Richard José Figueroa Avilés

Richard José Figueroa Avilés broke into professional football in 2017 with Zulia FC, the first stop in a career that has taken him through a string of Venezuelan clubs rather than settling anywhere for long. Deportivo Anzoátegui, Deportivo Lara, Zamora FC, Deportivo Táchira and Academia Puerto Cabello all followed in the years after, a run of moves that reads less like a rise through the ranks and more like a player still searching for the club where his game would click.

That search led him to Metropolitanos FC, which he joined as a free agent in March 2025 after leaving Juan Pablo II College, signing a deal that runs to the end of 2026. It has been the most productive stretch of his career on paper: in the 2025 Torneo Apertura he played 29 matches and scored four goals, and in the 2026 season he has added 24 appearances, two goals and eight assists, numbers that point to a winger who does as much creating as finishing. He has also featured in Copa Sudamericana fixtures, giving him a taste of continental competition alongside the domestic league.

His involvement with the Venezuela national team has been brief and unusual in its circumstances. He was named to a 15-man emergency reserve list in June 2021 after eight first-team players tested positive for COVID-19 on the eve of the Copa América, but he did not take the field in any official match for the senior side.

Figueroa plays as a left winger or forward, right-footed, and wears the number 88 shirt at Metropolitanos. No major honours or individual awards have been recorded during his career, and his path so far has been defined more by movement between clubs than by prolonged spells at any one of them.