Wilmer Raynel Neal Velásquez (born April 28, 1972) is a retired Honduran

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 played as a forward. He was regarded as one of the greatest footballers in Honduran soccer for Olimpia, and by foremost as the nation's greatest striker ever alongside Carlos Pavón. He is currently the all-time top goalscorer in the Honduran National Football League with 196 goals, and was the second player to reach 150 goals after

Denilson Costa Denilson Costa (born 10 June 1968) is a Brazilian and naturalized Honduran football coach and former player. He is currently the second all-time top scorer in the Honduran Liga Nacional and was also the first to reach 150 goals. Now he is a te ...

Club career

Nicknamed ''El Matador'', Velásquez started his professional career with Olimpia and he would not play for any other Honduran team during his career. He made his debut on 1 November 1990 against Platense and scored his first goal on 23 January 1992 against city rivals Motagua. He did play for other teams though, with Concepción in Chile, Sport-Recife in Brazil and

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

in Mexico but was not very successful with all of them. In 2005, Velásquez was crowned one of the ''Top Goalscorers in the World'' by the

International Federation of Football History and Statistics The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) is an organisation that chronicles the history and records of association football. It was founded in 1984 by Alfredo Pöge in Leipzig. The IFFHS was based in Abu Dhabi for s ...

. He made 15 goals with both the

Honduras national football team The Honduras national football team ( es, Selección de fútbol de Honduras) represents Honduras in men's international football. The team is governed by the Federación Nacional Autónoma de Fútbol de Honduras (FENAFUTH). They are nickname ...

and his club, Olimpia, finishing second only behind Brazilian player Adriano Leite Ribeiro, who scored 18 goals. He has won 12 titles of the Honduran League, all of them with Olimpia. In December 2008 he announced he would retire after the 2009 Clausura. He has scored 318 goals in competitive games, 258 of them for Olimpia.

International career

Velásquez made his debut for Honduras in an April 1997 UNCAF Nations Cup match against

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

in which he famously scored four goals. He has earned a total of 47 caps, scoring 35 goals. He has represented his country in only 2

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

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...

and

2007 UNCAF Nations Cup The 2007 UNCAF Nations Cup was the ninth version of the biennial football tournament for the CONCACAF national teams of Central America. The event took place in San Salvador, El Salvador from February 8 to February 18, 2007. It was the second time ...

s as well as at the

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, disintegrated during reentry into Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an 2002– ...

and

2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup The 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup was the eighth edition of the Gold Cup, the football championship of North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF). It was contested in the United States in July 2005. The United States emerged victorious ...

s.CONCACAF Championship, Gold Cup 2005 - Full Details
- RSSSF His final international was a February

match against

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean Sea, Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to ...

, in which he again scored four goals.

Career statistics

Club

International goals

Honours and awards

Club

;CD Olimpia * Copa Interclubes UNCAF (2):

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school s ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

* Honduran Super Cup (1): 1996–97 *

Liga Profesional de Honduras Liga or LIGA may refer to: People * Līga (name), a Latvian female given name * Luciano Ligabue, more commonly known as Ligabue or ''Liga'', Italian rock singer-songwriter Sports * Liga ACB, men's professional basketball league in Spain * Liga ...

(13):

1992–93 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 ''Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since th ...

, 1995–96, 1996–97, 1998–99, 2000–01 A,

2002–03 A The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, 2003–04 C, 2004–05 C, 2005–06 A, 2005–06 C, 2007–08 C, 2008–09 C, 2009–10 C *

Honduran Cup The Honduran Cup was the top knock-out football tournament in Honduras. The first tournament was played in 1968, four years later the second tournament took the name ''Copa Presidente'' ( en, President's Cup) in honor of Dr. Ramón Cruz; later, ...

(1):

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake strike ...

Individual

* Copa Centroamericana Top Goalscorer (3):

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ...

* Top goalscorers in Liga Nacional de Honduras (4): 1997–98 A, 1997–98 C, 1999–00 A, 2007–08 C *All-time Top Scorer of Liga Nacional de Honduras: 196 goals *All-time Top Scorer of

Club Deportivo Olimpia Club Deportivo Olimpia is a professional Honduran football club based in Tegucigalpa, Francisco Morazán. The club is the nation's most successful team both in the domestic league and in international club competitions. History Olimpia was ...

: 196 goals * CONCACAF Gold Cup Best XI: 2005 *

CONCACAF Gold Cup The CONCACAF Gold Cup ( es, Copa de Oro de la CONCACAF, french: Coupe D'or CONCACAF) is the main association football competition of the men's national football teams governed by CONCACAF, determining the continental champion of North Amer ...

Top Goalscorer:

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Velasquez, Wilmer 1972 births Living people People from Tela Men's association football forwards Honduran footballers Honduras men's international footballers 1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup players 2003 CONCACAF Gold Cup players 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup players C.D. Olimpia players Sport Club do Recife players Deportes Concepción (Chile) footballers Atlas F.C. footballers Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional de Honduras players Honduran expatriate footballers Honduran expatriate sportspeople in Chile Expatriate footballers in Mexico Expatriate footballers in Brazil Expatriate footballers in Chile Central American Games gold medalists for Honduras Central American Games medalists in football