No one knows how much longer this dream will last and very few football fans believe that it will have the optimal ending, but Girona fans are enjoying these days in which their team leads the Spanish League above Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid. The Girona team, which this Thursday at 15:00 visits Betis in Seville for the 18th round of LaLiga in Spain, remains at the top with a modest squad, which combines experience and youth, and which has as one of its pillars an Argentine who made his entire career outside the country: goalkeeper Paulo Dino Gazzaniga.
In its second season on Catalan soil, Gazzaniga is the undisputed owner of the fence of the cast directed by Míchel Sánchez Muñoz, the great revelation of the Spanish season. In several of the 17 games this season, the long-linear, who is 1.96 metres tall, was instrumental in his team's tally and in five of them he completed the job with a clean sheet.
To this man who will turn 2 on January 32, the trade came by family inheritance from his native Murphy, a town of 4,000 inhabitants located 156 kilometers from Rosario and where Mauricio Pochettino was also born, a man who would play a key role in his career. Gazza's paternal grandfather was a goalkeeper. "Unfortunately I didn't get to see it. He used to play in the village and everyone always raves about him. They say he was a great archer. From the area, the best," he said in a 2018 interview with Clarín.
Daniel Eduardo, his father, also played under the three posts: he went through the lower divisions of River (he did not make his debut in the First Division), played for Instituto de Córdoba, Deportivo Maipú de Mendoza and Villa Dálmine, and also had experiences in Ecuador and Peru. "From the first day I saw my dad save, I liked what he did so much that I wanted to be a goalkeeper. What I looked at the most was the clothing, because they are always different," Paulo explained.
The young Gazzaniga began his career at Centro Recreativo Unión y Cultura, the only club where soccer is played in Murphy, and had a brief stint at Club Atlético Las Palmas, in the city of Córdoba, when his father went to play at Instituto. But the first big move of his life happened when he was 15 years old: his parents divorced and Daniel chose to settle in Spain. He was followed by his two sons, Paulo and Gianfranco, two years younger, who is also a goalkeeper and now plays for Racing de Ferrol, in the Spanish Second Division.
Paulo Gazzaniga with Patricia, his partner, and Mario, his two-year-old son.
There, Paulo played two years at Torre Levante Orriols and one at Valencia's academy, but at the age of 19 he was released. At that time he received two proposals: one from a Valencian club in the Spanish third division and another from English Gillingham, who played in League Two, the fourth division of that country. "When I was presented with the two options, I didn't even think about it because I knew that going to England was opening a much bigger door. I grabbed my bag, my pair of boots, my pair of gloves and went on an adventure with 50 euros in my pocket," she recalled in 2018.
With the Kent County team he played just 22 games, which was enough for him to attract the attention of several teams in the higher categories. In July 2012, Southampton, who had won promotion to the Premier League a few weeks earlier, signed him for £<> million and offered him a four-year contract.
Paulo Gazzaniga made his first professional experience at Gillingham, in England's fourth division.
"We were looking for a young, hungry goalkeeper, and Paulo fits that mold. He's got a good stature, he's a young guy who has self-confidence, which is good, and he's got a really good attitude and work ethic, which is important to us," Saints coach Nigel Adkins praised the Argentine, who was just 20 years old at the time.
At Southampton he struggled to get his foothold and only managed to play 23 games in four years. But there he met Mauricio Pochettino, who took charge of the team in January 2013, after Adkins was sacked, and years later would open another big door for him. Despite being born in the same village, the goalkeeper and coach had not had contact until they met 11,000 kilometres from Murphy.
With the goal very well covered by Fraser Forster and already without Pochettino in charge of the team, Southampton opted to loan him to Rayo Vallecano in the 2016/17 season. In the first of his three professional experiences in Spain, he played 32 matches in the Second Division tournament (in 11 he did not concede) and another two correspondingly to the Copa del Rey. "Going to Rayo was very important. That's when I felt like a goalkeeper again, I had the chance to play several games again," he said about that campaign.
Paulo Gazzaniga made one stint at Rayo Vallecano, in Spain's second division.
On his return to England, he moved from Southampton to London, as Pochettino took him to Tottenham. There, too, it was very difficult for him to earn a place, as the starting goalkeeper was the Frenchman Hugo Lloris, captain of the team and one of Gazzaniga's references in the position. In fact, in his first season he played only one game, against Crystal Palace in the Premier League (Lloris was injured). In the second, he added a little more homework: he worked in 11 games.
Despite his lack of activity, in November 2018 he was called up by Lionel Scaloni, who had been in charge of the Argentine national team for two months, for two friendlies against Mexico in Cordoba and Mendoza. Just days before that call-up, he had made his Champions League debut in Tottenham's 2-1 win over PSV Eindhoven.
Paulo Gazzaniga played his only game for Argentina in November 2018: it was a friendly against Mexico.
"I was surprised by the call. It happened from one day to the next. I had no indication that they were going to call me. I was doing my job as usual and it caught me off guard. Mauricio (Pochettino) told me and I thought he was joking," said Gazzaniga, who was very comforted by the possibility of sharing a squad with Sergio Romero, another of his references: "Being Chiquito's teammate is another dream for me. I follow him and I'm proud to be training with him."
The Santa Fe native played his only match with the national team on November 20, 2018 in the 2-0 victory against the Mexicans at the Malvinas Argentinas in Mendoza: he replaced Gerónimo Rulli 12 minutes into the second half and had a very outstanding job, with two good saves against a header by Jesús Gallardo and a mid-range shot by Víctor Guzmán. After that, he was not called up again.
At Tottenham he only had continuity when Lloris suffered a fractured left elbow in October 2019. In February 2021 he was loaned to Elche, the team of Argentine businessman Christian Bragarnik. There he started the last eight games of the season and helped his team (which also included Pablo Piatti, Lucas Boyé, Iván Marcone, Emiliano Rigoni and Guido Carrillo) to stay in the elite of Spanish football on the last matchday, thanks to a victory over Athletic Club de Bilbao.
Paulo Gazzaniga was managed by Mauricio Pochettino at Southampton and Tottenham. Photo: David Klein/Reuters.
After his contract with Tottenham expired in July 2021, Gazzaniga was linked for two years with Fulham, who had just been relegated from the Premier League to the Championship. He started his first season as a starter, but after 11 rounds he lost his place with the Slovakian Marek Rodak in the team that would end up winning the Second Division competition.
With no place in the south-west London side, the goalkeeper opted again for a loan and for Spain as a destination: in September 2022 he was signed by Girona, a club whose shareholding is 44.7% owned by the City Football Group (which also owns Manchester City, among others) and which two months earlier had achieved promotion to the First Division.
In the Girona team it took him a handful of games to snatch the starting position from the veteran Juan Carlos; Since he appropriated it, he has never given it up. In that tournament, in which his team comfortably secured permanence, he had a very even performance with some peaks such as his remarkable performance at the Camp Nou, where Míchel Sánchez Muñoz's team (he had already managed the goalkeeper at Rayo Vallecano) rescued a 0-0 draw with Barcelona.
Paulo Gazzaniga is in his second season with Girona. Photo: Josep Lago / AFP.
At the end of that season (and also his link with Fulham), several clubs became interested in Gazzaniga's services. Among them was Villarreal, who were looking for a replacement for Geronimo Rulli, who had been transferred to Ajax. But the Santa Fe native, already on a free transfer, signed for another two seasons with Girona. It seems that he was not wrong: today he is one of the stars of one of the teams that surprise Europe.