Nicolás Alejandro Tagliafico (born 31 August 1992) is an Argentine professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who plays as a left back for Ligue 1 club

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...

and the Argentina national team.

Biography

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origins, his grandparents are from the city of

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

on the paternal side and Calabrian on the maternal side; he also has

Italian citizenship Italian nationality law is the law of Italy governing the acquisition, transmission and loss of Italian citizenship. Like many continental European countries it is largely based on ''jus sanguinis''. It also incorporates many elements that are ...

Club career

Banfield

Tagliafico made his professional debut for Banfield on a 2−1 away victory against Tigre for the fifth fixture of the 2011 Clausura, coming on as a substitute on the 72nd minute. Due to Marcelo Bustamante's ban, he was a starter the following game, a 2−2 draw with Huracán. In 2012, Tagliafico signed a one-year loan deal with Spanish club

Real Murcia Real Murcia Club de Fútbol, S.A.D., commonly known as Real Murcia (, "Royal Murcia"), is a Spanish football club based in Murcia, in the Región de Murcia. Founded in 1919, it currently plays in Primera División RFEF – Group 2, playing ho ...

Independiente

In 2015, he made the move to Independiente for an undisclosed transfer fee and made his professional debut for the club during a 3−2 away win at

Newell's Old Boys Club Atlético Newell's Old Boys () is an Argentine sports club based in Rosario, Santa Fe. The club was founded on 3 November 1903, and is named after Isaac Newell of the English county of Kent, one of the pioneers of Argentine football. A ...

. Tagliafico would end up captaining the team that won the

2017 Copa Sudamericana The 2017 Copa CONMEBOL Sudamericana was the 16th edition of the CONMEBOL Sudamericana (also referred to as the ''Copa Sudamericana'', or pt, Copa Sul-Americana), South America's secondary club football tournament organized by CONMEBOL. Argent ...

Ajax

On 5 January 2018, Tagliafico made the move to

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Gree ...

for a fee of £4 million and made his professional debut for the club during a 2−0 home win against

Feyenoord Feyenoord Rotterdam () is a Dutch professional football club (association football), football club in Rotterdam, which plays in the Eredivisie, the top tier in Dutch football. Founded as Wilhelmina in 1908, the club changed to various names bef ...

on 21 January 2018 in the Klassieker. Since then he has played over 100 league games for the club and scored 7 league goals and became a starter for the team in 2019.

Lyon

On 23 July 2022, he joined Ligue 1 club

on a three-year deal until June 2025, for €4.2 million

International career

Tagliafico has played in all the youth categories of the Argentina national team: under-15, under-17 and under-20. Tagliafico impressed for the Argentina national under-20 football team at the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Colombia; however, he missed Argentina's final kick in the quarter-final penalty shoot-out against

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, meaning Argentina exited that competition 5–4 on penalties ( Cartagena, 13 August 2011). In May 2018, he was named in Argentina's final 23 man squad for the

2018 World Cup The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national Association football, football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awa ...

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. He also played the

2019 Copa América The 2019 Copa América was the 46th edition of the Copa América, the international men's association football championship organized by South America's football ruling body CONMEBOL. It was held in Brazil and took place between 14 June and ...

, and took with Argentina the third place, through a 2–1 victory over

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

in the third-place match. In June 2021, he was included in Lionel Scaloni's final Argentina 28-man squad for the 2021 Copa América. He is the only foreign player to became champion at club level (Independiente, Sudamericana 2017) and at international level (Argentina, Copa América 2021) at the Maracaná stadium. In November 2022, he was named in Argentina's final 26-man squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar by Scaloni. Tagliafico was part of the starting line-up in the

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: * Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

against

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, where Argentina won the World Cup by a score of 4–2 on penalties.

Style of play

He is noted for his "lung-busting stamina, excellent technique and continuous enterprise". As a result of his skills, as well as his playing position and club, and nationality, and striking visual resemblance Tagliafico has been compared to the

Internazionale Football Club Internazionale Milano, commonly referred to as Internazionale () or simply Inter, and colloquially known as Inter Milan in English-speaking countries, is an Italian professional football club based in Milan, Lombardy. Inter is t ...

and

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

full-back Javier Zanetti, formerly also of Banfield.

Career statistics

Club

International

Honours

Independiente * Copa Sudamericana:

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Ajax *

Eredivisie The Eredivisie (; ''"Honour Division"'' or ''"Premier Division"'') is the highest level of professional football in the Netherlands. The league was founded in 1956, two years after the start of professional football in the Netherlands. It is c ...

: 2018–19, 2020–21, 2021–22 * KNVB Cup: 2018–19, 2020–21 Argentina *

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeypo ...

* Copa América:

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

* CONMEBOL–UEFA Cup of Champions:

Individual * Eredivisie Player of the Month: November 2018

References

External links

Profile
at the Olympique Lyonnais website *
Statistics
at Football-Lineups.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Tagliafico, Nicolas 1992 births Living people Sportspeople from Buenos Aires Province Argentine footballers Association football defenders Club Atlético Banfield footballers Real Murcia players Club Atlético Independiente footballers AFC Ajax players Olympique Lyonnais players Argentine Primera División players Primera Nacional players Segunda División players Eredivisie players Argentina youth international footballers Argentina under-20 international footballers Argentina international footballers 2018 FIFA World Cup players 2019 Copa América players 2021 Copa América players 2022 FIFA World Cup players FIFA World Cup-winning players Copa América-winning players Argentine expatriate footballers Expatriate footballers in Spain Expatriate footballers in the Netherlands Expatriate footballers in France Argentine expatriate sportspeople in Spain Argentine expatriate sportspeople in the Netherlands Argentine expatriate sportspeople in France People of Ligurian descent People of Calabrian descent Argentine sportspeople of Italian descent Citizens of Italy through descent