Since the dawn of its first season in 1929, the Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, now known as La Liga, quickly earned its right among the 5 best football leagues in Europe and across the world, with players from overseas often being eager to test their skills on the Spanish soil.
As such, there have been thousands of South American players in Spain’s top league over the years, and many of them have made a strong indelible impression.
According to the old saying, as a player, if you want to win the Ballon d’Or, then you need to move to La Liga.
Playing for the two top teams of Spain, Real Madrid, and Barcelona, is often a youngster’s biggest dream, irrespective of where he is born or which club he plays for—but South Americans, I must say, we have witnessed the greatest-ever assets from the continent.
Here are 7 of the best South American footballers ever to have played in La Liga.
1. Lionel Messi
Without a doubt, he is the best player in the 21st century. There needs to be no debate about him being on top when it comes to natural talent.
Messi has earned eight Ballon d’Or awards, six European Golden Shoes, and he was voted the best player in the world by FIFA on eight occasions. Messi is history’s most decorated professional football player: he has won a total of 44 team titles.
He spent his entire professional career with Barcelona until 2021, where he won a club-record 34 trophies, including ten La Liga titles, seven Copa del Rey titles, and the UEFA Champions League four times.
A prolific goalscorer and creative playmaker, Messi holds the records for most goals (474), hat-tricks (36), and assists (192) in La Liga, most appearances (39) and assists (18) in the Copa América.
He holds the record for most international goals with 109 and most international appearances with 187 by a South American male.
He has scored more than 800 senior career goals with his club and country and holds the record for most goals with a single club.
Saying that he is exceptional sounds like an insult because we have witnessed him take apart almost every team in Europe on his own for Barcelona in the last couple of seasons.
2. Ronaldinho
With Ronaldinho, there is no other player who had such a short career span yet blazed so high.
His career debut to its fullest was in 1998 for Grêmio, at the age of 20, and he moved to Paris Saint-Germain in France before signing for Barcelona in 2003.
In his second season at Barcelona, he earned his first FIFA World Player of the Year award as Barcelona won the 2004–05 La Liga title.
The following season is considered to be amongst the best in his career, as he was instrumental in Barcelona winning the 2005–06 UEFA Champions League, their first in fourteen years, and another La Liga title—giving Ronaldinho his first career double—receiving the 2005 Ballon d’Or and his second FIFA World Player of The Year in the process.
After netting two solo goals in the first 2005–06 El Clásico, Ronaldinho was given a standing ovation from the Real Madrid fans at the Santiago Bernabéu, the second Barcelona player after Diego Maradona in 1983- to ever get one.
Because of these successes, Ronaldinho was universally acknowledged to have changed the history of Barcelona.
This feat makes him the only player in history to have won a World Cup, Copa America, Confederations Cup, Champions League, Copa Libertadores, and Ballon d’Or.
The former Milan and Barcelona man was at the peak of his powers during that time and had firmly announced himself without any real dispute as the finest player on the planet.
Since he went off football, nobody has been able to grace the fans’ faces with a smile the way Ronaldinho was able to do.
3. Alfredo Di Stefano
It was Di Stefano who led Real Madrid to an unprecedented 5 European Cup victories in succession between 1955 and 1960, but his lasting legacy is one of unbridled success, netting over 200 times for Los Blancos in under 300 appearances.
Di Stéfano was a two-time Ballon d’Or winner as the European Footballer of the Year in 1957 and 1959.
He lies in the seventh position of the highest scorers in the history of the Spanish top division and was Real Madrid’s fourth-top league goalscorer of all time. He shared the all-time leading goalscorer of Madrid in El Clásico with Cristiano Ronaldo until 2015.
In November 2003, to mark the UEFA Jubilee, he was named by the Royal Spanish Football Federation as their Golden Player of Spain, considering him their outstanding player of the past 50 years.
Di Stefano was born in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, and has played for three national teams: Argentina, Spain, and Colombia.
Nevertheless, he never could play in a World Cup, thus maybe becoming the greatest to never appear in the biggest competition of them all.
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4. Maradona
Maradona may not have been able to equal the number of goals that Pele scored. He might not have been as dazzling an individual player as Messi was. But he did what many say no one has ever been able to do: score with this hand in a World Cup.
His home country as a whole will always be in the debt of the man who single-handedly dragged them, literally kicking and screaming at times, to glory in 1986: man-of-the-match performance after man-of-the-match performance, five goals, and the Golden Ball in between.
An advanced playmaker who played in the classic number 10 position, Maradona coupled his vision, passing, ball control, and dribbling skills with his small stature, which gave him a low center of gravity and ability to maneuver better than most other players.
He got transferred to Barcelona in Spain for a then-world-record transfer fee of £5 million, which amounted to approximately $7.6 million.
In 1983, with coach César Luis Menotti, Barcelona and Maradona took the Copa del Rey, Spain’s annual national cup competition, beating Real Madrid, and the Spanish Super Cup.
Barcelona won away to Real Madrid in one of the world’s biggest club games, El Clásico, where Maradona scored and became the first Barcelona player to be applauded by arch-rival Real Madrid fans.
He is not only the greatest South American footballer of all time. He is one of the greatest footballers of all time.
5. Ronaldo De Lima
The scariest thing about Ronaldo? Arguably we didn’t see him reach his full potential since knee injuries stopped him in his tracks on two different occasions.
It is undoubtedly frightening to imagine what the former Barcelona, Inter, and Real Madrid man could have achieved had he stayed in peak physical condition for the best part of his career.
He was the perfect embodiment of what you would want from a striker and, as his eight-goal tally at the 2002 World Cup proved, there was just no one like him when he was in the mood.
By that point in the 1996–97 season, Ronaldo had scored 47 times in 49 matches in all competitions; his goal celebration remained invariably the same, with his arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer, that iconic statue watching over his native Rio de Janeiro.
He won the 1996–97 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup with Barcelona and later added the much-coveted cup-winning goal in the final.
He also won the 1996 Supercopa de España and collected the top scorer award in La Liga in 1997 by hitting 34 goals in 37 matches and again the European Golden Shoe.
Until the 2008–09 season, Ronaldo remained the last player to score more than 30 goals in the La Liga.
He signed for Real Madrid for €46 million, and his jersey sales broke all records on the first day. He was part of the Galácticos era of global stars who were signed by the club every summer, including Zinedine Zidane, Luís Figo, Roberto Carlos, and David Beckham.
6. Luis Suarez
Suarez must be probably equated with that impossible man to love. Not that he gives two hoots anyway.
His on-field attitude can sometimes be quite atrocious but never mind all that. He is a talented football player, excelling for club and country over the last ten years. He is one of the greatest imports Liverpool and Barcelona have ever had.
Having struck up a successful partnership with one Daniel Sturridge, he equaled the goalscoring record for a 38-game Premier League season and was named Player of the Season in 2014.
That summer, in a £64.98 million deal to Barcelona, where he became one of the most expensive players of all time at £75 million.
Suárez was part of a dominant trio dubbed MSN alongside Lionel Messi and Neymar, winning the treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Champions League in his first season.
In his second season, he won the Pichichi Trophy and his second European Golden Shoe, becoming the first player since 2009 to win both awards other than Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.
He also won La Liga’s top assists and became the first player in league history to lead the league in goals and assists.
With Barcelona, Suárez won ten more trophies, three La Liga titles, and three Copas del Rey. He moved to Atlético Madrid in 2020 and won his fifth La Liga title in his first season.
7. Rivaldo
The Brazilian forward moved to FC Barcelona in 1997, with Sir Bobby Robson convincing Barcelona to sign Rivaldo instead of Steve McManaman by telling them that Rivaldo would score many goals for them.
He was the second top scorer with 19 goals from 34 matches in his first season at Barcelona. With the Brazilian in their ranks, Barcelona managed The Double of La Liga and Copa del Rey.
He repeated the La Liga title with the club in 1999 and was yet again the second top scorer, with 24 goals. It was in 1999 that Rivaldo became the FIFA World Player of the Year and he also won the Ballon d’Or.
After an unsuccessful European campaign with Barcelona, Rivaldo was linked to other teams from Camp Nou, with current Manchester United captain Roy Keane reporting that Rivaldo was the player he most wanted United to sign.
The crowning glory of his career came in 1999 as he was awarded the Ballon d’Or for his performances at Barca – though his best goal-scoring season came two years later as he netted 35 goals in all competitions.
Other Greatest South American Player to Play in La Liga
- Dani Alves
- Romario
- Mario Kempes
- Kaka
- Roberto Carlos
- Ivan Zamorano
- Neymar
- Juan Roman Riquelme
- Javier Mascherano
- Diego Forlan
- Vinicius Jnr
