Nacional da MadeiraCD Nacional is a football club founded on 8 December 1910 in Funchal, Madeira, whose history has been permanently intertwined with the story of one of the greatest players in the history of the game. A young Cristiano Ronaldo joined Nacional after leaving local rivals CS Marítimo, spending several years there as a youth player before moving to Sporting CP at the age of just twelve for a fee of £1,500, beginning his rise to the top of world football. In honour of that connection, the club's youth academy is now named the Cristiano Ronaldo Campus Futebol.
For most of its history, Nacional shared the Estádio dos Barreiros with the island's two other major clubs, Marítimo and União da Madeira. That changed thanks to longtime president Rui Alves, on whose initiative a new club stadium opened in 1998 in the hilly district of Choupana, high above Funchal. The venue was substantially expanded in 2007, with part of the funding coming from the transfer fee that had taken Ronaldo to Lisbon.
The club's most successful period came around the turn of the first and second decades of the 21st century. Nacional qualified for European competition five times, with its greatest success coming in the 2009-10 season, when, at its newly expanded home stadium, it hosted sides such as Athletic Bilbao, Werder Bremen and Austria Wien in the Europa League group stage. The club has also reached the Portuguese Cup semi-final on three occasions.
The team, nicknamed Alvinegros (Black-and-Whites) after its vertically striped shirts, remains Madeira's most accomplished club in terms of European football appearances, and its rivalry with CS Marítimo, known as the Madeira Derby, has electrified the island's supporters for decades.