Roque Santa Cruz Bio Send To Friend  

Paraguayan striker Roque Santa Cruz signed for Manchester City in June 2009 for a fee of around £17m. He became the club's second big signing of the summer after City picked up Gareth Barry for £12m a few weeks earlier.

Having impressed in the Premier League with Blackburn, the tall, powerful striker was linked with a host of clubs, but chose to reunite with former Rovers boss Mark Hughes.

Santa Cruz joined the Bayern Munich in 1999 after turning heads in his homeland with club side Olimpia Asuncion and with the Paraguay national team.

He joined Olimpia at the tender age of nine and rose through the ranks before being handed his first team debut aged just 16 in 1998. His 14 goals in 38 appearances helped garner Olimpia back-to-back championships in 1998 and 1999 and the Paraguayan Footballer of the Year award.

However, in eight years in the Bundesliga, Santa Cruz largely failed to fully live up to his considerable promise and has been deemed surplus to requirements following the arrival of Miroslav Klose and Luca Toni.

During his time at Bayern, Santa Cruz won the Champions League, five Bundesliga titles, four German Cups and a World Club Cup winner's medal. He scored 38 goals in 143 games for Bayern.

In July 2007, he agreed a four-year deal with Blackburn Rovers - completing a £3.5m move - and proved to be an inspired signing by the then Rovers boss Mark Hughes, as he went on to bag a superb 19 goals in his debut season.

Once Hughes left the club to manage cash-rich City in the summer of 2008, the striker was always keen on an exit and made his feelings clear. After missing much of the second half of his second season through injury, he eventually sealed a move to Eastlands in the summer for a fee of around £17m but was unable to make much of an impact due to a persistent knee injury.