El din Marbles

The El din Marbles were a professional football club based in the western Marquezian city of El din in Candelaria And Marquez, which played in the CMSC.

The club was one of the most recently established of top Candelariasian sides, though it has its origins in the main rivals to Cathedral City, the city’s biggest club – Recreativo El din and the El din Giants. Under the later name Sports of El din, Recreativo played a single top-flight NFBL season in 1973 – the two clubs later fused, but the new Marbles did not achieve promotion to the CMSC1 until the XXV season.

They would remain in the top-flight thereafter, finishing fourth once and winning the CMS Cup in the XXIX season but otherwise being a mid-table outfit that occasionally flirted with relegation. During the International Era, only Port of Clotaire conceded more CMSC1 goals.

So named as to reflect the club’s colourful origins and fanbase, the Marbles principally drew their support from the fringes of El din and Marquezian society, with thousands of Spanish-speaking residents of the city’s poorest barrios sitting alongside some of the most financially privileged individuals in the islands, at the modern Marble Ground.

The Marbles rapidly became one of C&M’s most popular clubs among neutrals, playing consistently good football under charismatic managers including Carlos Panadero, Félix Barreto and José Felipe Cassumba Domingos, and were noted for their commitment to youth development and use of cheap Nethertopian imports – striker Abdoulaye Soro being the first player from the Candelarias’ near neighbours to make a success in the CMSC and later having a stint as manager.

In later years they became the plaything of Sargossan meat magnate Daniel Gil – serving to spread awareness of his beef-based commercial empire without achieving great success on the pitch.

Tahodio
Ironically for one of the CMSC1’s more ‘modern’ sides; the El din Marbles’ earliest history can arguably be traced to Tahodio Club de Fútbol, a club established as an amateur entity in 1901, in a mining community on the outskirts of El din. Tahodio itself became engulfed by the still expanding city not long after, and in 1921 a former son of the village – having become a rare example of a Hispanic success story at that time – returned home to become patron of the football club he had once viewed as a substitute family.

Fernando Gutiérrez Franquelo soon agreed to fund the building of what was for the time one of the most advanced football stadia (and connected facilities) in the country, and despite their relatively small following Tahodio were able to attract leading players from across Marquez and become key players in the city’s burgeoning amateur league. In 1926 they became only the second Hispanic club to win the Liga El din, and in 1927 the strike pairing of José Manuel Perea and Luis Romero stunned the country by leading a battering of Deevin FC (later Albrecht FC), Sorres AFC and the Cockyard Cricketers during a tour of Albrecht.

Perea and Romero are still considered Marbles legends – their statues stood outside the Little Road Stadium, and Marbles supporters would long sing songs of the Albrecht victories – but Tahodio’s era of success was short-lived. El din began to suffer an economic downturn, the much-heralded era of Hispanic domination in Candelarias football never came to pass, and even locally they were increasingly outclassed by other Hispanic clubs set up often in their honour, as well as Anglo outfits.

In 1936 Tahodio were forced to sell off their beloved ground, the Estadio Fernando Guriérrez. Waiting in the wings were Club Recreativo de El din; an entity originally established by English-speaking Christian activists in the city, who believed in promoted healthy athleticism to the benighted masses in the impoverished settlements surrounding El din.

Recreativo
A dedicated football section was added months later, and Recreativo soon became one of El din’s most successful amateur sides – though this was hardly an awe-inspiring achievement in itself, with most of the Anglo teams having left local play and coalesced into Cathedral City. Even so, Recreativo’s stadium rapidly became almost a place of pilgrimage for many living on the city’s social fringes – and for a time, the EFG was widely considered the city’s third cathedral.

Despite the establishment of the nationwide NFBL, Recreativo remained amateur until 1951, when the success of Cathedral City at the national level and the ennui of a fifth straight Liga El din title finally saw supporters enact a quiet coup and oust the Protestant elite from their position of power in the boardroom.

Recreativo’s NFBL existence was largely inglorious however, with the club failing to meet even Cathedral City’s top-flight status. As the team continued to bounce between the second and third division however, the demographic geography of El din entered into a prolonged state of flux. Salt-of-the-earth districts such as Tahodio were steadily transformed into leafy suburbs – and ones financially fit only for the predominately English-speaking, and mostly Anglo, fiscal elite. Inner-city areas – such as where Cathedral City made their home – likewise transformed into largely Hispanic communities, leaving the city’s two biggest clubs rather out of place in relation to their traditional fanbases.

By the early sixties, Cathedral City’s side was almost entirely Hispanic in nature and, with the rise in attendances during the NFBL’s boom period, a new generation of Hispanic supporters had adopted the Cats as their own. Recreativo’s popularity plummeted and, in 1968, a small conglomerate of wealthy Cathedral City supporters bought the Tahodio club and its stadium.

The takeover very nearly caused civil unrest in El din of an unprecedented scale – only the insistence of the new chairman Daniel James that as many leading Recreativo supporters as possible would be given a say in club policy stopped outright rioting in the streets.

Sports and Giants
James’ claims soon proved to be merely that. In 1969, Recreativo were formally renamed under the clunky moniker of Sports of El din, while their traditional yellow and black home kits were dropped in favour of blue, red and yellow stripes that bore more than a passing resemblance to those of Cathedral City – with James rather dubiously claiming that he was merely taking the club back to their roots in adopting the former uniforms of Tahodio – which had indeed used such colours briefly during their early history, but alongside up to a dozen other outfits.

The issue of the club colours proved quite a major one for some time, with Cathedral City successfully suing Sports of El din, who were forced to drop the yellow from their kits in favour of orange, though the ‘original’ colours remain on the Marbles’ crest to this day.

The new board at the Sports were not the only disenchanted faction who departed Cathedral City in the late sixties however. Also in 1969, the El din Giants were formed – a business-owned franchise that aimed to take the wind out of both clubs’ sails. The Giants soon attracted yet more disillusioned ‘Catedral’ fans, and were the biggest spenders of the three during the final years of the NFBL, signing key, if homogenously Anglo, players from El din’s other two clubs, as well as from across C&M.

Continued wrangles at boardroom level stunted the hopes of Sports of El din meanwhile, but they were fortunate to have an inspired figure in the dugout in Peter Turner. Between 1970 and ’72, Turner guided the club up two divisions and into the top-flight for the very first time – and the 1973 season saw not two but six El din derbies, with Catedral, Sports and the Giants all in the NFBL’s first division. They all finished mid-table, before the NFBL collapsed.

By the time the CMSC began and opened itself up to professional sides, the Giants had already gone bust. The licence for the club’s name was bought by yet another small group of businessmen, who successfully followed Catedral back to professionalism. By now, Catedral’s support base had diversified once more, becoming a unifying force for the city’s middle-class of all hues and by far the most successful of the three clubs, with Cats fans delighting in mocking the relative lack of performances from the wealthy Giants and their privileged supporters.

By now, El din was fully into the swing of another period of social and economic upheaval, perhaps the worst in its history. C&M’s reliance on agricultural exports had collapsed, the mines of north Marquez were becoming increasingly less productive, and heavy industry was eschewing the city altogether. The crises had led to the development of a whole new ring of suburbs – this time consisting of shanty towns full of formerly rural workers now left to eek-out a meagre existence in some of the worst conditions anywhere in the islands. Despite vast government programmes of assistance, the problem seemed intractable – generations of invariably Spanish-speaking Marquezians were destined to live and die in a third world environment.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and Sports of El din were suddenly presented with an opportunity to return to their roots for good. Soon after the NFBL’s disestablishment, the newer elements of the board left the club, and those that remained embraced a return to the Recreativo name.

The merger
From their position in the second division, the Giants made one last big push towards gaining promotion – and failed miserably. A relegation into the semi-professional regional leagues after CMSC XI left them financially ruined, and Recreativo were little better off. Playing at a tiny, dilapidated stadium amongst the shanty towns (the Estadio Fernando Guriérrez having long since become flats), they continued to enjoy some of the biggest gates in Marquez but were unable to charge the ticket fees necessary to keep home-grown youngsters for any length of time – gallingly, more than a few left for Catedral over the years.

In the XVII season, Recreativo were relegated another division, and could only look on as a Catedral side containing several players who had come through what passed for Recreativo’s ‘academy’ finish second in the CMSC1. With crowds at the Giants’ Little Road Stadium also dwindling, a time for definitive action had clearly arrived.

Prior to the following season, Recreativo withdrew from the CMSC and the two clubs announced an unprecedented merger. The move was far from universally praised by supporters of either club, with many condemning a betrayal on a par with the adoption of the Sports of El din identity, but the new club was quickly steered out of choppy waters by the farsighted chairmanship of Sergio Lozano. Moving into Little Road and merging the Giants’ white kits with the orange and blue of Recreativo, the El din Marbles identity was chosen to reflect the multi-coloured marbles that were the main component of a game that remained popular among street kids and expensively-educated Anglo children alike, and the club’s own similarly colourful origins. Or possibly it was a pun.

The Marbles were soon given much attention and great credit in the national press for pulling together the extremities of the city in a way that almost no other institution seemed capable of. Little Road rapidly became one of the country’s noisiest arenas, if still relatively small, but on the field the Marbles were initially slow to live up to their new expectations.

Several managers came and went before the Marbles made the second division once more, before a rapid relegation. In XXII they were promoted again, though manager Jacob Wilson soon departed for Castillo FC. Under Giles Walton however they began to put together a side capable of challenging for a CMSC1 place for the first time.

XXV was the breakout season, given extra value by the plight of Cathedral City – forced to ground share with the Marbles at Little Road following a damning ruling on the safety of La Decimotercia. While Catedral struggled in the top-flight, the attendances for Marbles home games steadily began to outstrip those of the Cats. Asides from reaching the CMS Cup semi-finals, the Marbles finished second in the second division, leapfrogging Catedral.

Into the CMSC1
The first Marbles side in the top division were an offensive, if at times route-one, outfit based around creative young midfielder Crawford Panama, big defender Carlos Humberto Tokpah and giant Kura-Pellandi forward Andy Madden, though the key man was arguably Zachary Pinkowski, a boyhood Catedral supporter signed from the Cats on the free transfer. He scored in their first game, a 1-1 draw with Port of Clotaire, before being part of a side that let in six against Green Island.

On matchday twelve they were comfortably beaten by fellow newly-promoted outfit AFC MN Smith, prompting Walton’s shock resignation – with the manager reappearing barely hours later as the new Candelaria-Allemalli coach. Both clubs were united in their ire towards the manager derided as a turncoat, but in his place came Carlos Panadero, the veteran defender. With two thirds of the season gone they remained in the relegation zone, but a late string of results lifted them to safety in time to prepare for the first El din derbies for years. No less impressively, and despite the distractions of attempting to stay up, Panadero’s Marbles made the CMS Cup final, losing to Albrecht Turkish only in extra time.

Panadero – tall, dark, coat-bothering – soon emerged as a popular a figure as the Marbles were a club, rapidly becoming a nationwide pin-up among women of a certain age and men of a certain disposition. Foreign defenders Larry Torrell-Whyte – a former amateur boxer – and the Ad’ihani Kenneth Quinn were the headline signings, with Panadero believing that the Marbles required only a little extra stability at the back to succeed. Opening with a satisfying victory over CandelariaAM, Panadero won the first Manager of the Month award in guiding the Marbles to second place.

Though the Marbles ultimately fell away to a more sensible, mid-table finish; Panadero and his club continued to win admirers despite a seldom free-flowing style of play. The key moves before the next season saw Rockdale LeCass join the right flank, and Madden finding a partner in the Nethertopian Abdoulaye Soro – the Baptism of Fire starlet breaking decades of traditional by moving from Tenderville to the land across the water and scoring on his debut (following a matchday one absence after failing to get to grips with Candelariasian cuisine).

It proved to be quite the season of two halves for both El din clubs, fittingly for the debuts of the Apertura and Clausura ‘stages’ for international qualification. Utterly outdone by a resurgent Cathedral City in the first half of the season, the Cat’s run into the TQCC semi-finals seemed to spur the Marbles onto a sensational Clausura in which they lost just three times and narrowly finished fourth, despite a string of injuries to their small squad that would prove hallmarks of future Marbles seasons.

The Marbles go global
As Panadero prepared for the club’s first international campaign, he was hit by the decision of Madden not to sign a new contract and reacted by signing Golden Boot winner Jamie Watson from MN Smith, with Albrecht FC reject Jack Marshall coming into the midfield. Squeaking into the group stages in extra time, behind their first international opposition – Stestrenas OC of Vephrall – the Marbles were placed into a group highlighting the joys of the modern Champions’ Cup, picking up two victories against Cafundó do Juta in making the last sixteen behind Yuba United. They then exited to Olympique Protectorat however, despite a heroic fightback in Ad’ihan after a heavy defeat in El din.

Back in the league, the Marbles endured a series of heavy defeats that left them in relegation danger at the half-way stage – though admittedly only four points separated seventh from eighteenth at that point. The second year failed to get any better however, their TQCC campaign now a distant memory as they slipped into odds-on for the drop.

Panadero’s stock was falling fast, and only a Hamzah Abdullah Harouni goal for CAL against McDonald SC on the final day pushed the Saurin club into the CMSC2 and saved the much-vaunted Marbles from the drop. The distraction of the CMS Cup didn’t help – a competition increasingly pushed to the back burner for many clubs allowed the Marbles to make the final against CMSC2 surprise package Ironside-Talinger, scoring twice in the first ten minutes to eventually lift the trophy 2-1 – still a tremendous and greatly valued achievement coming days after ensuring their top-flight survival.

That victory secured a Globe Cup place and allowed the side to relax somewhat in XXX, though they remained stolidly in the bottom half of the table, their form in the XXVIII Clausura looking increasingly a one-off. They survived comfortably, despite Soro’s season-ending leg break, while the Globe Cup campaign saw them survive the group stage with a 2-2-2 record – an away victory at América, the Cafundelense club then managed by former Catedral player Javier Sanchez being the highlight – before being knocked out again by Olympique Protectorat.

Still struggling financially, the Marbles’ major domestic signing before XXXI saw goalkeeper Harry Rosalia join from Mayo Valley. It was in regards to the new rules on regional movements that Panadero really went to town however – allowing Soro to leave, but signing an all-Nethertopian strike force, a young holding midfielder, and a left-back. A handful more young Nethertopians were to sign to the bench and academy before the season was out, while home-grown defenders Joe Rodríguez and Adrián Gallo also made an impact, but the Apertura of XXXI was all about one man – Jack Marshall. The deaf player, now aged thirty, started the season in the form of his life, both as a goalscorer and creator, and was soon into the C&M squad for the first time. His ability, and the early form of the satisfyingly cheap Jan-Paul Snip up front, placed the Marbles suddenly among the early title contenders, losing just three games in the Apertura to finish second in the half-way table.

All this was achieved despite an epic injury list, with few players failing to spend at least half a dozen games on the sickbed and Panadero frequently forced to dip into the reserves and youth ranks. With Marshall’s form dropping off, the heroic spirit that had seen them through the first half of the season couldn’t be trusted to keep them in the hunt indefinitely. Their Clausura was poor, but they did enough to finish sixth and snatch a Globe Cup place – an adequate reward having suffered from such an injury crisis.

In the TQCC meanwhile, the Marbles won their group – including a home victory over Raynor City United – before being narrowly ousted in the last sixteen by San Solari.

The centre ground
Panadero lost ‘keeper Rosalia to Albrecht FC prior to the start of XXXII, but the expensive signing of occasional Cafundéu number one Bartolomeu sweetened that particular blow. Otherwise, the Marbles’ further development came from within – from left-back Oliver Wilkinson, and Nethertopian cousins Erik and Erwin Visser.

Little was expected of the Marbles this term, as so it proved – sitting high enough to be considered the ‘best of the rest’ at certain points, they also flirted with the relegation zone, particularly after the Vissers departed for the Di Bradini Cup. They ultimately survived with a certain amount of comfort however, and the greater ticket sales from their new Marble Ground stadium looked able to ensure a brighter future – albeit one still reliant on Rushmori-born youngsters developed by the Marbles themselves.

The XXXIII season proved to be one of mid-table comfort and little more, with Panadero attempting to trumpet modest developments but the progress of the club clearly having stalled. A difficult second season from Erwin Visser, and the general naivety shown by youthful stars including right-back Alex Palmer and the Secristanian Chris Coventry, epitomised another two years of mediocrity – but, for all that, Panadero retained the unwavering loyalty of supporters who really had never had it so good.

Throughout this period, Marbles supporters could draw both strength and amusement from the struggles of Catedral, their rivals blighted by years of financial misadventure and coming within hours of insolvency. If nothing else, it distracted the city’s other set of supporters from their own monetary travails – with chairman Keith Last balancing the books expertly but publicly admitting that the club would never be able to hope for any achievement greater than finishing in the top half as their finances stood.

XXXIV would turn out to be dominated by off-field activity for the Marbles, as well as the joy of watching Catedral tumble to an unexpected and immeasurably damaging relegation. Unable – and equally unwilling – to make major new signings, the sense that Panadero was now simply going through the motions became entirely clear to the majority of supporters. Even that outlook saw the manager achieve better things than many had anticipated, keeping the Marbles amongst the chasing pack throughout the Apertura, whilst publicly steeling the supporters for another Clausura blighted by absentees – with the Nethertopian contingent’s deployment to the Cup of Harmony and Oxen Cup inevitably disrupting the team and leaving Panadero reliant on green YTS products. For all that, most experts considered it a credit to the long-serving manager that the team ultimately finished just inside the top half with an 11-12-11 record.

By then however, all concentration was directed away from the season itself and towards the long-term future of the club. The first suggestions of a foreign takeover began early in the season, but it wasn’t until the Clausura’s dying stages that the arrival of Sargossan billionaire meat magnate Daniel Gil was formally confirmed, following an extensive operation aimed at convincing sceptical locals as to the benign nature of the takeover, and the ultimately hugely positive impact it could have upon the club’s fortunes. Gil’s own upbringing amongst the lower-class districts of San Marquez, and his resultant empathy for the club and much of its fanbase, was consistently trumpeted in an effort to bring them on-side and proved largely successful – though a small but vocal section of former Giants supporters remained less keen on handing the club over foreigners, never mind Hispanic ones, and sold their shares only with extreme reluctance while endorsing an image of Gil and his colleagues as English-speaking phonies amongst their less well-heeled peers. The accidental leaking of sensitive details regarding the takeover onto the internet by a Dancougan-born office temp further served to do little to instil widespread confidence in the new regime.

As for Panadero, his exit was confirmed in all but writing a short way into the Clausura; with the transition between himself and returning hero Abdoulaye Soro a generally smooth one. Soro’s own managerial background was limited to a short and not overly successful spell at FC DePardenti, but his arrival as a fans’ favourite was all but a given; given the need for Gil and new chairman Enrique Santana to ingratiate themselves as much as possible, and to maintain stability with the significantly Nethertopian squad.

The other major occurrence of XXXVI saw Erik Visser demand to be formally known as ‘Ricky’, confirming previous suspicions that he was, in fact, a bit of a tit.

XXXV struggles & Espinoza
The pre-season prior to XXXV provided Santana and Soro with their first opportunity to splash the cash and attempt to establish the Marbles as a true top-flight force for the first time in their history. Early signings saw two Sargossan internationals – including the national team captain Néstor González, the central defender – join the squad, but a greater display of financial might was to follow when the signing of Dancougan international Cody Horrigan, shortly to be followed by his fellow midfielder Jordan Hawker.

Though inevitably undisclosed, the fee for Hawker may well have been a league record for a Candelariasian, and represented a highly unusual occurrence in seeing a highly-rated C&M player move between two relatively wealthy but mid-table clubs. Moreover, Hawker was a former Catedral player – the first to join the Marbles since Zachary Pinkowski.

Now handed a squad seemingly capable of challenging at least for UICA qualification, Soro was left with the major task of fitting the available talent into the starting XI – one at which he would ultimately fail. The first weekend of the season saw the Marbles fall to a 5-4 defeat at reigning champions Green Island – hardly shameful in itself, but far worse was to follow. Soro’s hopelessly confused formation – the very epitome of the ‘square pegs’ cliché and typically described as a 3-6-1 – saw the team repeatedly beaten at the back and the congested midfield unable to give sufficient support to Ricky. Hawker in particular resembled a little lost sheep, his league form soon being repeated internationally for C&M, and his relationship with defensive midfield partner Thomas Schaak was all but non-existent.

Soro began to shuffle his team dropping Bartolomeu and, in a move that did nothing to further endear himself to the club’s new owners, González too, as well as promoting his own son Arouna Soro to the matchday XVIII but, after reaching the half-way stage with just two victories to his name and leaving the Marbles in the relegation zone, he was sacked. While this in itself was no surprise, his replacement certainly was – with former Turkish manager Asdrubal Espinoza returning to Candelariasian football as a Clausura stop-gap with his Queer Poco el Mona Ara side failing to qualifying for either the World Cup or Cup of Harmony that cycle.

Espinoza’s period with the club would prove to be mixed, winning just four league games, but their results were sufficient to drag the Marbles to safety and a fourteenth-place finish six points outside the drop zone. More notably, Espinoza’s experience in cup competitions helped resurrect the Marbles’ status as a consistent force in the CMS Cup – victories over Melin Professionals, Radyukevich CSC and KT Hotspur putting the side into the final for the first time since XXIX. On this occasion, in what effectively amounted to a Nethertopia versus Sargossa derby match, Tenderville United comfortably came away the better side with a 2-0 victory.

Following the season and Espinoza’s departure, experienced former Cuidad Soluca manager Félix Baretto became the first Sargossan coach in Candelariasian football, while Erik Visser was politely forced to stop referring to himself as Ricky, on pain of tickling.

Barreto
Once the surprisingly complex matter of how one actually goes about spelling ‘Barreto’ had been solved, the bespectacled veteran new manager was able to dip his toe into the transfer market, bringing in countryman Marcos Díaz García to left-back and Raheem Kay from Gamboa FC into goal. Hawker, meanwhile, exited to Cafundéu after just one season – with few especially sad to see the C&M international leave, his departure helping to solve the problem of the Marbles’ congested midfield.

With Erik Visser again alone up front, the new 4-5-1 seemed a more sensible solution to the seemingly inherent selection dilemmas facing any modern Marbles manager – but the season soon proved a case of same old, same old with Barreto finding it impossible to deliver the consistency needed to mount a real push for the top half. The marooned striker in particular appeared out of sorts, perhaps pining for his trusty nickname, while the team’s disciplinary record also soon fell under the spotlight – much-loved Taeshanese hardwoman Jacin Raellis sent off no fewer than five times, two of them straight reds, over the course of the season, effectively ending her Marbles career with Adrián Gallo coming back into the reckoning instead.

On the final day, with Cathedral City relegated once more and El din facing the prospect of not having a club in the top-flight for the first time in decades, the Marbles were forced to travel to face Gamboa, their final relegation rivals. Though the visitors were arguably second best, and Gallo fortunate indeed to stay on the pitch himself, a single Erik Visser goal gave the Marbles victory – only their third of the Clausura – and a fifteenth-place finish in the table. Barreto’s job, while safe, was clearly going to be an uphill struggle for a lengthy while yet.

A small number of additions were enough to see the Marbles improve dramatically the following season, with Erik Visser and Starblaydi striker Rodrigo Silva dovetailing seamlessly even after Visser’s cousin had been dropped to the bench. The emergence of teenager Darren Hastings was perhaps the most significant boon, the centre-half soon finding himself called up to the C&M ‘B’ team for the Copa Rushmori and forging, alongside new club captain Néstor González, one of the division’s most feared defences.

By comparison, the second half of their XXXVII was extremely poor; picking up just sixteen points compared to the Apertura’s thirty and narrowly falling out of the Globe Cup positions. To be fair on Barreto, however, the manager had clearly accepted the club’s inability to push for greater honours in the league early on, and gave his fullest attentions to the CMS Cup – before a disappointing quarter-final exit to Tenderville – and later Globe Cup 17, though the Marbles were ousted at the group stage with their only victories coming in the Babbage Islands.

Final years
With Gil, Santana and Candelariasian sporting director Cidro Siles having finally twigged that buying Sargossans and hoping that that would somehow drag them out of mid-table mediocrity was a fool’s errand; the club focused their attentions and finances elsewhere to pull off the biggest domestic move of the summer by signing C&M striker Gabriel Macanás from Arrigo Portuguese. Starblaydi international George Rosenthal was brought in from Caires City to shore up the defence, though arguably the most impressive early performer was home-grown midfield general Miguel Ángel Madrid.

It soon became apparent – at least, to everyone bar Barreto – that Silva, Macanás and Visser had absolutely no chemistry, but the front three’s season-long marriage of convenience only came to an end with Barreto’s end-of-season sacking. It was by no means a nightmare season, but tumbling from fifth at the halfway stage to eleventh simply wasn’t good enough for Gil. The star man once again proved to be a local boy in the form of box-to-box midfielder Luis Pavoni, finally blooming in his late twenties.

For XXXIX, Pavoni would have new friends in midfield – a Sargossan international, José Luis Borrás, at the base and winger Zoran Živkovic joining from Mayo Valley. Živkovic was far from the club’s first choice, though the Candelarian could at least boast a diacritic even if not of the preferred kidney and soon proved his worth. The biggest new name of all however, in every sense, was manager José Felipe Cassumba Domingos, the former C&M international mercifully known as Cassa swapping the Sargossa international dugout for the Marble Ground much to every Candelariasian’s amusement.

It would be a solid season – a sixth-place finish, a couple of Globe Cup runs – without ever looking likely to achieve the breakthrough into the championship race that similar moneyed clubs had managed over the years. It would also be their last and, with a Globe Cup exit to suitably Latino Aguazul outfit Estudiantes de Íguen, the nation-shattering effects of the Beatrice event brought Candelariasian football to its knees. A headed Gabriel Macanás equaliser in the ninetieth minute away at Tenderville on MD34 proved to be the 11,502nd and final goal of the CMSC1’s International Era and the last scored in top-flight Candelariasian league football.

Football in El din is now once more an amateur activity, and Sunday afternoon football still takes place at El Campo, that vast stretch of the city that demarcates the affluent suburbs and poorest barrios in El din’s north-east, and between impoverished bambinos, with prized balls and discarded tin cans alike, amongst the plywood and corrugated metal of their cramped homes and stinking streets. While still blunted compared to the International Era, passion for the sport runs deeper here than in much of the Candelarias where it has become the subject of official displeasure and social taboo, and it is widely considered that if C&M were to ever return to international, or even organised semi-professional, football it is likely to be the denizens El din and similar corners of Marquez who will lead the way.

Stadium
Having spent their entire history under that name at the Little Road Stadium, the El din Marbles moved to a new forty-thousand all-seater stadium prior to this CMSC XXXII season – allowing their average gates to swell far beyond those of Cathedral City and further enhance their reputation, as well as hand El din one of the eight Candelariasian venues for World Cup 44.

The Marble Ground – as the stadium was formally known, though locals soon took to referring to it as La Canica – was constructed more cheaply, was considered less plush than most of its WC44 colleagues, and was built notably closer to El din’s shanty towns than its predecessor, though still close enough to the retail centres and suburban areas to avoid visitors traipsing through too many of the city’s less salubrious districts.

Architecturally a very much old-school affair, the ground’s most notable feature was the curved CorGlass roofing over one sideline stand and one goal line stand. The stands themselves were multi-coloured and would initially temporarily, and then inevitably forever, be known respectively as The Stand Behind the Dugout With the Roof, The Stand Behind the Goal With the Orange and Light Blue and a Roof, The Sideline Stand Without a Roof and The One With the Orange and Darker Blue and No Roof, Where We Stick The Away Supporters.

There were only a small number of executive boxes, to encourage the club’s wealthier supporters to slum it with their less privileged neighbours.

The stadium also became only the second Candelariasian – and second Marquezian – ground to host a major international club final, when Gamboa FC lost 3-1 to Septentrionian side Stade de Dauphin at the tenth SBCC final. In addition to a shock 1-0 friendly defeat to Sargossa prior to World Cup 51, the stadium hosted the Big Blues in a 1-0 win over Ad’ihan during the WC44 group stage and a 1-1 draw against Unreal229 during World Cup 47 qualifying. The Marble Ground hosted two other group stage matches at C&M’s sole home World Cup with the Capitalizt SLANI playing out a bore draw with Daehanjeiguk and securing a 1-0 win over Septentrionia on their way to the quarter-finals.

The Poco Camino was the name given to the El din Marbles’ base of operations beyond the Marble Ground; the first team and youth teams both training here on a site constructed from the former Little Road Stadium and several surrounding buildings.

Unlike most Candelariasian clubs, the Marbles housed several dozen permanent scholars of various ages at their main facilities, with kids from the city’s notorious shanty towns living alongside promising players from far wealthier backgrounds and foreign youngsters, most notably Nethertopians and Sargossans. As a result, the Poco Camino had a full complement of kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms and dormitories – all in the hope of making the Marbles an increasingly attractive destination for globally-based youngsters looking for a footballing education and a future professional contract. So much for that.

Following the end of the CMSC Gil, resisting the urge to hand the El din Marbles back to their rightful owners, sold off the Marble Ground and Poco Camino alike to developers in order to focus on more bovine business pursuits once more, and the Marbles effectively disappeared.

Notable CMSC1 International Era players
Goalkeepers
 * Bartolomeu
 * Raheem Kay
 * Aubrey Mkhonza
 * Vern Touati

Defenders
 * Marcos Díaz García
 * Adrián Gallo
 * Darren Hastings
 * Alex Palmer
 * Kenneth Quinn
 * Andrés Quirot
 * Jacin Raellis
 * Joe Rodríguez
 * George Rosenthal
 * Larry Torrell-Whyte
 * Oliver Wilkinson

Midfielders
 * Flag of Ex-Nation.png Chris Coventry
 * José Luis Borrás
 * Néstor González
 * Jordan Hawker
 * Alberto Herráez
 * Cody Horrigan
 * Miguel Ángel Madrid
 * Jack Marshall
 * Crawford Panama
 * Luis Pavoni
 * Zachary Pinkowski
 * Thomas Schaak
 * Wim Smits
 * Ben van Dam
 * Erwin Visser
 * Zoran Živkovic

Forwards
 * Gabriel Macanás
 * Andy Madden
 * Rodrigo Silva
 * Jan-Paul Snip
 * Abdoulaye Soro
 * Erik Visser
 * Jamie Watson