Papu Gómez

Club

_Free Agent Soccer

Position

Left Wing

Nationality

Argentina

Date of birth

1988-02-15

Birthplace

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Height

167 cm

Weight

59 kg

Shirt number

17

Alejandro Darío Gómez (Spanish pronunciation: ; born 15 February 1988), known as Papu Gómez, is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward, left winger or attacking midfielder for Serie A club Monza. He is banned from competing professionally until October 2025 due to having failed an anti-doping test.

Gómez started his club career in his home country with Arsenal de Sarandí in 2005, before joining San Lorenzo in 2009. The following year, he was signed by Italian club Catania. In 2013, he joined Ukrainian side Metalist Kharkiv, where he remained for a single season, before returning to Italy to play for Atalanta. In 2019–20, Gómez set the Serie A record for most assists in a single season with sixteen, and was named to the Serie A Team of the Year.

Although he was born in Argentina, Gómez is a dual citizen of Argentina and Italy, having gained Italian citizenship on 14 May 2016. He made his senior international debut for Argentina in a friendly against Singapore in 2017, during which he also scored his first international goal. He later took part in Argentina's victorious 2021 Copa América and 2022 FIFA World Cup campaigns.

In 2007, Gómez was picked to represent the Argentina Under-20 team at the 2007 South American Youth Championship in Paraguay. Later that year he was in the Argentina squad that won the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Canada.

Having only played internationally for Argentina at youth level, dual citizenship was widely believed to have qualified him for selection to the senior Italy national team, for whom he had expressed interest in playing. FIFA has since ruled him ineligible to switch his football nationality, however, because he did not have a dual passport when he first represented Argentina at that level, and does not have Italian lineage, which would have allowed him to override this requirement.

On 19 May 2017, Gómez received his first senior call-up by newly appointed coach Jorge Sampaoli for Argentina's friendlies against Brazil and Singapore in June. He made his senior international debut in the match against Singapore on 13 June, helping Argentina to a 6–0 away win, and also marked his debut by scoring his first international goal, while also setting up a goal for Federico Fazio during the same match. He went to make three more international appearances that year.

In June 2021, Gómez was included in Argentina's squad for the 2021 Copa América in Brazil. On 21 June, he scored the only goal of the