DIMAYOR AND OTHER COLOMBIAN "WORDS": AUGUST 15th 1948

Before 1948 there was no professional football league in Colombia. Argentinian club, Velez Sarsfield toured Colombia in January 1948. 12,000 watched them play in Bogota. The first clubs were formed in Barranquilla and Bogotá and named Barranquilla FC, Polo Club, Escuela Militar and Bartolinos, although the game took a while to develop in popularity. The 1918 Campeonato Nacional was the first tournament played between Colombian clubs, followed by the Copa Centenario Batalla de Boyaca. Independient Medellin, founded on 15 April 1913, is the oldest club that remains as a professional club. The first tournament was organised by the Colombian Football Federation and DIMAYOR later in August, 1948. 

Ten teams signed up for this first tournament, paying the required fee of 1,000 pesos. Two teams each signed on from CITIES, Bogota, Cali, Manzales, and Pereira, plus one from Barranquilla. 252 players were registered for that year's tournament, 182 of which were Colombians, 13 were Argentine, 8 Peruvian, 5 Uruguayan, 2 Chilean, 2 Ecuadorian, 1 Dominican, and 1 Spanish.

Soon after the League's foundation, disputes between Adefútbol (the body governing amateur football in Colombia) and DIMAYOR (the organizing body behind the new national league) erupted. DIMAYOR broke away from Adefútbol, announcing that it would operate independently of FIFA rules and regulations. In response, FIFA sanctioned Colombian football, banning the national team and all its clubs from international competition. This period in the national football league, which lasted from 1949 to 1954, is known as El Dorado. 

Some authors consider that to have been a "golden age" for Colombian football.

Far from being a dark time in Colombian football, this was its golden age. No longer required to pay transfer fees to clubs from other nations, Colombian clubs began importing stars from all over South America and Europe. The most aggressive "signer club" of international players was Millionarios de Bogota, which won consecutive championships with stars such as Alfredo di Stefano. (later, he was also one of the great players that took Real Madrid to European success in the late 1950s-early 60s). Other signings, amoingst around 50 imports, included:

• Independient Sante Fe brought the Argentines Hector Rial, who would later be star of Real Madrid, and Rene Ponterio. Also, the Englishmen, Neil Franklin 
  
  
  and George Mountford from Stoke City, below
  
  
  
  
  
  and Charlie Mitten from Manchester United, LEFT-The Bogota Bandit.
• Millionarios, called the Ballet Azul due its greatest performances, went back to Argentina and brought Alfredo di Stefano, Julio Cozzi and Nestor Rossi. Britons, Bobby Flavell of Hearts of Midlothian
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  and Billy Higgins (below) with his wife, Helen, dining on the Queen Elizabeth on the voyage back to Britain in October 1950.
• In 1950, DiMAYOR agreed with FIFA to end El Dorado through the Pacto de Lima. The key requirement was that the foreign players would return to their countries in 1954. Attendances boomed, and the expanding appetite for club competitions resulted in the creation of the Copa Colombia in 1950. That knockout competition was played sporadically over the next 58 years and only became an annual tournament in 2008.  A truce was called in 1953 and DiMayor returned to the international fold. Although the stars returned to their nations when Colombia rejoined the international fold, the era was never forgotten.

In 1968 the League followed the pattern emerging in South America by replacing its year-long tournament with two shorter ones. From this point forward, Colombian clubs would compete in two tournaments a year; the Apertura from February to June and the Finalización from July to December, which became independent championships in 2002. 

Another league restructuring came in 1991, with the addition of Second and Third Divisions. The Third Division had its 2002 edition cancelled for economic reasons, and stopped awarding promotion to the professional tiers in 2003 until it was finally dropped in 2010.