Angel Di Maria

About Angel Di Maria

Ángel Di María left Rosario as a skinny teenager and came back two decades later as one of the most decorated players Argentina has produced, closing a loop that very few modern footballers manage to close. Born in February 1988, he made his name at Rosario Central, the club where his professional career began in 2005, and his nickname, "Fideo", the noodle, said everything about the slight frame that never seemed built for the collisions of top-level football.

From Rosario the route went to Lisbon. Benfica signed him in 2007, and his three seasons there turned a raw winger into a complete one, comfortable on either flank and dangerous with his left foot from almost any angle. In 2008, still a Benfica player, he scored the winning goal in the Olympic final in Beijing for Argentina, an early sign of a pattern that would define his international career: Di María scoring in finals.

Real Madrid bought him in 2010, and the four seasons in Spain were the peak of his club career in terms of prestige. He became a tireless worker on the left of midfield, the player who balanced a side full of attacking stars, and in the 2014 Champions League final in Lisbon he was one of the decisive figures as Real Madrid won the competition for the tenth time. Shortly afterwards he was sold to Manchester United, where the single season in 2014–15 never worked out, either on the pitch or off it.

Paris Saint-Germain gave him a home for seven years, from 2015 to 2022. In Ligue 1 he won a long sequence of domestic trophies and became one of the most productive creators in Europe, an assist provider who could also finish. Then came a season in Italy with Juventus in 2022–23, followed by an emotional return to Benfica from 2023 to 2025.

It is with Argentina, however, that his reputation became legendary. After years of painful defeats in finals, he scored the only goal of the 2021 Copa América final against Brazil at the Maracanã, and a year and a half later he scored in the World Cup final in Qatar, a match Argentina went on to win. Three finals, three goals: Beijing, Rio, Lusail.

In 2025 he completed the circle by returning to Rosario Central, the club that had first trusted him, a homecoming that few players of his stature ever choose to make while still active. The map of his career covers Argentina, Portugal, Spain, England, France and Italy, and in nearly every stop he was the same kind of player, a wide creator with a curling left foot and an appetite for the biggest matches.