Gustavo Alfaro

Gustavo Julio Alfaro (born 14 August 1962) is an Argentine former footballer and currently a manager , coach of Gimnasia de La Plata.

Alfaro had a short career as a footballer, he was captain of the Atlético de Rafaela, with which he won promotion to the Argentine Primera División in 1989. Alfaro retired from football in 1992 to concentrate on his coaching career. He won his first league title with Arsenal de Sarandí in the 2012 Clausura.

Coaching career

Alfaro started his career as manager working for Atlético de Rafaela and Patronato de Paraná in the early 1990s. He then had his first spell as manager of Quilmes and a second spell at Atlético de Rafaela.

In 2001, Alfaro became the manager of Olimpo and led them to the Primera B Nacional Apertura 2001 championship and promotion to the Primera.^[1]

In 2003, Alfaro led Quilmes to promotion. He stayed to manage the team for the following season (2003–04), achieving a 4th and a 6th place finish which earned them qualification for the 2005 Copa Libertadores and 2004 Copa Sudamericana tournaments.

In his only shot at an important club, Alfaro had a disastrous spell in San Lorenzo, before joining Arsenal de Sarandí in late 2006.^[2]

Alfaro helped Arsenal to two 5th place finishes, allowing the club to qualify for the Copa Libertadores for the first time in their history. They also earned qualification for the 2007 Copa Sudamericana, where they beat Argentine champions San Lorenzo in the qualifying round to earn a place in the round of 16. In that stage, they faced Brazilian team Goiás. Arsenal won 3-2 in Brazil and recorded a 1-1 draw in the second leg to win the tie 4-3 on aggregate, their official first victory over foreign opposition. Arsenal eventually reached the final of the competition, leaving a wake of sacked managers in their wake, including Daniel Passarella, who resigned from River Plate after their defeat by Arsenal in the semi-finals.

In the final of the competition, Arsenal drew 4-4 with Mexican América, winning the title on the Away goals rule. This was the first major championship in the history of Arsenal de Sarandí and also Alfaro's first major title.

In the end of the 2007–08, season he was replaced by Daniel Garnero as manager of Arsenal. In October 2008, he was named as the manager of Rosario Central. At 2009 he went to Saudi Arabia to work in Al-Ahli (Jeddah), he came with high expectations from the fans. he stayed as the coach for 4 months, then on 20 of November he resigned for personal reasons.

On 17 May 2010 Arsenal de Sarandí confirmed that the new manager for next season would be Alfaro, who arrived along assistant coaches Sergio Chiarelli, Carlos González and Claudio Cristofanelli.^[3] On June 24, 2012 he won with Arsenal the first league title of the club's history and Alfaro's first league title.

The Final Tournament of 2014 looked good for Alfaro. He had a very good team and was going to play the Copa Libertadores. By April, the team have had awful results and he announced he would leave the club by the end of June. However, he was discharged by the club ^[4] and replaced by Martín Palermo.

Honours

Olimpo

• Primera B Nacional (1): 2001 Apertura

Quilmes

• Primera B Nacional (1): 2003

Arsenal

• Copa Sudamericana (1): Copa Sudamericana
• Argentine Primera División (1): 2012 Clausura

References