Underdog Stories / Football history

How Colo-Colo Femenino Won Chile’s Second Libertadores

How did Colo-Colo Femenino win the 2012 Copa Libertadores? Follow their rise in Chile, a wild semifinal in Brazil, and Christiane Endler’s final save.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 28, 2026

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On November 25, 2012, Christiane Endler waited in a goalmouth in Brazil. Colo-Colo Femenino had scored four times in the shootout. Foz Cataratas had scored twice. One save would end the final.

How did Colo-Colo Femenino win the 2012 Copa Libertadores? They built a side that dominated Chile, reached a second straight continental final, survived a seven-goal semifinal and held the Brazilian hosts scoreless. Then Endler stopped the last kick. Colo-Colo had its second Libertadores title, 21 years after the men won theirs.

In “Colo-Colo Femenino — Chile Has Two Libertadores,” an episode of Why We Love This Club, host Chris Horwedel begins with that save. It is a fair place to start. The harder question is how a women’s team founded only five years earlier got Endler to that goalmouth.

How did Colo-Colo Femenino become Chilean champions?

Colo-Colo opened a women’s football school in 2007. Its senior team joined Chile’s new national women’s championship in 2008. The first official match was a loss to Unión La Calera, and the team finished sixth that year. There was no hint of a coming dynasty in the table.

The players did inherit a famous shirt. Colo-Colo’s men’s club began in 1925, when David Arellano and other players left Magallanes. The club took its name from a Mapuche leader. Its white shirts carry a black band in memory of Arellano, who died after an injury sustained on a European tour in 1927. The women wore those marks of history from the start. They still had to build a team worthy of them.

José Letelier took charge and won the women’s first national title in 2010, beating Everton. The wins kept coming. From that championship through the 2015 Apertura, Colo-Colo won 10 straight Chilean league titles. Several years had two separate tournaments, so the total rose fast. Winning each one was still a job the players had to do.

The squad had options. By 2012, Letelier could call on Chilean players including Karen Araya and Francisca Lara, alongside Argentine playmaker Estefanía Banini, Venezuelan attacker Yusmery Ascanio and Paraguayan forward Gloria Villamayor. Yanara Aedo was still young, with much of her career ahead of her. She already knew what a title run felt like.

There was a limit to what home results could prove. Colo-Colo had reached the 2011 Libertadores final and lost 1-0 to Brazil’s São José. They returned knowing they could reach the last match. This time they needed to win it.

How did Colo-Colo reach the 2012 Libertadores semifinal?

The fourth women’s Libertadores was played in Brazil. Brazilian clubs had won its first three editions. Colo-Colo started in a group with Vitória, Universidad Autónoma of Paraguay and Peru’s JC Sport Girls.

Their opener against Vitória ended 1-1. Colo-Colo then beat JC Sport Girls 10-1 and Universidad Autónoma 3-1. Seven points and 14 goals scored sounds like an easy route through. It was close enough to make the table awkward: Vitória also had seven points and finished above them on goal difference. Colo-Colo advanced as the best second-place side.

That put them back against Vitória in the semifinal. First, though, Endler had to get there. She had spent the early group games at the University of South Florida, where she was studying and playing. She told La Tercera that the Thanksgiving break made the trip possible. Colo-Colo paid for her flights to Brazil.

It is an odd footnote to a championship team: their goalkeeper arrived for the last two matches because the dates worked around her classes. Her teammates were glad to see her. They had already scored enough to reach the semifinal. Against a Brazilian side they had failed to beat in the group, they would need Endler too.

What happened in Colo-Colo’s 4-3 semifinal against Vitória?

Ascanio scored after five minutes. Araya made it 2-0. Vitória pulled one back, but Aedo restored the two-goal lead before halftime. At 3-1, Colo-Colo looked to have earned a calmer evening than the score would allow.

Vitória scored again in the second half, then equalized with about 12 minutes left. Villamayor struck almost at once. Colo-Colo won 4-3 and headed to another final.

Horwedel tells the semifinal as a comeback from 3-2 down. The match reports tell a different, still breathless story: Colo-Colo led 3-1, let Vitória draw level, then found the winner. They were never behind. What makes the match memorable is how little time they gave themselves to worry after losing the lead.

“Chile has two Libertadores. Colo-Colo's women won one of them.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

The final would bring another Brazilian opponent. Foz Cataratas had come through its group with three wins, then beaten defending champion São José in a semifinal shootout. Colo-Colo had scored four against Vitória; Foz had allowed one goal in its own semifinal. Both sides reached the last game unbeaten.

How did Christiane Endler win the final against Foz Cataratas?

The final was played at the Estádio Severino Cândido Carneiro in Vitória de Santo Antão, near Recife. Colo-Colo and Foz Cataratas finished 90 minutes at 0-0. For the Chilean side, a tournament marked by goals had narrowed to kicks from the penalty spot.

There had already been a small hitch before kickoff. In a later account published by Colo-Colo, Villamayor recalled leaving her football boots at the hotel. The team bus turned back. She retrieved them, then scored Colo-Colo’s fourth shootout kick. A player can win the Libertadores with boots she nearly left in her room.

The Chilean kicks were scored by Claudia Soto, Lara, Araya and Villamayor. Foz scored twice. Endler then saved the Brazilian side’s last attempt, sealing a 4-2 shootout win and Colo-Colo’s first women’s Libertadores.

Horwedel names the final taker as Helane. La Tercera’s interview with Endler, published less than two weeks after the match, identifies her as Rilany Aguiar da Silva. Endler recalled deciding to wait before choosing a side. She watched Rilany begin her run, read where the ball was going and stopped it.

Endler was 21. The same La Tercera interview makes the distance between the trophy and a full-time football career plain: she spoke of finishing her studies because, in 2012, she could not count on making a living from the women’s game. She would later win the Women’s Champions League with Lyon and be named FIFA’s best women’s goalkeeper for 2021. In Brazil, those years were still ahead of her.

Why is the 2012 title called Colo-Colo’s second Libertadores?

Colo-Colo’s men won the Copa Libertadores on June 5, 1991. The women won South America’s top club competition on November 25, 2012. Santos had already won both versions. Colo-Colo became the second club on the continent to do so, and its women became the first winners of their Libertadores from outside Brazil.

The link is Letelier. He had been a reserve goalkeeper in the men’s 1991 championship squad. In 2012, he coached the women to their title, putting him on opposite sides of two Colo-Colo triumphs, first as a reserve and then in charge. Few coaches get to watch the same club lift both trophies from such different seats.

The rest of that year deserves space beside the final. Colo-Colo won Chile’s Apertura and Clausura titles. They added the domestic Trofeo de Campeonas in December. Across their matches that year, the team went unbeaten. The Libertadores was one of four trophies, and the one that showed how far their work could travel.

Yet the 1991 win is often treated as the Colo-Colo Libertadores. The women’s win can disappear inside that habit. The club’s own 2012 annual report recorded what happened plainly: Colo-Colo had joined Santos as a winner of the men’s and women’s competitions. The record was there. Remembering it proved less automatic.

That gap matters. The women won a continental title without the working conditions people might assume came with it. Chile did not pass its law requiring contracts for women players until 2022. The rules took effect in stages, reaching every player in 2025. The team had been champions of South America for more than a decade before that full requirement arrived.

What happened to Colo-Colo Femenino after 2012?

They kept getting close. Colo-Colo lost the 2015 Libertadores final to Ferroviária, then the 2017 final to Audax/Corinthians on penalties. Add the 2011 defeat and the 2012 victory, and Las Albas reached four finals in seven editions. One continental title was hard won, even for a side that made finals look familiar.

Home football changed too. Palestino ended Colo-Colo’s run of 10 straight league titles in the 2015 Clausura. After winning again in 2016 and 2017, Colo-Colo went five years without a national championship. In the 2022 final, they faced Universidad de Chile at Estadio Sausalito. Aedo, who had been part of the 2012 squad as a teenager, scored the only goal.

Colo-Colo won the next three annual titles as well. Their 1-0 victory over Universidad de Chile in December 2025 gave them a fourth straight championship and their 17th Chilean women’s title. By then, the team had players who could remember both long winning runs and what it felt like when one ended.

The club marked the 2012 squad’s anniversary in 2025. That was fitting. There is plenty to recall from that week in Brazil: Endler’s flight from Tampa, Villamayor’s missing boots, the semifinal lead that vanished. Then there is the last kick. The ball went toward Endler, and she kept it out.

The full episode of Why We Love This Club is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.