Juan Carlos Plata
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Juan Carlos Plata | ||
 |
||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Juan Carlos Plata | |
| Date of birth | January 1, 1971 (age 35) | |
| Place of birth | Guatemala City, Guatemala | |
| Height | 170 cm | |
| Nickname | "Pin", "El Pin", "JCP" | |
| Position | Forward | |
| Club information | ||
| Current club | CSD Municipal | |
| Professional clubs* | ||
| Years | Club | Apps (goals) |
| 1990-2006 | CSD Municipal | 444 (258) |
| National team** | ||
| 1996-2006 | Guatemala | 88 (35) |
|
* Professional club appearances and goals |
||
Juan Carlos Plata (born January 1, 1971) is a Guatemalan football striker, the most capped player and highest goalscorer in the history of the Guatemala national team. He has played all of his professional club career for CSD Municipal and is also the all-time top goalscorer for that club, and has broken virtually every scoring record associated with professional football in Guatemala.
Contents |
[edit] Club Career
Plata, born in Guatemala City, has been a consistent striker throughout his career. He made his debut in the Liga Mayor (Major League, now Liga Nacional) with Municipal in the 1990-1991 season, in which he won the national title. He has since been a regular for the club. He has scored at least 15 goals in 12 different seasons. His best season in terms of total goals scored was 2005-2006, scoring 31 goals, the total of both the Torneo de Apertura and the Torneo de Clausura. He has helped Municipal win 11 league titles, 5 league cups and 2 Central American championships.
[edit] National Team
Plata has scored 35 international goals in 88 international matches, both national team records. He has not appeared in any World Cup finals as Guatemala has never qualified for them, but played for the national squad at the World Cup qualification processes of 1998, 2002 and 2006. He scored 7 goals in 27 World Cup qualification matches, including 2 in a 2-1 win against Costa Rica in September 5, 2004 that helped Guatemala advance to the final stage of the 2006 CONCACAF World Cup qualification.
His most famous goal with the national team, however, might be the one he scored in the last seconds of the 1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup match against Brazil, a header off a corner kick to equalize the score 1-1, a very surprising result considering Brazil were the reigning world champions at the time and fielded stars like Romario, Mauro Silva, Edmundo, Denilson and Taffarel.
He retired from international play in 2006.
[edit] Playing style
Plata is not a very physically gifted player, but he is a technical player with a good sense of positioning and playing without the ball. He is not only a good finisher but he can also be a creative playmaker and passer.
[edit] Honours
League champion:
- 1991-1992
- 1993-1994
- 2000 Clausura
- 2000 Apertura
- 2001 Apertura
- 2003 Clausura
- 2003 Apertura
- 2004 Apertura
- 2005 Clausura
- 2005 Apertura
- 2006 Clausura
Top scorer:
- 1996
- 2005
As of October 2006, Plata was third among all active players in the world in goals scored in top division leagues,[1] and among the top 60 goalscorers of all time in the world[2] according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics.
[edit] Biography on film
Juan Carlos Plata gained true celebrity status on February 16, 2006 with the release in Guatemala of his biographic documentary film 321: Juan Carlos Plata. The 94-minute film, with an original soundtrack by DJ Sasha, centers itself around the scoring of goal 321, which gave Juan Carlos the record as top goal scorer in the history of professional Guatemalan Football. It also covers his on-going carreer as well as other non-sport related subjects, such as family and business. The grand premiere took place at the "Centro Cultural Miguel Angel Asturias" (National theatre), with a little more than 2000 people in attendance, including high Guatemalan government officials, the National team in full and about a thousand fervent fans, who chanted, screamed and yelled in support for their idol throughout the film. The documentary, alongside many additonal features, are included in a special edition DVD, with over 200 of his career goals, which was released for sale to the public on the night of the film's premiere.
[edit] References and footnotes
- ^ "The World's most successful Top Division Goal Scorers among the still active Players" - www.iffhs.de - IFFHS - retrieved October 31, 2006.
- ^ "The World's most successful Top Division Goal Scorers of all time" - www.iffhs.de - IFFHS - retrieved October 31, 2006.
