Santino Giannini

Santino Gianini made his first appearance for Argentinos Juniors' first team in the 2026 Liga Profesional Clausura, coming on for 71 minutes against Estudiantes de Río Cuarto. It marked the arrival, at 17, of a left-footed centre-back who had been working his way up through the club's structure with Argentinos Juniors II since 2025.

There is no goal or assist attached to that debut, and the numbers around it stay thin — a single appearance, an average rating in the high sixes, nothing yet to build a longer account on. That is often how it goes for a teenage centre-back stepping in from the reserves: the story is the inclusion itself, not a moment inside the game.

He wears the number 13 shirt at Argentinos Juniors, a club with a track record of pushing academy defenders into first-team football early. For now, Gianini's case sits in that pattern — a name added to the squad list rather than a fixture in it, with the rest of his path still to be written.