THE OTHER NATIONAL TEAM · PARAGUAY
During the men’s World Cup, FemGol will trace the history of some of the women’s national teams from the countries taking to the pitch. Because a country’s football doesn’t fit in a single team.
Today, Paraguay return to the knockout stage of the World Cup.
The men’s national team, who finished third in Group D and progressed as one of the best third-placed sides under Gustavo Alfaro, face four-time world champions Germany in the round of 32. The match will be played at Boston Stadium, the tournament designation for Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, and will be Paraguay’s first World Cup knockout game since 2010.
Across the country, people are talking about the Albirroja, about returning after 16 years and about extending a tournament that has already restored Paraguay to a stage from which it had been absent for far too long.
Paraguay’s other national team also had somewhere it wanted to be.
And just 20 days ago, that journey came to an end once again.
On 9 June 2026, Paraguay hosted Colombia at the Defensores del Chaco in the final round of the CONMEBOL Women’s Nations League. The competition awarded two direct places at the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil and another two berths in the inter-confederation play-offs.
Paraguay took the lead three times.
Dulce Quintana scored from the penalty spot in the third minute. After Colombia’s first equaliser, Claudia Martínez made it 2-1 in the ninth. Lice Chamorro sent Paraguay into half-time with a 3-2 advantage.
For a while, it seemed possible.
Linda Caicedo equalised in the second half. Ana María Guzmán scored in the 89th minute to make it 3-4 to Colombia. Paraguay finished the competition with ten points, in sixth place, outside both the direct qualification positions and the play-offs.
Out again.
Claudia had been there from the start. She was 18 years old and already embodied, more than any other player, the possibility that Paraguay’s future might be different.
She played. She scored.
It still was not enough.
Rubia against Morena
To understand why that hurts so much, we have to travel to Sapucái, a railway town in the department of Paraguarí.
The railway had brought British engineers and workers to the area. A town had grown around the workshops of the Paraguay Central Railway.
Research by historian Andrew Nickson identifies Sapucái as the site of the first documented women’s football match in Paraguay, played on 14 May 1926. Its centenary had been marked only a month and a half earlier.
The two teams were called Rubia and Morena.
Rubia was made up of the daughters of British railway workers. Morena consisted of the daughters of Paraguayan labourers from the railway workshops. They played during the national holiday on 14 May, outside any federation structure and decades before women’s football had a recognised competition in the country.
They played because they wanted to play.
Then came those who wanted to tell them that they should not.
In April 1960, during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, Article 50 of Decree 9553 stated that women would not be permitted to practise sports considered incompatible “with the conditions of their nature”.
Football was treated as one of them.
Twenty years later, two teams decided to challenge that prohibition in full view of everyone.
On 13 July 1980, a women’s team from Olimpia and another from Ciudad Presidente Stroessner — now Ciudad del Este — took to the pitch at half-time during a men’s match between Olimpia and Guaraní.
The following day, Olimpia president Osvaldo Domínguez Dibb received a telegram from the National Sports Council. The message reminded him that football was reserved for men.
The women kept playing.
A beginning with 163 tickets sold
On 16 August 1997, eight years after the fall of the dictatorship, the then Paraguayan Football League launched its first organised women’s competition. It was still described as experimental.
Atlético Colegiales and Deportivo Encarnación played the opening match at the Bernabé Pedrozo stadium, home of Club Silvio Pettirossi. Colegiales won 5-1.
A total of 163 tickets were sold.
The gate receipts came to 815,000 guaraníes.
Among the players who took part during those early years was Irma Cuevas. She played for Nacional, represented Paraguay during the early years of the senior national team and continued competing beyond the age of 40. In 2020, she said she had scored more than 630 goals during her career.
It was women’s football that almost nobody saw, but that somebody always kept playing.
Almost two decades later, a Paraguayan club achieved something the senior national team is still pursuing.
Sportivo Limpeño reached the 2016 Copa Libertadores Femenina final against Venezuela’s Estudiantes de Guárico. Limpeño fell behind, equalised through Liz Peña and completed the comeback with a Damia Cortaza strike in the 89th minute.
Paraguay had produced a Copa Libertadores champion before its senior national team had ever reached a World Cup.
One match away
The senior team has come close.
Its clearest opportunity arrived in February 2023, after finishing fourth at the previous year’s Copa América.
Paraguay qualified for the inter-confederation play-off tournament that awarded the final places at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. In their opening match, they trailed Chinese Taipei 2-0 with only 15 minutes remaining.
Rebeca Fernández pulled one back. Dulce Quintana equalised in added time. Paraguay survived the penalty shoot-out.
Panama came next.
A Lineth Cedeño goal decided the final match. Panama secured the first World Cup qualification in their history. Paraguay returned home after coming within 90 minutes of their own first appearance.
One match.
That was as close as Paraguay had ever come to the door.
The house before the key
A few months before that play-off, in October 2022, the Paraguayan Football Association had opened the Women’s Football High Performance Centre in Ypané.
The CARFEM was developed with the involvement of the APF, FIFA Forward and CONMEBOL’s Evolución programme. It includes separate accommodation for the senior and youth national teams, seven pitches, a gym, stands and media facilities.
It remains unusual for a federation to have a centre designed specifically for its women’s national teams.
Paraguay built the house before earning their first World Cup place.
They still needed to find the key.
Champions before becoming adults
In May 2025, something shifted.
Paraguay’s under-17 side entered the final match of the South American Championship with a chance to win the first title in their history. The game against Ecuador remained goalless as the clock passed the 90-minute mark.
In the fourth minute of added time, Claudia Martínez scored.
Paraguay won 1-0, finished top of the final stage and became South American champions. Claudia ended the tournament as its leading scorer with ten goals.
A few months later, at the Under-17 World Cup in Morocco, Paraguay crossed another frontier. They won two matches, drew another and progressed beyond the group stage for the first time.
Claudia scored a hat-trick against New Zealand. Mexico ended Paraguay’s run in the round of 16 with a 1-0 victory.
The generation had arrived.
But great youth generations do not automatically become great senior national teams.
In February 2026, Paraguay hosted the South American Under-20 Championship. They reached the final six-team stage but finished fifth, immediately behind the four sides that qualified for the World Cup in Poland.
Progress is not linear.
It never is.
Claudia cannot open the door alone
Claudia Martínez was born in Capitán Bado in 2008. She began her career at Sportivo Ameliano, later moved to Olimpia and made her senior international debut in July 2024, when she was 16.
A year later, she became the breakout star of the Copa América Femenina.
She scored six goals and finished as joint top scorer alongside Brazil’s Amanda Gutierres. Her season also earned her a nomination for the inaugural women’s Kopa Trophy, created to recognise the best young player in the world.
She finished fifth.
In January 2026, Washington Spirit announced her signing from Olimpia on a three-year contract with an option for 2029. The American club confirmed that it had paid a transfer fee but did not disclose the amount.
ESPN reported the fee to be around $950,000. If accurate, it would be the highest known transfer fee ever paid for a Paraguayan women’s footballer and one of the largest deals completed in women’s football at the time.
Claudia also became the first Paraguayan player to appear in the NWSL.
Her arrival in the United States was not merely an investment in the future. Before the June international break, she had appeared in all 13 of Washington Spirit’s matches and scored four goals, three of them match-winners.
Then she returned to Paraguay.
On 5 June, she scored four times in a 0-8 victory over Bolivia. Four days later, she found the net against Colombia in the match Paraguay had to win to keep their path to Brazil 2027 open.
Paraguay scored three times at home. They led at half-time. They had on the pitch the player who best represents everything that might come next.
It still was not enough.
The defeat also exposed the limits of any story built around a single player.
Paraguay’s future will not depend solely on how many goals Claudia can score. It will depend on the strength of the domestic league behind her, the continuity of the youth system, the number of players who gain access to professional environments and whether the senior team can turn individual talent into a side capable of sustaining an entire qualifying campaign.
The door is still there
Today, the men face Germany. Paraguay return to a World Cup knockout match for the first time in 16 years.
The other national team will have to wait for the next cycle.
Paraguay will enter it carrying a history that began a century ago, when the daughters of British and Paraguayan railway workers formed two teams beside the tracks. It continued when a decree attempted to decide which sports were compatible with a woman’s nature. It reappeared at half-time during a men’s match, survived a telegram, sold 163 tickets on the opening day of its first organised competition and eventually lifted the Copa Libertadores.
Now Paraguay have a high-performance centre, a generation of youth internationals who already know what it means to win South America and a forward capable of scoring across the continent, at a youth World Cup and in one of the best leagues in the world.
What they still do not have is an appearance at a senior Women’s World Cup.
Paraguay already know where the door is.
The next challenge is not to wait for Claudia to open it alone, but to ensure that everything built around her reaches it too.
