Goalkeepers are among the longest-lived players in football fields, and they usually choose a special date to withdraw and retire from the game after crowning a title or participating in a major tournament, but this rule has exceptions made by names that the history of the game reminds of its achievements or its decisions.

Our story today from Argentina to a goalkeeper who embraced glory in just two years, knocked on the doors of Manchester United, defeated malaria and cancer patients, and decided to suddenly disappear from view at a remote location waiting for the end of the world.

Carlos Angel Roa, born in 1969 in the Argentine city of Santa Fe, starred early with the local Racing Club and he was only 19 years old, and he played with this team about 100 games.

This stage witnessed the first strange events in Roa’s life. He had contracted malaria during a trip with his team to the Congo to play friendly matches, but he recovered quickly and returned to participate in the matches again.

In 1994 he moved to Atletico Lanus and went through three seasons during which the team competed for the first positions in the league and crowned a continental cup, which opened the doors of professionalism in Europe through the Spanish club Mallorca, which he contracted in 1997.

In Spain, Roa’s career has undergone a major transformation, as he helped the team achieve historical results in the league after years of fading in the darkness of the second degree.


Mallorca reached the King's Cup final and lost to Barcelona, ​​and opened the doors of participation to it in the European Cup for Cups, the results that qualified Roa to join the Argentine national team.

He reached the pinnacle of his career during his participation with the "Tango" team in the 1998 World Cup trip, as he kept his net clean during the first three round encounters against Croatia, Jamaica and Japan, and he tackled a decisive penalty kick against England on the way of crossing from the final price, to be one of the team's heroes The celebrated despite the exit from the quarter-final against the Netherlands after the 1-2 loss.

The following season, Roa continued his brilliance and led Mallorca to finish third in the league after the two rivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, as he reached with the team the Cup Winners' Cup and lost to Italian Lazio.

With an average goal of only every 108 minutes, Rua was entitled to the Zamora Award for Best Goalkeeper in Spain. He was also chosen as the best goalkeeper in Europe to succeed Italian Angelo Peruzzi, who won the award the previous two years, and precedes the German Oliver Kahn who won the award the following two years, which confirms that the Argentine goalkeeper He reached the summit between 1998 and 1999, prompting Manchester United to try to sign him, without succeeding.

Here was another turnaround in the career of Rua, when Mallorca was preparing for the Champions League qualifiers for the 1999-2000 season, the Argentine goalkeeper disappeared from view and no one was able to reach it.

Roy was within a religious sect that believed that the end of the world would come with the beginning of the new millennium, and therefore chose to retire in a remote region, and explained that his idea at that time was to prepare for the end of the world in a place that would provide him with all his needs.

He returned to the stadiums again because the end of the world did not come, and he resumed his career with Mallorca, and said at the time that his faith did not change, stressing that his isolation revitalized his football appetite, but that was not enough to open the team's doors to him again.

Roa did not give up his beliefs, and he refused to play on Saturdays because they are dedicated to rest according to the church that he was affiliated with. Therefore, he was excluded from most of Majorca's games, who were forced to play mostly Saturday because of his association with the Champions League matches Tuesday and Wednesday.

In 2002, he left for Albacete in search of resurrecting his career and did not exceed 33 years, and succeeded in leading the team to climb to the first degree, before receiving during his second season with shocking news.

Roy had testicular cancer, to begin the stage he described as "the worst in his life." He did not believe that he would have this disease, and he was always keen on a healthy lifestyle and acquired the title "lettuce" because he was a vegetarian in a country where beef competes with water on the tables, and he also stopped smoking And wine.

The treatment march forced the veteran goalkeeper to return to his country, and after recovery he concluded his career at Olympo Club, which he played for one season before deciding to move to the training world.