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Carles Puyol is one of the best defenders of the world now. But once he was a goal keeper. But many doesn’know this fact. He started his career as a goal keeper. But that time, he was playing in his home town and not in any league or international match. Unfortunately, he got injured and the injury was on his shoulder. This prompted him to play as a striker. In 1995, he started to play for Barcelona youth clubs and that time he was playing as a midfielder. Then in 1997, he was in the FC Barcelona B team playing as right back, which is his current position. But, Puyol plays well as left back as well.

Puyol jumped into the senior Barcelona team in the year 1999. The coach had great faith in him and made him play his debut match against Real Valladoid. Barcelona had won that match and this was a perfect setting for his career. In the year 2002, Puyol was honoured as “the best European right back” by UEFA. This award might have boosted Puyol’s performance for sure. That’s because not many of the players get such awards from UEFA. And it did reflect in his career as he has been improving from game to game. 

After two years of getting into the senior team, Puyol was appointed as the captain. Now his responsibilities are more. He have to concentrate on his play and also control the whole team during the match. He was appointed as the captain of FC Barcelona and Spain in the season 2003-2004. It was under Puyol’s captaincy, Barcelona became the champions of the UEFA Champions League in 2006.

Puyol has been playing for the international team (Spain) for a long time now. He was in the 2000 Olympics team,  World Cup 2002 (FIFA), Euro Cup of 2004, World Cup 2006 (FIFA) and also in the recent Euro Cup, which was held in 2008.

Spain’s defensive players along with Puyol did a great job in the Euro 2008 final, which provided them victory over Germany. They had won the game by 1-0 and the winning goal in that match was hit by Fernando Torres. Not just that, in Euro 2008, Spain has conceded just two goals. It is because of the strong defensive play from the Spain players including Puyol, whose captaincy is one of the reasons why they won the cup.