Santos Noel Rivera Ayala (born April 8, 1974) is a former

Salvadoran Salvadorans (Spanish: ''Salvadoreños''), also known as Salvadorians (alternate spelling: Salvadoreans), are citizens of El Salvador, a country in Central America. Most Salvadorans live in El Salvador, although there is also a significant Salvado ...

professional

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

Club career

Rivera started his career at

Segunda División The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Segunda División, commercially known as LaLiga SmartBank for sponsorship reasons, is the men's second professional association football division of the Spanish football league system. Administrated by the Lig ...

club Santiagueño at the age of 15 and moved to

Primera División Primera may refer to * Nissan Primera, a car * Primera Air, a former airline * Primera división (disambiguation), multiple top division football leagues * Primera, Texas, a town in Cameron County, Texas * Alí Primera, Venezuelan musician, compos ...

outfit

ADET Adet (Amharic: አዴት) ,also known as Adet Medhanialem is a town in northwestern Ethiopia. Located south of Bahir Dar in the Mirab Gojjam Zone of the Amhara Region (or ''kilil''), this town has a latitude and longitude of with an altitude of ...

in 1993. After six years there, he joined

Municipal Limeño Club Deportivo Municipal Limeño is a professional Salvadoran football club based in Santa Rosa de Lima, La Unión, El Salvador. Their home stadium is Estadio Jose Ramon Flores, with a capacity of 5,000. Limeño have won five Segunda Divisió ...

for another four years, before he finally moved to one of the country's top teams for a short spell at Águila. He returned to Águila after another short stint at FAS. He did not win a league title during his playing career and retired from the game in 2009 to become goalkeeper coach of Águila. Noel Rivera played several finals of the Primera División during his career: Apertura 1999 and Apertura 2000 with

, also Clausura 2006 and Apertura 2006 with FAS but he could never be crowned champion because all the finals were lost.

International career

Nicknamed ''el Negro'', Rivera made his debut for

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

in a November 1995

friendly match An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, a scrimmage, a demonstration, a preseason game, a warmup match, or a preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or ...

against

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

when he came on as a substitute for Raúl García. He has earned a total of 22 caps, scoring no goals. He has represented his country in 7

FIFA World Cup qualification The FIFA World Cup qualification is a competitive match that a national association football team takes in order to qualify for one of the available berths at the final tournament of the (men's) FIFA World Cup. Qualifying tournaments are hel ...

matches and played at the

2005 UNCAF Nations Cup The eighth edition of the bi-annual UNCAF Nations Cup was held in Guatemala, from February 19 to 27, 2005. All matches were played at the Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala City. The four semifinalists qualified for 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Squads : ...

, as well as at the

1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup The 1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup was the fourth edition of the Gold Cup, the soccer championship of North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF). The tournament was once again held in the United States, in Los Angeles, Miami, and O ...

and

2002 CONCACAF Gold Cup The 2002 CONCACAF Gold Cup was the sixth edition of the Gold Cup, the soccer championship of North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF). The tournament was once again held in the United States, in Miami and Pasadena. The format ...

s.CONCACAF Championship, Gold Cup 2002 - Full Details
- RSSSF His final international game was a February

match against

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

Managerial career

In May 2010, Rivera left his position of goalkeeper coach of Águila to become coach of the Águila reserves but in summer 2011, he was dismissed despite his contract running until 2015. In October 2011, he was named as successor to

Luis Ramírez Zapata Luis Baltazar Ramírez Zapata (born 6 January 1954) is a retired Salvadoran footballer. Club career Nicknamed ''El Pelé'', he spent nearly 20 years playing for Salvadoran club Águila. He started with Águila, after being recommended by Bra ...

at the Department of Culture and Sports of the San Miguel mayorship. During some time, Noel Rivera became presenter of the sports program "Palco Deportivo" of Canal 33. Since 2013, Noel Rivera has had participation in the coaching staff of Dragón, being a coach, technical assistant and interim coach on more than one occasion with the team of San Miguel. In 2018, he re-signed as team coach in substitution of

Rubén da Silva Rubén Fernando da Silva Echeverrito (born 11 April 1968) is a retired Uruguayan footballer who played as a striker. He played for a number of clubs in Uruguay, Argentina, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Da Silva started his career in 1986 with Danub ...

, with Dragón playing in

Honours

Player

Club

;

C.D. Municipal Limeño A CD or compact disc is a thin plastic silvery disc for audio recordings. CD or cd may also refer to: Science and technology Astronomy and cosmology * Cordoba Durchmusterung, a star catalog of the southern sky * Cosmological decade or CÐ, a u ...

** Runners-up: Apertura 1999, Apertura 2000 ;

C.D. FAS Club Deportivo Futbolistas Asociados Santanecos, commonly known as FAS (pronounced "fas"), is a professional Salvadoran football club based in Santa Ana. It competes in Primera División de Fútbol de El Salvador, the country's top professiona ...

** Runners-up: Clausura 2006, Apertura 2006

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rivera, Santos 1974 births Living people People from San Miguel Department (El Salvador) Men's association football goalkeepers Salvadoran men's footballers El Salvador men's international footballers 1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup players 2002 CONCACAF Gold Cup players C.D. Águila footballers C.D. FAS footballers