Javier Mascherano
One of the best central midfielders of the moment, Javier Mascherano is going to be one of the most important players of Argentina national team at the 2010 World Cup. With a good kick shot from the mid and long distances, he is a threat when he becomes part of the attack, but that doesn’t happen very often. The real value of Macherano is his defensive capability to cut the other team’s progression, sometimes with more roughness than the average: He has the worst disciplinary record of the Premier League in 2009/2010, with seven yellow cards and two red cards.
Mascherano was born in San Lorenzo, Argentina, in 1984. He started his professional career with River Plate in 2003, where he arrived from the youth categories of the team. With the “Millonarios” (as River Plate is known), he won the 2003-2004 Clausura Championship. In the middle of the 2005-2006 season, he was acquired by Corinthians of Brazil, where he obtained the 2005 Série A Championship, but Masherano played only a few games, because of a foot fracture. He moved to England, with his compatriot Carlos Tévez, where they joined West Ham United by the 2006-2007. It was an unexpected move, because West Ham rarely is part of the market for high profile players in their prime years. However, Mascherano saw few play time with West Ham, and the season was being very bad for the team. In January 2007, the team sent him to Liverpool in a loan. England’s football authorities considered that the operation was made without good faith by West Ham, and the Premier League fined the team with a record amount of £5.5 million.
The movement came just in time for Mascherano, who debuted in the Champions League in Quarter Finals and was an important part of the team in the way to the final, where Liverpool was defeated by AC Milan. As a club player, Mascherano has seen his best years with Liverpool, where his reputation as a field warrior and a ferocious marker increases year by year, even with the bad results the team has obtained in the recent years, either at the Premier League or the Champions League. He is under contract with Liverpool until 2012, but he and the team are in talks for a new extension, because the club thinks the interest of other teams in Mascherano will increase after the World Cup.
Mascherano’s international career started very soon. He played with Argentina in the 2001 FIFA Under-17 World Championship, and repeated with the national team at the 2003 FIFA World Youth Championship. In both tournaments, Argentina finished fourth. With the Under-23 National team, he won the Olimpic Gold Medal in the 2004 Olimpic Games at Athens, with a victory 1-0 over Paraguay at the final.
He debuted with the absolute National Team on July 16th, 2003, against Uruguay. He was part of the team eliminated in Quarter Finals in the 2006 FIFA World Cup at Germany, knocked out by the host team in penalty tiebreaker. Masherano is the captain of Argentina since 2008. He has dressed the national uniform 52 times and has scored two goals.