Herlyn Ysrael Zúñiga Yañez (born August 27, 1976) is a Peruvian footballer

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 who currently plays for Club Juan Aurich as a striker

Striker

Forwards, also known as strikers, are the players on a team in association football who play nearest to the opposing team's goal, and are therefore principally responsible for scoring goals...

 in the Peruvian First Division.

Career

Zúñiga initially trained as a dental technician

Dental technician

A dental technologist is a member of the dental team who, upon presciption from a dental clinician, constructs custom made restorative and dental appliances.There are four major disciplines within dental technology...

 before deciding to become a professional footballer at the relatively late age of 22. He gained some international notoriety after scoring a league-record equalling 32 goals for Melgar

Melgar

Foot Ball Club Melgar, known simply as FBC Melgar or Melgar, is a Peruvian soccer club based in Arequipa, Peru. It is one of Peru's oldest soccer teams, founded on March 25, 1915 by a group of soccer enthusiasts from Arequipa....

 in his first season in the Primera División Peruana

Primera División Peruana

The Peruvian Primera División is the top professional division of Peruvian football. It is known today as Torneo Descentralizado de Fútbol Profesional Peruano...

 in 1999. His goalscoring success prompted English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Premier League club Coventry City

Coventry City F.C.

Coventry City Football Club, otherwise known as the Sky Blues owing to the traditional colour of their strip, are a professional English Football league club based in Coventry...

 to purchase him for £750,000 in February 2000. However, he was unable to find any form in England; scoring four goals in 30 appearances spread over two and a half years with Coventry before he was released in the summer of 2002.

After leaving Coventry he joined Argentinian

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 club Estudiantes

Estudiantes de La Plata

Club Estudiantes de La Plata , simply referred to as Estudiantes, is an Argentine professional sports club based in La Plata. The club's football team currently competes in the Primera División, where it has spent most of its history....

, but again struggled to recapture his scoring form. Zúñiga returned to his homeland following the conclusion of his spell in Argentina to join Sporting Cristal, a club he spent time at as a teenager before leaving the game to study to be a dental worker.

He won 22 caps and scored 3 goals for the Peru national football team

Peru national football team

The Peru national football team, known as 'el equipo inca', represents Peru in international football competition and is managed by the Peruvian Football Federation . The team competes against the other nine members of FIFA's CONMEBOL conference, which encompasses the countries of South America...

.

He was recalled against Ecuador on June 2007.

External links

• Ysrael Zúñiga at TransferMarkt.co.uk
• national-football-teams.com