Santiago López García

Born in Mendoza, he came up through the local academies of Club Banco Mendoza and Chacras de Coria before, still a teenager, taking a leap abroad: in January 2016 he joined the youth setups of Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Afula in Israel. He returned home to sign with Gimnasia y Esgrima de Mendoza, where he made his senior debut in 2019 after working his way up through a string of loan spells, including two years at Deportivo Maipú.

The loan route stayed a constant in his career. A short stint at Quilmes in 2022 was followed by a longer one at San Martín de San Juan in 2023–2024, and it was there that his single clearest achievement arrived: San Martín won the Primera Nacional's Reducido play-offs in 2024, sealing promotion to the Primera División.

That result opened the door to Banfield, who signed him on loan in January 2025 with an option to buy 50% of his rights for 150,000 US dollars . The club later exercised that option, and López García put pen to paper on a contract running to December 2028. He has settled into the side wearing the number 24 shirt, and in the 2026 season he played 21 matches, scoring twice and setting up four goals for team-mates, with an average rating of 7.16.

He has never been called up to the Argentina senior side or any of its youth categories, and his career has not brought individual honours such as a player-of-the-tournament award. What stands out instead is the route itself: a Mendoza-born player who tried his luck in Israeli academies, spent years bouncing between loan clubs in Argentina's lower divisions, and only found a settled first-team home at Banfield after finding a settled first-team home elsewhere.