Champions League: the story of Danilo Rinaldi, the part-time Argentine footballer who scored the first goal of the 2022/2023 season

Danilo RinaldiArgentine soccer player 36 yearsscored the first goal of the Champions League 2022/2023. However, the goal did not help La Fiorita to salvage at least one point: the San Marino team ended up losing by 2-1 contra Inter d’Escaldes, from Andorra, in the preliminary round of the highest European club competition. Rinaldi, number 16, is usually summoned for the San Marino national teamwhere football is semiprofesional. In his daily life, the man born in Conesa, San Nicolás district, works in a furniture store.

The match took place at the Viking stadium in Reykjavík, Iceland. Rinaldi, captain from La Florita, found a rebound and defined with his left foot the farthest post from the goalkeeper to make it 1-0 two minutes into the first half. But Inter d’Escaldes would reverse the score with two annotations from the Spaniard Genís Soldevila Solduga35-year-old striker who registers steps through several clubs of the Catalan promotion.

Rinaldi is in San Marino for 14 years. He was formed in the club of his town, With thatand then moved on to the lower divisions of Chacarita Juniors. However, he was not recorded and returned to be close to his family. Armenia, Red General Sports Union (in Argentine C) and Emilia (Saint Nicholas) were their shirts. Until in 2008, a cousin who played rugby offered to move with him to Europe. Rinaldi then embarked for San Marino.

Danilo Rinaldi’s goal, the first of the 2022/23 Champions League

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCYCHwP6yxM

“My positions are those of striker and left winger”, Rinaldi said in an interview with TNT Sports last year. His stay in that country playing for La Fiorita, added to the Sanmarinese blood of his mother, meant that Rinaldi soon obtained nationality. And he was soon called up for the national team. “The national team is known more for the defeats we have had than for the victories. But It is thanks to the national team that I have had to be in big stadiums and face the best teams in Europe”, he counted.

“Getting used to it here was a bit difficult. Because of the language issue and because people here are a little more closed than what we Argentines are”, Rinaldi graphed. “Not being able to communicate is a problem. At the beginning, at the club, I had to run alone. They were all running and I was alone behind, without talking to anyone. She finished, I bathed and I went home. And over there they got together or invited me, but for not knowing how to communicate I was going home”, he added in the chat with TNT Sports.

“Soccer here is semi-professional, therefore it does not allow us to live from it. So both me and my colleagues have other jobs. Since I arrived I work in the same place: a furniture factory, big, what is here I am since 2008. The country is wonderful and I feel one more”, declared Rinaldi, who maintains customs such as mate in the locker room and barbecue. “The leaders, the family and nothing else come,” he said about the number of fans every time La Fiorita, current champion of the local league, plays at the Igor Crescentini stadium. “Football is not the first sport in San Marino and here it is not lived as passionately as we do”he added.

He was on the Andorran bench as a coach Federico Bessone. Former Instituto defender, from Córdoba, shared a team as a player in Spain with Lionel Messi. He then had a long career that included spells at Swansea, Leeds, Swindon, Oldham (all from England), Andorra and Inter d’Escaldes, the team he now manages. In the Andorran team he also plays Víctor Casadesús, who started against La Fiorita. At 37 years old, he registers in his curriculum Mallorca, LaLiga, Spain, and the youth teams of that country.

–