Gabriel Mercado

In the last sixteen of the 2018 World Cup, Gabriel Mercado scored against France. Argentina went out of that match.

Mercado came from Puerto Madryn, in the Patagonian province of Chubut, and his career took its first turn upward in July 2010, when he joined Estudiantes . The Apertura title arrived in his first season there.

The move that defined him came two years later. At River Plate , from July 2012, Mercado collected trophies at a pace few defenders manage: the Copa Sudamericana in 2014, the Torneo Final championship the same year, then the Recopa Sudamericana and the Copa Libertadores in 2015, and the Copa Argentina in 2016.

Sevilla paid around €2.5m in August 2016, and Mercado played in the Europa League for them — though he missed the 2016 final of that competition through injury.

The Argentina call-up had come earlier, on 10 February 2010, in a 2–1 win over Jamaica. Between then and 2019 he made roughly 24 appearances and scored four goals. He was in the squad at the 2016 Copa América, where Argentina finished runners-up, and at the World Cup in Russia two years later.

In July 2019 he left Sevilla as a free agent for Al-Rayyan in Qatar. Right-footed, he spent most of those years in the centre of the defence rather than at full-back.