Lionel Scaloni

Lionel Sebastián Scaloni is an Argentine professional football manager and former player who is the current head coach of the Argentina national team. Under his leadership, Argentina won the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Scaloni is regarded as one of the best men’s national coaches in the world. A versatile player, he operated as a right-back or right midfielder.

The Deportivo years

Long before he was the most decorated national-team coach of his generation, Lionel Scaloni was a Deportivo full-back: not a footnote, but a fixture. Signed from Estudiantes de La Plata in 1999, he made 145 appearances for the club between 1999 and 2005, overlapping with the 2000 league title and the 2002 Copa del Rey, and sharing a dressing room with Valerón, Fran, Mauro Silva and Diego Tristán.

Riazor remembers a specific kind of player: an aggressive, intelligent right-sided defender whose engine suited the era’s demands, trusted by three different coaching staffs. He left for West Ham United in 2006, played out his career in Spain, England and Italy, and retired into a coaching apprenticeship few predicted would lead where it did.

From Riazor to world champion

Scaloni took over Argentina in 2018 as a caretaker appointment widely questioned in Buenos Aires. What followed is one of modern football’s great coaching runs: the 2021 Copa América (Argentina’s first senior title since 1993), the 2022 Finalissima against Italy, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and the 2024 Copa América. Four major international trophies, with Lionel Messi as his captain.

For Deportivo supporters, the arc carries a particular satisfaction: the man lifting the World Cup learned his European football on the Atlantic coast of Galicia. Of all the branches the Super Dépor tree produced, Scaloni’s is the one that reached furthest.

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