Football Player's Biography 7: Lucas Barrios

Full name	Lucas Ramón Barrios Cáceres
Date of birth	13 November 1984 (age 26)
Place of birth	San Fernando, Argentina
Height	1.87 m (6 ft 2 in)
Playing position	Center forward

Lucas Ramón Barrios Cáceres (born 13 November 1984 in San Fernando, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born Paraguayan footballer. He currently plays as a striker for Borussia Dortmund in the German Bundesliga. Barrios is known for his effectiveness in the target area. This earned him his nickname, La Pantera which means The Panther.
Barrios' mother is Paraguayan, which made him eligible to receive Paraguay nationality at birth. He received his Paraguay nationality in March 2010.^[1] (and renounce Argentine nationality as the nation did not recognize dual nationality).

Career

Barrios rose to prominence as a forward for the Chilean club Cobreloa, where he had a spectacular scoring record. Before joining Cobreloa, he spent much of his professional career in second division football, either in Chile or Argentina. However after joining Cobreloa, he has demonstrated his innate goal scoring ability, notching 14 goals in the Apertura 2007.
After the good time he passed with Cobreloa, Barrios garnered attention from Chilean club Colo-Colo and Mexican club Necaxa. However, Barrios was finally signed by Mexican club Atlas for $2.5 million, where he played one short season in which he scored a single goal in 14 league appearances.^[2]

Colo-Colo

At the beginning of 2008 Colo-Colo signed Barrios on a six-month loan as a reinforcement for their Copa Libertadores 2008 campaign.^[3] Barrios returned to his pre-Atlas form as he was the leading goal scorer in the Apertura with 19 goals. In the play-offs Barrios was an integral part of the club's success. In the second leg of the semi-final Colo-Colo found themselves trailing Ñublense 2–0 on aggregate with only ten minutes remaining, when Barrios scored two goals in less than two minutes to qualify the team for the final. In the first leg of the final, Barrios added his fifth goal of the play-offs and his nineteenth of the season.
At the end of May 2008, and with the loan agreement due to expire in June 2008, Colo-Colo offered $1.5 million for Barrios which Atlas rejected as it didn't meet their $2 million valuation. Eventually, Colo-Colo offered the $2 million Atlas was asking for Barrios. However Colo-Colo only purchased eighty percent of the player and Barrios holds the remaining twenty percent of his ownership. Barrios' salary with Atlas was almost $400,000 per year, but in order to be transferred to Colo-Colo he had to accept a forty percent pay cut.
Barrios maintained his fine form in the 2008 Clausura, scoring 18 goals in 16 matches only. This meant he finished top scorer in both halves of the championship, the first to do so since Patricio Galaz in 2004. He amassed an impressive 37 goals in 38 games which attracted the attention of a number of clubs.
Lucas Barrios was on the verge of signing a four-year contract with French club Nancy, but Colo-Colo's president Gabriel Ruiz-Tagle, on the afternoon of 12 January 2009, rejected the offer, but stated that further offers were being discussed.^[4]
On 29 January 2009 it was revealed that a $7 million offer from Espanyol had been rejected by Colo-Colo due to the way the deal was structured.^[5] On 28 June 2009, rumors from Greece claimed that Lucas Barrios signed a 4-year-contract with Panathinaikos for a sum of €5 millions. However it was later announced that even after Colo-Colo accepted the offer, Barrios declined to go, without any reasons being mentioned.

Borussia Dortmund

In July 2009, after just one and a half years at Colo-Colo, Barrios officially signed a contract with German club Borussia Dortmund. The German club paid a sum of €4.2 million. After having a tough start, Barrios finally broke through and scored five goals in five consecutive Bundesliga matches. Barrios also added four goals and one assist in three DFB-Pokal appearances. Since then he has added 13 more goals, bringing his tally to 19 for the Bundesliga season, and 23 all together.
Barrios has been a key part of Dortmund's push for Champions League football for next season. His goals, especially his hattrick on 24 April 2010 against 1. FC Nuremberg helped his team win 3–2 and to secure a place in the Europa League the following season.^[6]
His first season in Germany ended with a goal on the final day of the season away at Freiburg, the goal meant Barrios finished third in the Bundesliga top scorer of 2010 with 19 goals in 33 games.^[7]
His scoring in the 2010/11 Bundesliga season has not gone unoticed, he has been linked with many top european clubs including Chelsea FC of England.

International career

Barrios started his dual citizenship process on 16 March 2010 hoping to get a chance to be in the World Cup 2010 which was granted on 8 April.^[8] He is the fourth Argentine to join the Paraguay National team along with Jonathan Santana, Néstor Ortigoza and Sergio Aquino. On May 4, 2010, Barrios earned his first call-up for the Paraguay national football team for the training camp for the 2010 FIFA World Cup