Francisco Varallo
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Francisco "Pancho" Varallo (born February 5, 1910 in La Plata, Argentina) was a football player for Argentina and is the last survivor of the first World Cup Final, which took place in Montevideo, Uruguay on July 30, 1930.
Early in his career, Varallo was given the name Cañoncito (Little Cannon). Although not technically gifted, Varallo had an exceptional shooting ability.
At the age of eighteen, Varallo had a trial with Estudiantes of the city La Plata, but, despite scoring eleven goals in three games for the club, the directors of 12 de Octubre, where Varallo was playing, all supported their crosstown rivals Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata and so he joined them, rather than Estudiantes. He played for Gimnasia between 1928 and 1930, making his debut in a Third Division game and scoring all nine goals in 9-1 victory. A week alter, he was playing in the First Division. He won the Amateur League Championship with them in 1929.
After the 1930 FIFA World Cup, he was bought by Boca Juniors and he played for them between 1931 and 1939, becoming the club's top goal-scorer of all time, with 181 goals in just 209 matches in his eight years at the club. He also won the Professional League with Boca in 1931, 1934 and 1935 as well as coming second in that tournament in 1933 (when he was the league's top goalscorer with thirty four goals).
Varallo was also an integral part of the Argentina team that won the South American Championship in 1937, as he scored three goals at the tournament, including both goals in a 2-1 win over Chile. In 1938, he was only able to play one game because of a bad knee injury and, although he played more frequently the next year, he retired in 1940, aged 30.
Despite considerable success in his career, it is his place as a runner-up in that inaugural World Cup more than seventy years ago for which he is most famous. He has become even more well-known since he has outlived all twenty one other players from that Final. In 1994, Varallo was awarded with the FIFA Order of Merit for contributions to football, the first one ever to be handled.
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