Classroom lesson · Sport · 🇨🇷 Costa Rica

Football - the favourite sport

From the school yard to La Sele, Costa Rica's national team

Children playing football on a grass pitch in Costa Rica

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Football (called fútbol in Spanish) is by far the most popular sport in Costa Rica. Almost every child plays it - in the school playground, on the street, on a sandy beach pitch, or on a proper grass field. The national team is nicknamed La Sele, short for La Selección - 'the selection'.

Tell me more

Costa Rica's national team has played in six World Cups. The most famous moment came in 2014 in Brazil, when tiny Costa Rica beat much bigger teams like Uruguay, Italy and Greece, and reached the quarter-finals. The whole country watched together. Schools paused. Streets emptied.

Most Costa Rican towns have a football pitch in the middle, often right next to the church and the school. Even the smallest village has a flat patch of grass with two goals at each end. Children play barefoot or in plimsolls - whatever they have.

The two biggest Costa Rican club teams are Saprissa (purple shirts) and Alajuelense (red and black). When they play each other, it is called El Clásico. Families pick a side - sometimes the way English families pick Liverpool or Manchester United - and stay loyal forever.

Costa Rica has produced some of the best goalkeepers in the world. The most famous is Keylor Navas. He grew up in a small Costa Rican town, started in goal because he was the youngest on the team and nobody else wanted to play there - and ended up winning some of the biggest trophies in world football.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01When a national team does well, why does the whole country get caught up in it?
  2. 02Why do you think football is the most popular sport in so many countries around the world?
  3. 03Keylor Navas was put in goal because nobody else wanted to play there. What does that tell us about being given a job you didn't choose?
Try this

Classroom activity

Hold a class World Cup. Make small flags for 8 different countries (including Costa Rica). Play a quick game where each pupil represents one country and the class swaps flags every round. Talk about how it feels to 'represent' someone else's place.