Sports
Football is the most popular sport in Peru. Football in Peru is governed by the Peruvian Football Federation (PFF), which the PFF organizes the men's, women's, and futsal national teams. Futbol legends from Peru include Alejandro Villanueva, Teodoro Fernández, Valeriano López, Alberto Terry, Hugo Sotil, César Cueto, Roberto Challe, Héctor Chumpitaz and Teófilo Cubillas, Peru's most successful striker in the World Cup finals with 10 goals.
Current renowned players include midfielder Nolberto Solano (Hull City), Juan Manuel Vargas (Fiorentina) and strikers Claudio Pizarro (Werder Bremen), José Paolo Guerrero (SV Hamburg) and Jefferson Farfán (Schalke 04). Alianza Lima, Sporting Cristal, and Universitario de Deportes are the biggest teams in Peru. In 2003, Cienciano won the Copa Sudamericana beating Argentinian club River Plate, and then proceeded to beat Latin American powerhouse Boca Juniors (Also from Argentina) in the Recopa Sudamericana played in Miami. Sporting Cristal was finalist in the Copa Libertadores de América 1997, South America's most important soccer tournament. Also Universitario de Deportes but in 1972.
Achievements from the Peruvian national football team include competing at the FIFA World Cup, in 1930, 1970 (Quarterfinalists), 1978, and 1982. The national team won two Copa América's in 1939 and 1975.
Achievements from the Peruvian women's national football team include finishing third place at the 1998 Sudamericano Femenino, and finishing fourth place at the 2003 Sudamericano Femenino.
Women's volleyball is a popular sport in Peru (Silver medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics, Runners-up in the Volleyball World Championship, and 12 times South American Champion).
Rugby union in Peru is a minor but growing sport.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Peru
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“There be some sports are painful, and their labor
Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)