Juan Carlos Plata

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Personal information
Juan Carlos Plata
Full name	Juan Carlos Plata
Date of birth	January 1, 1971 (1971-01-01) (age 37)
Place of birth	Guatemala City, Guatemala
Height	170 cm
Playing position	Forward
Club information
Current club	CSD Municipal
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1990-	CSD Municipal	504 (392)
National team²
1996-2006	Guatemala	88 (35)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of December 31, 2007. ² National team caps and goals correct as of January 2007. * Appearances (Goals)

Juan Carlos Plata (born January 1, 1971) is a Guatemalan football striker and the highest goalscorer in the history of the Guatemala national team tied with Carlos Ruiz.

Plata has played all of his professional club career for CSD Municipal and is also the all-time top goalscorer for that club; he has broken virtually every scoring record associated with professional football in Guatemala, and as of March 2008 is the world's leading active goalscorer.

1 Club career
2 National Team
3 Playing style
4 Honours
5 Biography on film
6 References and footnotes
7 Further reading
8 External links

[edit] Club career

Plata, born in Guatemala City, 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, and has helped them win 11 league titles, 5 domestic cups, and 2 Central American championships.

A consistent striker throughout his career, Plata has scored at least 15 goals in 13 different seasons, with his most prolific season in terms of total goals scored being 2005-2006, when he scored 32 goals in total for both the Torneo de Apertura and the Torneo de Clausura.

On February 15, 2008, Plata played his 500th official match with Municipal against Deportivo Zacapa for the domestic league.^[1]

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[edit] National Team

Plata has scored 35 international goals in 88 international matches. 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

As of January 2008, Plata has scored the most career goals among all active players in the world in top division leagues,^[2] and is among the top 60 goalscorers of all time in the world^[3] according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics.

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

[edit] Biography on film

Juan Carlos Plata's career received a tribute with the release in Guatemala of his biographic documentary film 321: Juan Carlos Plata on February 16, 2006. The 94-minute film makes emphasis on the scoring of goal 321, which gave Plata the record as top goal scorer in the history of professional Guatemalan football. It also covers his ongoing career as well as non-sport related subjects, such as family and business. The premiere took place at the Centro Cultural Miguel Angel Asturias (national theatre), with over 2000 people in attendance. The documentary and other additional features, are included in a DVD which includes over 200 of his career goals and was released for sale to the public on the night of the film's premiere.