📼 Sporting Cristal, Peru football club: match highlights videos, News & History

The Club Sporting Cristal is a Peruvian sports club located in the city of Lima, best known for its football team. It was founded on 13 December 1955 in the Rímac district by engineer Richard Bentín Mujica and his wife Esther Grande de Bentín, stockholders of the Peruvian brewery Backus and Johnston. The club and the brewery have been closely linked since its inception, and it is for this reason that it is popularly known as los Cerveceros (\"the brewers\").

The team has played in the Peruvian Primera División since 1956, where it obtained the title that year. Due to this achievement, the Cristal is often referred to as \"El club que nació campeón\". Since their first participation, they have won the league title 19 times and are one of the few teams in Peru to have never been relegated from the top division. Sporting Cristal is also the first Peruvian team to have been crowned tricampeóns, successively winning the 1994, 1995, and 1996 seasons. In 1997, they were runners-up of the Copa Libertadores, losing the final to Brazilian side Cruzeiro. The Cristal holds the longest undefeated streak in the tournament; 17 games without suffering a loss.

The Cristal has a heated rivalry with Universitario de Deportes. One of the main reasons for the enmity between the two sides is the series of transfers of Universitario's star players to los Celestes. The club also has rivalries with Club Alianza Lima, Deportivo Municipal, and the Sport Boys.

Sporting Cristal plays its home games at the Estadio Alberto Gallardo. They play at the Estadio Nacional for international competitions such as the Libertadores or Sudamericana. The Estadio Nacional is also the venue for matches against Universitario and Alianza Lima.

In addition to football, the club has teams specializing in Esports, futsal, women's football, and volleyball.