Alajuelense Home football shirt 1989 - 1990

1989 - 1990 Alajuelense home football shirt. Home shirt used by Alajuelense during the latter part of the 1988-89 season and for a few matches on the 1989-90 season.

Alajuelense had an irregular 1988-89 season--even though the playoffs were reached, Alajuelense was away from the top two spots (they qualified by placing fourth) due to a lot of ties being conceded in the regular season; whereas on the playoffs only one match was lost but most of them were tied, resulting in them being ruled out with two games to spare. Four coaches (one of them caretaker) took the hot seat with varying results: Costa Rican Leroy Lewis started the season after being appointed ahead of the 1987-88 playoff in place of Czechoslovak Josef Bouska, even though Lewis did win three regional playoff stages (one was an elimination round against Panamanian team Plaza Amador and the other two were group stages contested at Guatemala and Honduras) he only won one 1988-89 domestic match and left the post after a 3-1 loss at Guanacaste; former midfielder Mario \"Chalazo\" Vega was the caretaker and won his match at charge before giving the post to Brazilian Odir Jacques who could not repeat his success on his previous stint (he won the league title on 1984 after being the second coach in charge for the 1983-84 season) and was sacked after 22 matches in charge (twenty domestic and two regional, the latter two being the CONCACAF semifinal against Honduran powerhouse Olimpia); with Costa Rican Juan José Gámez taking the job and lasting until early 1991, the club legend being previously in charge between 1975 and 1977.

Alajuelense fielded a total of 37 players during the season, a handful of them won the then-last league title on early 1985, a few of them arrived during the decade, also a few of them were youngsters who debuted during the season, and four foreigners (Uruguayans Fernando Sosa and José Pablo Alonso, Honduran Juan Carlos Espinoza and Brazilian Eduardo Santana; three of them were released mid-season with only Sosa remaining until the end of the 1992 season and retiring thereafter). Whilst most of the youngsters had short spells with the team, a handful of them were called for international duty on the 1989 FIFA World Youth Championship (i.e. the U-20 World Cup) and ended the season on the starting XI--even though most of them debuted under Odir Jacques, Juan José Gámez kept fielding them (as he coached the World Cup campaign) and his bet paid off as the youngsters (Paul Mayorga, Maximilian Peynado, Óscar Valverde, Austin Berry and Juan Carlos Arguedas) were a vital part of Alajuelense\'s later squads, with them initially carrying the burden on the 1989-90 season and helping the team to a respectable second place (given the circumstances).

Even though Punto Rojo is one of the most memorable Alajuelense sponsors, only three striped shirts (two of them were made by the El Centro de Sport brand DeSport) were ever used with the stripes--one of them used in 1983, the above example used between 1989 and 1990, and the concurrent/replacement shirt used on most of the 1989-90 season\'s matches which featured thinner stripes. Punto Rojo remains associated with the popular hooped shirts worn on the 1983-84 and 1988-89 seasons. To note that this section only deals with the home shirt.

Shirt #3 was used on the first team by Uruguayan defender Fernando Sosa, however this example was one of the surplus shirts cascaded to the Reserves, which was used by (and is the property of) former player Guillermo Espinoza. Espinoza was promoted to the first team by Juan José Gámez ahead of the 1990-91 season (alongside fellow youngsters Luis Ugarte, Wesley Cruz, Bernal Villegas and goalkeeper Álvaro Mesén) but chose to retire during the season to focus on his studies.