Palestino, the Chilean club whose projection matters far beyond the pitch

The home team unveiled new jerseys on Saturday. By half time at La Cisterna, an old, low-slung stadium in the southern suburbs of Santiago, Chile, those who wore it were entitled to regard it as a lucky charm. In their novel shirts, green-and-white hoops with a busy mosaic of badges and flags across the chest to signal various global alliances, Palestino had raced to a 3-0 lead over Cobreloa.

It was 5-0 by full time, an emphatic scoreline to start off Chile’s league season, an even better result given the players in the club’s third-choice kit had some second-string elements to their line-up. Key men had been rested in anticipation of a higher-stakes fixture three days later.

That game is on Tuesday, when La Cisterna anticipates cheering a club with a unique historical pedigree towards a threshold that only comes around once a decade, at best – progress to the group stage of the Copa Libertadores.

Hold onto the 2-1 first leg advantage they brought home from Portuguesa of Venezuela last week, and Palestino will be one qualifying round away from joining the likes of Brazil’s Flamengo and Fluminense and Argentina’s River Plate in the group phase of South America’s most prestigious club competition, its equivalent of the Champions League.

With that would come significant global projection. For Palestino, generally no more than middleweight performers in the top division of Chilean football, that sort of projection matters well beyond the pitch or on the annual accounts. The clue here is in the club’s name. It is explicit in the dominant paraphernalia all over the uncovered terracing at La Cisterna.

Above the stadium fly the flags of Chile and of Palestine. Parallel to the touchline hangs a 50-metre banner with the words