Gabriel Calderón

Calderón was born on 7 February 1960 in Rawson, Chubut Province. He began his football career in with Club El Porvenir B team in 1974 and was promoted to the original squad in 1976. He was promoted to the El Porvenir original team in 1976 and was transferred to the Racing Club de Avellaneda in the next year after good showing and played three seasons and a half season at Club Atlético Lanús as loan. Then, he played for Club Atlético Independiente for two seasons before moving to La Liga side, Real Betis. He played for Betis 131 times and scored 38 goals for them. In 1987, he moved to Ligue 1 Paris Saint-Germain and played for the club three seasons. He was one of the key players of PSG in his second season at the club. In 1990, he joined to FC Sion but returned to France to play for Stade Malherbe Caen in 1992. He moved back to Switzerland next year and finished his football career in FC Lausanne-Sport in 1994 at the age of 34.

International career

Calderón played for the Argentina Under-20 team and won the 1979 FIFA World Youth Championship. In 1981, he was invited to the national team by coach César Luis Menotti. He made his debut in a match against Brazil and scored his only international goal in a match against Denmark. He was part of the national team in 1982 FIFA World Cup held in Spain and in the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy and played along with Diego Maradona. He was key player of the national team in 1990 FIFA World Cup where Argentina reached the final…

Early years

Calderón began his managerial career in 1997 as head coach of Stade Malherbe Caen where he had played between 1992 and 1993. He was appointed as head coach of Lausanne Sports, another former club in 2003 but resigned after just five weeks due to poor results.

Saudi Arabia national team

Calderón then took over as the coach for the Saudi Arabia national football team at the end of 2004, and successfully guided the Saudi team to qualification for the Football World Cup 2006 in Germany by beating Uzbekistan 3–0 in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia was the only team in that qualification that lost no matches. Calderón said "Qualifying to the World Cup is the dream of every coach and I'm more than satisfied with our campaign in the qualifiers." "I'm very happy with the qualification since that was the goal I was aiming at when I first arrived in the Kingdom," he added. However, in December 2005, Calderón was fired by the Saudi Arabia Football Federation as they were dissatisfied by the team's poor showing in the 2005 West Asian Games after a defeat to Iraq, and was replaced by Marcos Paqueta.

Oman national team

On 9 April 2007, Calderón signed as the coach of the Oman national football team and led the team at the 2007 AFC Asian Cup. Oman began the tournament with a 1–1 draw with Australia but was defeated 0–2 against co-host Thailand, then made a 0–0 draw with the tournament's winner, Iraq and was eliminated in the Group Stage. On 30 June 2008, he…

As a player

Real Betis Copa de la Liga runner-up: 1986 Paris Saint-Germain Ligue 1 runners-up: 1988–89 FC Sion Swiss Super League: 1991–92 Swiss Cup: 1991 Argentina FIFA World Youth Championship: 1979 FIFA World Cup runner-up: 1990

As a manager

Saudi Arabia Qualifying to the FIFA World Cup: 2006 Al-Ittihad AFC Champions League runner-up: 2009 Saudi Professional League: 2008–09 King Cup: 2010 Al-Hilal Saudi Professional League: 2010–11 Crown Prince Cup: 2011