Roberto Ayala encyclopedia topics

Football career

Club

Italian club Parma FC brought the Argentine defender to Europe, however the club having their quota of three non-EU players, he was loaned to Napoli, who bought up half of his contract. Ayala was allowed leave for AC Milan. Playing for Valencia, he reached the finals of the 2000 and 2001 UEFA Champions League, but his team lost to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. The next year, Valencia won the 2001-02 Spanish La Liga. In 2003-04, Valencia again won the Spanish La Liga and added the UEFA Cup.

In 2004-05 injuries kept Ayala from much of the Liga campaign and he missed the UEFA Super Cup 2004 victory over Porto.

In August 2006, he was not offered a new contract by sporting director Amedeo Carboni. On February 7, 2007 Ayala announced he would join regional rivals Villarreal CF at the end of 2006/07. However, before having played for Villarreal, he joined Real Zaragoza on a three-year deal on 14 July 2007.

On 3 May 2008, Ayala scored his first goal for Real Zaragoza in the 94th minute versus Deportivo La Coruna to lead Zaragoza to a 1-0 victory. Zaragoza however are now playing in the Spanish 2nd Division.

Country

He made his debut for Argentina on 16 November 1994, against Chile under coach Daniel Passarella.

Ayala played for Argentina at the 1996 Summer Olympics, winning the silver medal. He played for Argentina in the 1998 World Cup and was a non-playing squad member in the 2002 competition due a last minute injury moments before their first match against Nigeria. He was then selected as an over-age player as Argentina won the gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Ayala played an integral part in the Argentine squad for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. He played brilliantly throughout the tournament, and was picked as a member of the All Star Team. In the quarterfinal against Germany he scored a header that gave Argentina the 1-0 lead. Argentina lost the penalty shootout after the 1-1 tie, with Ayala's spot kick being saved by Jens Lehmann.

On 30 May 2006, In a friendly match against Angola, Ayala completed 100 caps for Argentina. One of the best defenders in Argentina history, on 7 February 2007, Ayala became the most capped player of the National team (most of the times as captain), beating his friend Diego Simeone, in a friendly victory 1-0 against France played in Stade de France, Paris.

On 5 June 2007, in a friendly against Algeria, Roberto Ayala captained Argentina for a record 58th international, having equalled Diego Maradona's mark of 57 in the 1-1 draw against Switzerland in Basel on Saturday 2nd June.

On 17 July 2007, after playing in the Copa América 2007 final against Brazil, during which he scored an own goal, Ayala announced hs retirement from international football. Ayala stated, "it has nothing to do with what happened in the final of the Copa America.

Career statistics

|- |1991-92||rowspan="3"|Ferro Carril Oeste||rowspan="3"|Primera División||18||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1992-93||36||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1993-94||18||1|||||||||||||||| |- |1993-94||rowspan="2"|River Plate||rowspan="2"|Primera División||16||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1994-95||24||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1995-96||rowspan="3"|Napoli||rowspan="3"|Serie A||29||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1996-97||30||1|||||||||||||||| |- |1997-98||28||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1998-99||rowspan="2"|Milan||rowspan="2"|Serie A||11||0|||||||||||||||| |- |1999-00||13||0|||||||||||||||| |- |2000-01||rowspan="7"|Valencia||rowspan="7"|La Liga||28||1|||||||||||||||| |- |2001-02||30||2|||||||||||||||| |- |2002-03||31||1|||||||||||||||| |- |2003-04||30||1|||||||||||||||| |- |2004-05||17||0|||||||||||||||| |- |2005-06||23||2|||||||||||||||| |- |2006-07||29||2|||||||||||||||| |- |2007-08||Villarreal||La Liga||0||0|||||||||||||||| |- |2007-08||rowspan="2"|Real Zaragoza||La Liga||33||1|||||||||||||||| |- |2008-09||Segunda División||||||||||||||||||||112||1||||||||||||||||111||1||||||||||||||||221||10||||||||||||||||444||12|||||||||||||||| |}