Carlos Roa

Carlos Roa
Personal information
Full name	Carlos Ángel Roa
Date of birth	15 August 1969 (age 55)
Place of birth	Santa Fe, Argentina
Height	1.91 m (6 ft 3 in)
Position(s)	Goalkeeper
Team information
Current team	AEK Athens (goalkeeper coach)
Senior career*
Years	Team
1988–1993	Racing Club
1994–1997	Lanús
1997–2002	Mallorca
2002–2004	Albacete
2005–2006	Olimpo
Total
International career
1992	Argentina U23
1997–1999	Argentina
	*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Carlos Ángel Roa (born 15 August 1969) is an Argentine former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He is currently the goalkeeper coach of Greek Super League club AEK Athens.

Most of his professional career was spent with Racing Club and in Spain with Mallorca, winning one major trophy with the latter. Roa was first-choice for the Argentina national team at the 1998 World Cup.

Club career

Born in Santa Fe, Roa started playing professionally for Racing Club, making his Primera División debut on 6 November 1988 at the age of 19. During a summer tour of Africa with the club, he contracted malaria, but fully recovered. In 1994, he moved to Lanús, rarely missing a match with the Buenos Aires Province side as they achieved three consecutive third-place league finishes (one in 1995, two in 1996),^[1] and adding the Copa CONMEBOL in 1996.^[2]

Roa then signed with Spanish club Mallorca alongside Lanús teammate Óscar Mena, playing 25 La Liga matches as the Balearic Islands club finished fifth straight out of Segunda División and also reached the final in the 1997-98 Copa del Rey, they lost against Barcelona on a penalty shoot-out.^[3]

In the summer of 1999, after helping Mallorca win the domestic Supercup and reach the final of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (already accompanied in the team by former Lanús teammates Ariel Ibagaza and Gustavo Siviero),^[4] 30-year-old Roa retired from football in order to take a religious retreat. After a year of charitable and religious work spent as a member of his church, his convictions led to his refusal to discuss a new contract with his team because he believed the world was going to end in the near future.^[5]^[6]

Less than one year later, Roa nicknamed the Lechuga ^[1] returned to Mallorca, forced to play out the remaining two years of his contract. Never being able to reproduce his previous form, he was relegated to the bench by compatriot Leo Franco.

Subsequently, Roa moved to Albacete, appearing in 39 league games as the Castile-La Mancha side returned to the top division after a seven-year absence. Midway through the following season, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and was forced to stop playing; after surgery, he spent an entire year between chemotherapy and rehabilitation.^[7]

After keeping his fitness with amateurs Constancia and Atlético Baleares, both in the Majorca area, Roa returned to professional football and his country, joining Olimpo and retiring after one top division season. In 2008, he joined amateurs Atlético Brown as a goalkeeper coach. He was appointed assistant manager two years later at Ben Hur; in the former capacity, he went to work under former international teammate Matías Almeyda at River Plate, Banfield and Guadalajara.^[8]

International career

In 1992, Roa appeared for Argentina at the 1992 CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament in Paraguay, which saw the country fail to qualify for the 1992 Summer Olympics.^[9] He was selected by the full side for the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France: after not conceding any goals during the group stage, he saved the decisive penalty in the shootout against England in the round-of-16, denying Newcastle United's David Batty.^[10] The national team was eventually defeated in the following match by the Netherlands (1–2).

Honours

Club

Racing

Supercopa Sudamericana: 1988
Recopa Sudamericana runner-up: 1989

Lanús

Copa CONMEBOL: 1996

Mallorca

Supercopa de España: 1998
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup: Runner-up 1998–99
Copa del Rey: Runner-up 1997–98

Individual

Awards

Ricardo Zamora Trophy: 1997–98
ESM Team of the Year: 1998–99^[11]

Personal life

Roa is a Seventh-day Adventist, teetotaller and vegetarian.^[2]^[12] He is married and has two daughters.^[13]^[14]

References

^ ^a ^b "Carlos "Lechuga" Roa" [Carlos "Lettuce" Roa] (in Spanish). Club Atlético Lanús. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
^ ^a ^b Caple, Alex (18 August 2017). "Carlos Roa:To the end of the world and back again". The Versed. Retrieved 16 May 2022.
^ Astruells, Andrés (30 April 1998). "La Copa más histórica" [The most historical Cup] (PDF). Mundo Deportivo (in Spanish). Retrieved 9 April 2015.
^ Segurola, Santiago (20 May 1999). "El Mallorca pierde con orgullo" [Mallorca loses proudly]. El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 28 January 2016.
^ Lewis, Aimee (19 March 2008). "When football's final whistle blows". BBC Sport. Retrieved 19 March 2008.
^ "UK Millennium madness comes to UK". BBC. 24 April 1999. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
^ "Batlling back from the brink". FIFA. 19 March 2010. Archived from the original on 22 March 2010. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
^ Uribe Muñoz, Juan (13 October 2016). "El héroe mundialista que llegó al Rebaño" [The World Cup hero that made it to the Herd] (in Spanish). Rojo y Blanco. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
^ "Argentina v Bolivia, 02 February 1992". 11V11.Com. 11V11. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
^ Carlos Roa – FIFA competition record (archived)
^ Stokkermans, Karel (14 March 2007). "ESM XI". RSSSF. Archived from the original on 7 February 2016. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
^ Lowe, Sid (2002). "Roa relives that Batty moment". The Guardian.
^ Marshall, Tyrone (19 April 2020). "Argentina goalkeeper reveals the bizarre reason he rejected Manchester United transfer". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 16 May 2022.
^ "Argentina World Cup Hero Carlos Roa Snubbed Transfer To Man Utd Because He Thought The World Was Going To END In 2000". Sporting Excitement. 31 August 2021. Retrieved 16 May 2022.