Mario Kempes

• 1. Introduction

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  In the 105th minute of the 1978 World Cup final, Mario Kempes scored the game-winning goal against the Netherlands. He had entered that match as the only foreign-based player César Luis Menotti had selected for the entire tournament. By that July night, he held the Golden Boot as the competition's top scorer and the Golden Ball as player of the tournament. He also won the South American Footballer of the Year award that same year. Only two other individuals in history have claimed all three prizes at a single World Cup: Garrincha in 1962 and Paolo Rossi in 1982. The path to those honors started quietly, in a place most football fans had never heard of. And the years that followed the peak were anything but predictable.

• 2. From Bell Ville to Mestalla

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  Mario Kempes was born on the 15th of July 1954 in Bell Ville, a city in Argentina's Córdoba province. His father, Mario Quemp, was of German descent; his mother, Teresa Chiodi, came from Italian stock. At seven he began playing with a junior team, and by fourteen he had joined the Talleres reserves. His first senior club was Instituto, where he played alongside Osvaldo Ardiles before moving on to Rosario Central.

  At Rosario Central, the goals accumulated at speed: 85 in 105 matches. Before his move to Spain, he had been Argentina's domestic top scorer twice. Those titles came in the 1974 Nacional and the 1976 Metropolitan.

  At Valencia's Mestalla, Kempes scored 24 goals in the 1976-77 La Liga season and won the Pichichi, the award for Spain's top scorer. The following season he scored 28 goals and retained it. Over his time at Valencia, his league total reached 116 goals in 184 games. The club collected the Copa del Rey in 1978-79 and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1979-80. The UEFA Super Cup followed in 1980.

  The back-to-back Pichichi trophies gave him credibility at the top club level. The 1978 World Cup in Argentina presented a different question entirely.

• 3. The Tournament

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  Kempes had played in the 1974 World Cup in West Germany at nineteen years old without scoring once. Four years on, the tournament came to Argentina, and the opening group-stage matches produced the same silence from him. His name was absent from the scoresheet.

  When announcing his World Cup squad, coach César Luis Menotti had assessed Kempes in plain terms: "He's strong, he's got skill, he creates spaces and he shoots hard. He's a player who can make a difference, and he can play in a centre-forward position." The first evidence of those qualities arrived on the 14th of June 1978 at the Estadio Gigante de Arroyito in Rosario. Argentina faced Poland in the second-round group stage, and Kempes scored twice. In that same match, he also stopped a shot with his hand and conceded a penalty. The goalkeeper Ubaldo Fillol saved it.

  Against Peru in Argentina's next group match, Kempes added two more goals. The final against the Netherlands at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires, on the 25th of June, ended 3-1 for Argentina. The goals Kempes scored in that match were the last he would ever score for his country. He was twenty-three years old.

  Before 1978 ended, the Onze d'Or had named him European Footballer of the Year.

• 4. Style and Instinct

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  Kempes was classified as a box number 9, though that description only partly captures what he did on a pitch. Rather than staying close to goal and waiting for service, he would drive from outside the penalty area. His left foot did most of the damage, and many defenders found his attacking style difficult to handle. He also possessed a lethal header, giving him a threat in the air as well as on the ground. Reaction time and physical conditioning sharpened his shot, making him dangerous from a range of distances.

  The two nicknames that tracked him through his career reflect both sides: El Toro, the Bull, and El Matador.

• 5. After the Peak

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  In 1981, before the Valencia chapter fully closed, Kempes made a brief return to Argentina with River Plate and won the Nacional championship. He came back to Valencia for two more seasons before the relationship ended in 1984. Hércules, based in the nearby city of Alicante, was his next stop, where he spent two years. Then came six years at Austrian clubs, where he did not compete for top scorer honors. The 1990s brought stints in Indonesia, Chile, and Albania. During that period, he also served as a player-manager at Pelita Jaya, the Indonesian League champions.

  His full-time managerial debut came in Albania, with a club called Lushnja. That stint made a specific kind of history: Kempes became the first foreign manager in Albanian football to sign a foreign player. The Albanian chapter ended in 1997. The following year brought Mineros de Guayana in Venezuela. In 1999, he took charge of The Strongest in Bolivia, then moved to Blooming in 2000. He had also served earlier as an assistant to Uruguayan manager Héctor Núñez at Valencia.

  With Fernando Palomo and Ciro Procuna, Kempes provided Spanish-language commentary for the FIFA video game series. That run began with FIFA 13 and extended through FIFA 23, before continuing with EA Sports FC 24 and beyond. He also works as a football analyst and commentator for ESPN Deportes, the Spanish-language version of ESPN.

  In March 2004, Pelé named him among the 125 greatest living footballers, compiled as part of FIFA's centenary celebration. The 1978 Ballon d'Or listed him among its Le nouveau palmarès winners. The stadium in Córdoba was named after him in 2010, becoming the Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes. A 2006 ranking placed him twenty-third among South American players of the century, and the Golden Foot award followed in 2007. As recently as 2021, the International Federation of Football History and Statistics included Kempes in its Argentina All Times Dream Team. His voice is still heard on ESPN Deportes.