Christian Giménez (1981)

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Christian "El Chaco" Giménez (born February 1, 1981 in Chaco, Argentina) is an Argentinian soccer player who currently plays for CF Pachuca in Mexico's professional league, the Mexican First Division. Labeled an offensive midfielder, Giménez is one of many talented players to be exported from Boca Juniors, Argentina's most decorated club.

1 Career
- 1.1 Argentina
- 1.2 Mexico
2 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] Argentina

From a very early age, Christian was playing soccer in a competitive environment. In 1989, he was signed by scouts working for Boca Juniors and was inmediately enrolled in the team's youth squad. Almost a decade later, Giménez debuted in the professional Argentine league with Boca Juniors and quickly enjoyed success, being part of the teams that won the Apertura '98, Clausura '99 and Apertura 2002 championships for the xeneizes, as well as two international titles, the Copa Libertadores of 2000 and 2001.

In 2003, Christian split time at Independiente and Unión and later returned to Independiente for the first half of the 2004 season. That summer, Giménez migrated to Mexico, as he was transferred to Veracruz.

[edit] Mexico

At Veracruz, Giménez was joined by a talented squad that included Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Kléber Boas, Braulio Luna and Gustavo Biscayzacú. In Giménez's first season at Veracruz, the team led the entire league in points, with Christian scoring four goals throughout the regular season. Despite being the top-seeded team, Veracruz exited the playoffs in the first round. The following season, Veracruz lost Blanco and Boas in the transfer window, and new signing Leandro Romagnoli was not performing at top level despite his seven figure salary. As a result, the team's performance dropped and Veracruz missed the playoffs. Giménez also saw a drop in production at a personal level, failing to score a goal despite increased play.

Before the Apertura 2005 season, it was reported that Christian's old teammate, Cuauhtémoc Blanco, was trying to convince his team's (América) bosses to sign Giménez for the following season. The executives took Blanco's advice and Giménez was signed to a contract shortly after. In his first season at América, Giménez scored three goals despite limited play (coming off the bench in eight of his nine appearances) and América led the league in points at the end of the regular season. Strangely enough, the set of events that occurred during Blanco and Giménez's (and Kléber Boas, who also migrated to América with Blanco in 2004) partnership in Veracruz repeated themselves at América. Like at Veracruz, their team was the top-seeded club going into the playoffs, and like at Veracruz, América failed to get past the first round of the playoffs, being defeated by UANL Tigres.

Prior to the start of the Apertura 2006 season, Giménez was transferred to Pachuca, who days before had won the Clausura 2006 tournament, defeating Club San Luis - a sister club of Christian's last employer, Club América.

Giménez is a member of the "Blanco Four", a group of players who once played at Veracruz with Blanco and were signed by América after being recommended by the striker. The other members are Kléber Boas, Carlos Infante and Armando Navarrete.