Argentina international Thiago Almada is the latest player to arrive at Olympique Lyonnais via their association with Brazilian club Botafogo under the shared ownership of John Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings. The twenty-three year old attacking midfielder or winger moved to Lyon during the January 2025 transfer window. He initially joined on loan as Lyon were barred from making new signings by the French financial watchdog, the DNCG, at the time.
Despite his youth, Almada has already accrued a wealth of experience and an impressive trophy haul. In 2024 he helped Botafogo win both the Brazilian championship and the Copa Libertadores, but his career highlight is undoubtedly the 2022 World Cup win with Argentina in Qatar. He is therefore the third World Cup winner in the current Lyon squad, alongside his compatriot Nicolás Tagliafico and Frenchman Corentin Tolisso.
Breakthrough at Vélez
Almada was born in Ciudadela, a suburb of Buenos Aires, in April 2001. He grew up in the nearby Fuerte Apache neighbourhood, a poor, working class, inner city district that has also produced Argentina internationals such as Carlos Tevez and Fernando Gago. Almada showed an aptitude for football at a young age and soon joined local club Vélez Sarsfield, where he would spend the best part of twelve years honing his skills in the youth academy before making his first team debut aged seventeen.
Former Manchester United defender Gabriel Heinze was the Vélez manager who handed Almada his first taste of senior football. He brought him off the bench to replace Lucas Robertone just after half time in a Superliga Argentina match against CA Aldosivi at the Estadio José Amalfitani. Almada made an immediate impact, helping to turn a goalless stalemate into a 2-0 win, not least by taking the free-kick that provided the assist for the second goal.
Thiago Almada was a fixture in the Vélez squad for the remainder of the season. He got his first start and his first goals in a 3-2 defeat at Defensa in November 2018 and went on to amass twenty-two appearances and four goals across all competitions in 2018-19 as Vélez finished sixth in the league. He continued his progression during the 2019-20 season when he made forty-one appearances and scored eleven goals as Vélez managed a third place finish in the Superliga Argentina and got to the semi-finals of the Copa Sudamericana.
Post-pandemic progression
However, the Covid-19 pandemic brought his development to an abrupt halt when football in Argentina was suspended for seven months between March and October 2020. The enforced hiatus played havoc with the competition schedules and league football didn’t resume until July 2021 when the newly formed Liga Profesional de Fútbol launched the new Primera División championship. Almada was now a key player and helped Vélez to a fifth place finish.
In February 2022, by now aged twenty, Almada moved away from Argentina and signed for Atlanta United for $16 million, which represented a record transfer fee for an MLS club. Despite the team’s struggles, Almada enjoyed a successful two and a half years in America on a personal level. He was named MLS Newcomer of the Year in 2022 and nominated for the MLS All-Star game in 2023, when he also picked up the MLS Young Player of the Year award.
A big bucks move to Brazil
Midway through the 2024 MLS season, Botafogo came in with a bid of $21 million for Thiago Almada, which broke both the MLS and Brazilian league transfer records and took him back to South America. He went straight into the first team and made his debut in a Copa do Brasil defeat away at Bahia in August 2024.
His Serie A debut came four days later away at Juventude and, following that 3-2 defeat, he didn’t miss a match for the remainder of the season as Botafogo embarked on a sixteen game unbeaten run to clinch their first league title since 1995, finishing six points clear of second placed Palmeiras.
Palmeiras were also the opposition in the Copa Libertadores, which was at the last sixteen stage when Almada arrived in Rio. He helped Botafogo overcome their domestic rivals 4-3 on aggregate to set up another all-Brazilian clash against São Paulo in the quarter-finals. It was another close fought affair, with the first leg in Rio finishing goalless. Almada gave Botafogo an early lead in the second leg only to see it cancelled out late on. A penalty shoot out ensued, with Almada converting his spot kick to help his team prevail 5-4.
The semi-final against Peñarol of Uruguay was a much more straightforward affair, as Botafogo secured a 5-0 lead at home in the first leg to effectively end the tie. Almada scored their only goal of the second leg in Montevideo, which finished 3-1 to the hosts.
Continental Glory
The final was yet another all-Brazilian encounter, this time against Clube Atlético Mineiro at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. It got off to a disastrous start for Fogo when they were reduced to ten men in only the second minute due to a red card for midfielder Gregore. However, they rallied and managed to take a 2-0 lead into the interval. Atlético struck back at the start of the second period, but couldn’t muster an equaliser and the result was sealed when Júnior Santos made it 3-1 to Botafogo deep into injury time giving them a first ever Copa Libertadores title.
Playing alongside Thiago Almada that day were former Lyon defenders Adryelson and Marçal as well as former Manchester United left-back Alex Telles. All will go down in Botafogo folklore as being among the players who helped to finally end their quest for the much coveted continental title. However, it was to be one of Almada’s final appearances for the club, as he was loaned to Lyon just a few weeks later.
First steps with La Albiceleste
Those two trophies earned with Botafogo undoubtedly represent the highlights of his club career to date, but little can compare with the experience of lifting the World Cup with Argentina in 2022. Almada’s story with his national selection began back in March 2018 when he first appeared as a late substitute for the U-20 team in a friendly against England U-18 at the Joie Stadium (the Manchester City academy ground) in Manchester.
A few more appearances for the U-20s followed that year, which led up to his inclusion in the squad for the U-20 South American Championship in January and February 2019. Held in Chile, the tournament consisted of two group stages with the winners of the second stage taking the title. Almada made six appearances and scored one goal, against eventual winners Ecuador, as Argentina took the runners-up medals.
By the summer of 2021, Almada had progressed to the Argentina U-23 team and was part of the squad that went to the delayed 2020 Olympic Games in Japan in July 2021. However, he didn’t get much playing time as Argentina crashed out in the group stage. A gap of more than a year followed, during which Almada didn’t see any international action, but it was ended by a surprise call-up to the full national squad for a World Cup warm up match in September 2022.
On top of the world
His Argentina debut came as a 54th minute substitute for Papu Gómez in a 3-0 victory over Honduras at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida, home of the Miami Dolphins NFL team. However, Thiago Almada failed to make the cut when coach Lionel Scaloni announced his squad for the FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar on the 11th of November 2022.
Nevertheless, fate was on Almada’s side as Fiorentina winger Nicolás González was forced to withdraw from the squad due to a muscular injury and then Internazionale forward Joaquín Correa suffered a similar fate. Their misfortune opened up a door to Atlético Madrid’s Ángel Correa and, just four days before Argentina’s opening game, Almada was also added to the squad. At just twenty-one years old, he became the youngest player in their finals squad.
Playing time was very much at a premium for Almada in Qatar, but he was afforded a run out in the final few minutes of the last group game against Poland when he replaced Alexis Mac Allister with Argentina two goals to the good and heading into the knockout stages. Almada remained firmly on the bench as Argentina progressed through the rest of the tournament to lift the trophy but he’ll go down in history as the first MLS based player to win the World Cup.
Olympian twice over
Since then, Almada has made a further four appearances for the national team, and scored his first senior international goal in a friendly against Panama at the Estadio Monumental in March 2023. His first competitive international goal also came at the Monumental in a 6-0 demolition of Bolivia in World Cup qualification in October 2024.
In between those two strikes, Thiago Almada had been busy captaining the U-23 team and scoring regularly for them in the build up to the 2024 Olympic Games in France. A key part of Javier Mascherano’s squad, he found the net twice in his second Olympic tournament, against Iraq and Ukraine, as Argentina progressed to the quarter-finals. There they came up against the hosts in Bordeaux. Playing as a number ten, Almada was unable to unlock a tight French defence and they went down 1-0 to Thierry Henry’s selection, which was captained by Alexandre Lacazette.