Arturo Erasmo Vidal Pardo

The moment that defines Arturo Vidal at Colo-Colo has two dates on it, sixteen years apart. He made his first-team debut at the club as a teenager and left with a domestic title before Bayer Leverkusen signed him away; he returned in 2024, and Colo-Colo won the Chilean championship again with him back in the dressing room. Between those two league titles sits a career that took him through five of European football's biggest clubs.

Leverkusen gave him his platform, but it was Juventus that made him a reference point in his position. Turin's supporters voted him their player of the season in 2013/14, and in a Serie A campaign built on ball-winning he was rated the league's best at making tackles. He left Juventus with five consecutive Italian championships to his name.

The move to Bayern Munich in 2015 carried the weight of a €37 million fee, among the highest ever paid for a Chilean player at the time, and he answered it with three Bundesliga titles in three seasons. Barcelona followed, then Inter Milan, where he added a further Serie A title to close out the loop he had started in Turin years earlier. A brief spell in Brazil brought the Copa Libertadores and the Copa do Brasil with Flamengo before he moved on to Atletico Paranaense.

With Chile, Vidal has been a constant presence since making his debut against Venezuela, going on to become one of the five most-capped players in the national team's history and one of its top scorers. He was named the best player of the 2015 Copa America final as Chile won the tournament on home soil, and he was picked for that edition's team of the tournament. A year later he won the Copa America again, and in 2017 he reached the final of the Confederations Cup.