Juan Carlos Plata
|
File:Juan carlos pin plata.jpg | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Juan Carlos Plata | ||
| Height | 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in) | ||
| Position(s) | Forward | ||
| Team information | |||
Current team | CSD Municipal | ||
| ‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of June 2006 | |||
Juan Carlos Plata (born January 1, 1971, in Guatemala City) is a Guatemalan football striker, the all-time international caps and goals leader for his 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 Guatemalan football.
Playing style
At 1.70 meters tall, he 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.
Club Career
Plata 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.
National Team
Plata has scored 35 international goals in 82 international matches, both record for his national team. He has not appeared in any World Cup finals as Guatemala has never qualified for them, but he was an important member of the squads that played the World Cup qualification tournaments 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.
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 the summer of 2006, Plata was third among all active players in the world in goals scored in top leagues, and among the top 70 goalscorers of all time in the world according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics.[2]
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.
References and footnotes
- ^ Source: Juan Carlos Plata's page at CSD Municipal official website http://www.rojos.com/prinPlata.php
- ^ Sources: "The World's most successful Top Division Goal Scorer among the still active Players " http://www.iffhs.de/?2b04f8320cf83e48c50948a21417f3320ae43d00a76e and "The World's most successful Top Division Goal Scorers of all time" http://www.iffhs.de/?2b04f8320cf83e48c50948a21417f3320ae43d00a761