Top 5 Football Players From Costa Rica
The best football players from Costa Rica ever
Costa Rica are comfortably the biggest national football team from Central America. They have qualified for five FIFA World Cups and will make it six in Qatar 2022.
Costa Rica have also won four CONCACAF Championships, a feat no other teams from Central America can get near.
Costa Rica’s best World Cup performance came in 2014, finishing 1st in a group consisting of former World Cup champions Uruguay, England and Italy.
They went on to defeat Greece on penalties in the round of 16, reaching the quarter finals for the first time in their history.
In this article, we will countdown Costa Rica’s greatest ever players, culminating in the best player in the number 1 spot.
5. Rolando Fonseca
Caps: 113
Goals: 47
Rolando Fonseca, a Costa Rican national team regular for almost twenty years, is the country's all-time leading scorer, with 47 goals in 113 international games.
La Principito would utilise his low centre of gravity to dazzle defenders, and he played for Los Ticos at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
However, he was controversially left out of the team for Costa Rica's disastrous campaign in Germany four years later.
Fonseca was very effective when deployed in a strike pairing, able to occupy defences and leave space for his partner to exploit.
At club level, Fonseca won three CONCACAF Champions' Cups, five Costa Rican Championships and four Guatemalan crowns while scoring over 250 league goals for a variety of teams, which included Saprissa and and America de Cali.
4. Bryan Ruiz
Caps: 144
Goals: 29
The present skipper has already made his imprint on the history of the country's football.
Ruiz spearheaded the charge for Los Ticos during their incredible ascension out of their World Cup group of former World Champions in 2014.
He netted twice in the 2014 edition of the World Cup, including a spectacular header against Italy.
The former CONCACAF player of the year winner was successful everywhere he went, scoring 26 in 79 at Gent in Belgium, at FC Twente he managed 35 in 65 and won the Eredivisie in 2009/10.
At Fulham, he managed 12 in 97 and he was initially a big hit in the Premier League, rejuvenating a side that had lost many key players in previous years.
3. Paulo Wanchope
Caps: 73
Goals: 45
Only Rolando Fonseca has more goals for Costa Rica than Paulo Wanchope. This fantastic player scored against Brazil and Germany in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, respectively.
Wanchope's games-to-goals ratio, on the other hand, is far more outstanding!
The attacker spent eight years in the Premier League, playing for Derby County, West Ham United and Manchester City.
On his debut in English football, he scored a historic goal against Manchester United, beating an entire defence prior to beating the great Peter Schmeichel in goal.
The solo effort was eventually rated the finest in the history of Derby. It would also help Wanchope win Premier League Player of the Month award in October 1997.
The deadly forward achieved European success, winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup with West Ham in 1999.
2. Alejandro Morera
Caps: 7
Goals: 6
Alejandro Morera was a forward who began his career in the 1920s and soon rose through the ranks of European football, scoring an astounding number of goals wherever he went.
He is one of the few Costa Ricans who have established themselves as one of the best players in European football, along with Keylor Navas.
The nimble, pacey attacker drew notice in the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s with a productive tenure at his hometown club LD Alajuelense, striking the net 175 times in 191 games across two periods at the club.
This earned him a move to Spanish giants Barcelona in 1933.
Morera's eye-catching goals-to-game rate continued with the Catalan club, as he scored 63 goals in just 76 outings.
Morera returned to Alajuelense in 1936 and in his third and final spell at the club he recorded 312 goals in 364 appearances, helping his team to an invincible league season in 1941.
1. Keylor Navas
Caps: 107
Keylor Navas is arguably the best goalkeeper in the entire history of CONCACAF. He has been a staple in the Costa Rica team for more than a decade. His heroics in the World Cup Finals in 2014 earned him a move to Real Madrid.
In this championship, he stunned the world with his acrobatic saves against England, Italy and Uruguay in the group stage, prior to being the hero in the shootout against Greece.
At Los Blancos, he only cemented his legacy further. Navas played in goal for the side that won the UEFA Champions League three times in a row between 2016 and 2018.
The shotstopper also enjoyed success in France with Paris Saint-Germain, winning everything there is to win domestically.
However, he missed out on his fourth UEFA Champions League title against Bayern Munich in the final back in 2020.
Navas’ success for his home country and Europe can simply not be ignored. He is not only one of the greatest Costa Rican players of all time, but he is also one of the greatest to play for the nations within the CONCACAF federation.
Goalkeepers are often overlooked, but Navas has forged a reputation which most keepers do not have.
His flashy reflexes are displayed throughout his career, and they have always made him much more exciting to watch than the majority of goalkeepers.
