Claudio Pizarro

He is the all-time top scorer of SV Werder Bremen, the ninth top scorer in the history of Bayern Munich and the sixth top scorer in the history of the Bundesliga and its second top scorer in the 21st century.

He is also among the 20 top scorers in the history of UEFA club competitions and is the seventh highest South American scorer in European football history.

Claudio Miguel Pizarro Bosio (born 3 October 1978) is a Peruvian former professional footballer who played as a striker.

He is currently serving as club ambassador for Bayern Munich.

He was captain of Peru's national football team, being its fifth highest scorer.

He is the highest scorer and most successful Latin American football player in the history of German football.

His professional debut came in 1996, with Deportivo Pesquero.

His first professional match was in 1996 against Alianza Lima.

He scored his first two goals two weeks later against Atletico Torino in the 2–1 victory of Deportivo Pesquero.

He finished the 1996 season with three goals in 16 appearances.

In 1998, he joined Alianza Lima, where he won a Peruvian Primera División, being highlighted as the best player of the season.

In 1999, he was signed by Werder Bremen from the Bundesliga.

Pizarro scored 25 goals over two seasons with Alianza Lima and was part of the team that ended in second position in the Torneo Apertura of Peru in 1999.

He also made seven appearances in Copa Libertadores.

Shortly after his success at Alianza, Pizarro was sold to Werder Bremen in the German Bundesliga.

Later that year, he earned his first call for the Peru national football team.

Pizarro joined Werder Bremen for the first time in the summer of 1999 when he was only 20 years old.

Just one year later, he was chosen as the newcomer player of the championship and was included in the ideal team of the 2000–01 season.

In 2001, he signed for Bayern Munich and the following seasons he won one Intercontinental Cup, 2 Bundesligas, 4 DFB-Pokale (German Cups), 2 DFL-Ligapokale (German League Cups) and the DFL-Supercup (German Super Cup).

In addition, he was the top scorer in the DFB-Pokal in the 2004–05 and 2005–06 editions.

He also participated in the 2004 and 2007 Copa América.

Pizarro was born to Patricia Bosio and Claudio Pizarro Dávila, a naval officer, in Callao, Peru and raised in Santiago de Surco district of Lima, Peru.

He started playing in his youth in the Academia Deportiva Cantolao in Callao.

Pizarro has Italian ancestry; some of his paternal great-grandparents were from Brescia, while his maternal grandparents came from Frattaminore, near Naples.

Pizarro started his professional career playing with Deportivo Pesquero, a small provincial team in the city of Chimbote in the north of Peru, at the age of 17.

In 2007, he signed for Chelsea F.C. scoring on his debut and achieving runner-up in the Premier League at the end of the season.

In 2009, he returned to Bremen, where he was champion of the 2008–09 DFB-Pokal and the unofficial 2009 German Supercup, in addition to becoming top scorer in the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League.

In 2012, he was hired again by Bayern Munich, winning the UEFA Champions League, the Club World Cup, the European Super Cup, the DFL-Supercup, three Bundesligas and two DFB-Pokale, thus becoming the foreign player with most titles in the history of Bayern Munich, a total of 18.

In mid-2015, he returned to Werder Bremen.

With the senior team, he achieved the third place at the 2015 Copa América.

In 2017, he was hired by the 1. FC Köln, from which he separated a year later to return to Werder Bremen.

Pizarro is the Peruvian football player with the most goals scored and games played in Europe and in German football.

He is the second highest foreign scorer and sixth all-time historic scorer in the Bundesliga (197 goals).

He is also the Latin American football player with the most goals scored and titles won in the history of German football.

He is the ninth all-time top scorer for the DFB-Pokal (34 goals), top scorer for Werder Bremen (153 goals), the ninth all-time top scorer for Bayern Munich (125 goals), the tenth historical scorer of the UEFA Europa League (24 goals) and the fifth historical scorer of Peru's national football team (20 goals).

He is also the foreign player with the most games played in the history of Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal.

Pizarro is considered an idol by Bayern Munich's fans and a legend of Werder Bremen's, teams for which he scored more than 100 goals each.

As well as being one of the players with the most seasons played in the history of the German league, Pizarro is also the oldest player to score a goal in the Bundesliga (at over 40 years old).

In international competitions, he is the fourth highest Latin American scorer in European Cups (Champions League, UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League) with 48 goals, ranking only behind Lionel Messi, Alfredo Di Stéfano and Sergio Agüero.

With the Peru national football team he is the fifth highest scorer with 20 goals and the tenth with the most matches (85).