Ricardo Caruso Lombardi

Ricardo Caruso Lombardi
	Ricardo Caruso Lombardi during a talk with students from the University of Palermo
Personal information
Full name	Ricardo Daniel Caruso Lombardi
Date of birth	10 February 1962 (age 62)
Place of birth	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Height	1.66 m (5 ft 5 in)
Position(s)	Midfielder
Senior career*
Years	Team
1981	Argentinos Juniors
1982–1983	Deportivo Italiano
1984	Atlanta
1985	Deportivo Italiano
1986–1989	Almagro
1989–1990	Chacarita Juniors
1990–1992	Defensores de Belgrano
Managerial career
1994–1995	Defensores de Belgrano
1995–1996	Sportivo Italiano
1996	Estudiantes (BA)
1997	Temperley
1997–1998	Sportivo Italiano
1998–1999	Estudiantes (BA)
2000	Platense
2001–2002	El Porvenir
2002–2003	All Boys
2003–2006	Tigre
2007	Argentinos Juniors
2007–2008	Newell's Old Boys
2009	Racing Club
2010	Tigre
2011–2012	Quilmes
2012	San Lorenzo
2013	Argentinos Juniors
2014	Quilmes
2014	Tristán Suárez
2015	Arsenal de Sarandí
2016	Sarmiento (Junín)
2016	Huracán
2017	Tigre
2019	San Martín Tucumán
2019–2020	Belgrano
2024	Miramar Misiones
	*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Ricardo Daniel Caruso Lombardi (born 10 February 1962) is an Argentine football manager and former who played as a midfielder.

Caruso Lombardi is best known for saving teams from being relegated to second division.

Playing career

Born in Buenos Aires, Lombardi started his playing career with Argentinos Juniors in 1981. His career was then mostly in the lower leagues of Argentine football apart from 1984 when he played a single season for Club Atlético Atlanta in the Primera Division.

In 1986, he was part of the Deportivo Italiano team that won the Primera B championship.

Managerial career

After retirement, Caruso Lombardi took up coaching, initially in lower league teams. In the 1995–96 season, he won the Primera B Metropolitana (third division) with Sportivo Italiano, and in the 2004–05 he won it again with Tigre.

Caruso Lombardi was then in charge of Argentinos Juniors, until resigning five games into the 2007 Apertura tournament, despite his team's 3–2 win over Boca Juniors only three weeks previously. He was then hired by Newell's Old Boys, with which he obtained his second victory over Boca in the same 2007 Apertura tournament, beating them 1–0.

On 24 February 2009, Caruso Lombardi became Racing Club's head coach, signing a two-year contract. He helped Racing avoid relegation in his first season; however, he resigned in October 2009, after coaching 11 games without a win in the Apertura tournament. After three years, on 17 December 2009, the coach returned to Tigre, replacing Diego Cagna.

Caruso Lombardi has a preference towards using physically tall footballers on all the positions of the field.^[1] In 2010, while coaching Tigre, he was accused by one of his players (Juan Camilo Angulo) of requesting a bribe to put him on the first team.^[2] The coach denied the truth of the accusations.

On 8 March 2011, Caruso Lombardi was appointed as head coach of Quilmes, with the club languishing at the bottom of the table and fighting relegation. It is expected that he would remain in that role until his contract expired in June 2012.^[3] After a successful spell at Quilmes, during the night of 3 April of the next season, he signed a contract with San Lorenzo de Almagro, replacing Leonardo Madelón in the charge, after their bad results.^[4]

On 26 February 2019, Lombardi was appointed as the manager of San Martín Tucumán.^[5]