Marco Rojas

Marco Rojas
Marco Rojas during VfB training (2013)
Personnel
Surname	Marco Rodrigo Rojas
birthday	5th November 1991
place of birth	Hamilton ,  New Zealand
size	169 cm
position	attacking midfield
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
2007-2009	Hamilton Wanderers
2008-2009	Waikato FC	13 0(1)
2009-2011	Wellington Phoenix	21 0(2)
2011-2013	Melbourne Victory	50 (15)
2013-2016	VfB Stuttgart	0 0(0)
2014-2016	VfB Stuttgart II	4 0(0)
2014	→  Greuther Fürth  (loan)	3 0(0)
2014	→  Greuther Fürth II  (loan)	4 0(1)
2015-2016	→  FC Thun  (loan)	37 0(4)
2016-2017	Melbourne Victory	25 (12)
2017-2019	SC Heerenveen	23 0(4)
2019–	SønderjyskE Fodbold	18 0(3)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals) 2
2011	New Zealand U-20	9 0(4)
2012	New Zealand U-23	6 0(1)
2011-2018	New Zealand	40 0(5)
1 Only league games are given. As of September 8, 2019 2 As of September 8, 2019

Marco Rodrigo Rojas (born November 5, 1991 in Hamilton ) is a New Zealand football player of Chilean descent. Rojas played for Wellington Phoenix and Melbourne Victory in the A-League from 2009 to 2013 , in which he was awarded the Johnny Warren Medal as Player of the Year in 2013 . He has also been active for the New Zealand national team since 2011 and took part in the Olympic Games in Great Britain with the Olympic team in 2012. He is currently under contract with SønderjyskE Fodbold .

Club career

Rojas joined the academy of the Wynton Rufer Soccer School of Excellence in Hamilton in 2003 , an institution founded by the former New Zealand exceptional soccer player Wynton Rufer . In the following years Rojas played several times with the academy team at international tournaments, made guest appearances in Chile at CF Universidad de Chile and CSD Colo-Colo, and completed test training sessions in Germany in 2008 at Borussia Mönchengladbach , Hannover 96 and Werder Bremen .

As early as 2007, Rojas played alongside Chris Wood of the same age for the Hamilton Wanderers in the Northern League , the top regional division in the northern part of New Zealand's North Island , and scored a goal in the traditional Chatham Cup . In the 2008/09 season he also played for Waikato FC in the New Zealand Football Championship , the top division in the country, where he was used in 13 of the 14 season games.

Rojas in the jersey of Melbourne Victory (2012)

In March 2009, Rojas was announced as the winner of the Yellow Fever Youth Scholarship . This privately funded NZ $ 5,000 scholarship, funded by Yellow Fever , the fan association of the A-League club Wellington Phoenix , allowed Rojas to train with the Wellington Phoenix professional team for a week. Rojas convinced the coaching staff and was invited to another trial session, in which he was also used in a pre-season game against Melbourne Victory and helped to prepare the equalizer for the 1-1 final score.

The offensive player finally received a professional contract for two years with Phoenix and made his A-League debut on September 13, 2009 against Melbourne Victory. In total, Rojas came on four substitutes in his first professional season. For the 2011/12 season he moved to Melbourne Victory .

His first year at Melbourne Victory was mixed, Rojas remained without a goal throughout the season and missed the play-offs with Victory. In the following season under the new coach Ange Postecoglou Rojas improved noticeably, formed a dangerous offensive duo with Archie Thompson , scored 15 goals this season and reached the semi-finals of the play-offs. At the end of the season he was voted the best player of the season by the A-League players by a large margin over Alessandro Del Piero and was awarded the Johnny Warren Medal . He also won the Rising Star Award as the best young player in the league. Shortly after the end of the season it was announced that Rojas would leave the club during the break to move to Europe. His contract with Melbourne Victory ended on April 30, 2013.

On May 8, 2013 Rojas signed a contract with VfB Stuttgart dated until the end of June 2017, through which he was eligible to play for the Swabians from the 2013/14 season . Due to a metatarsal fracture, which he suffered in preparation for the season, he missed the first VfB games. Even during the season he could not prevail and did not come to a Bundesliga game in his first season for the Swabians. He made his professional debut in Germany on April 4, 2014 in the third division match between VfB II and MSV Duisburg . On August 21, 2014, SpVgg Greuther Fürth announced that Fürth had loaned Rojas from VfB until the end of the 2014/15 season. The loan agreement does not include a purchase option. In January 2015 it became known that the loan to Fürth had been shortened by half a year. On January 3, 2015, Rojas was awarded to the Swiss first division club FC Thun until the end of the season . On June 12, 2015, the parties agreed to expand the loan business until the end of the 2015/16 season . On August 22, 2016, his contract with VfB was terminated by mutual agreement. Three days later, Rojas returned to Melbourne Victory . After a year in Melbourne, Rojas moved back to Europe, and signed a contract with SC Heerenveen . In January 2019 he then moved to SønderjyskE Fodbold in Denmark .

National team

Rojas made his debut on March 25, 2011 under Ricki Herbert , who was coach of the national team and Wellington Phoenix in personal union from 2007 to the beginning of 2013, in the New Zealand national jersey in a friendly against China . A few months later, he took part in the World Cup finals in Colombia with the New Zealand U-20 team after successfully qualifying for Oceania , but failed there after a draw with Cameroon and Uruguay due to a 0-1 defeat in the last group game against Portugal the preliminary round. In late summer 2012 he was part of the New Zealand Olympic team at the Olympic Games in Great Britain. There he was part of the starting eleven in all three group games, but the New Zealand selection missed the leap into the knockout round after defeats against Belarus and Brazil and a draw against Egypt.

In June 2012, he took part in the Oceania Championship with New Zealand when a semi-final defeat against New Caledonia surprisingly missed qualification for the 2013 Confederations Cup . In 2013 he reached the playoff games for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil with New Zealand .

Awards

• PFA Harry Kewell Medal (U-23 Footballer of the Year in Australia): 2012/13
• Johnny Warren Medal (Footballer of the Year in Australia): 2012/13

Web links

• Marco Rojas in the database of weltfussball.de
• International match statistics

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Profile at the Wynton Rufer Soccer School of Excellence ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ au.fourfourtwo.com: Marco's Chance Of A Lifetime (March 16, 2009)
3. ↑ au.fourfourtwo.com: Phoenix Sign Fever Recruit (July 1, 2009)
4. ^ Rojas heads to Europe. Melbourne Victory , April 18, 2013, accessed May 8, 2013 . 
5. ↑ Marco Rojas changes to VfB. VfB Stuttgart , May 8, 2013, accessed on May 8, 2013 . 
6. ↑ Newcomer Marco Rojas is out for a long time with a broken metatarsal bone. Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 17, 2013, accessed on May 14, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Friday should be a public holiday. Stuttgarter Zeitung, April 4, 2014, accessed on May 14, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Cloverleaf borrows Rojas. (No longer available online.) SpVgg Greuther Fürth, August 21, 2014, archived from the original on August 26, 2014 ; accessed on August 21, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Rojas is coming, Schneuwly is leaving ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Official website of FC Thun, accessed and published on January 3, 2015 
10. ↑ Rojas stays, Markovic moves up ( memento of the original from June 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Official website of FC Thun, accessed and published on June 12, 2015 
11. ↑ Marco Rojas returns to Melbourne Victory Melbourne Victory August 25, 2016