The scorer of league 1 In 2022 it was Peruvian Luis Benites, but in the last decade we’ve gotten used to having a foreign player most of the time. Before Emanuel Herrera made a splash in Peruvian football for beating Eduardo Esidio’s record in 2018, the most coveted name for many teams was that of Robinson Aponza. The Colombian was one of Alianza Atlético’s signings for the 2015 season and finished as the tournament’s top scorer.
Robinson Aponzá came to Peruvian football as an attacking midfielder but established himself in several games as a winger and even as a striker. Despite not being number 9 in the box, the Colombian scored 30 goals in 2016 and was close to qualifying for the Copa Sudamericana with Alianza Atlético. However, he was never able to repeat his great performances in other teams.
Robinson Aponzá established himself as the goalscorer of Descentralizado 2016 despite not being a top scorer. Photo: GLR archives
Robinson Aponzá and his time in Peruvian football
Robinson Aponzá signed with Alianza Atlético for the 2015 Clausura, a tournament in which he almost always played without attracting too much attention. However, the Colombian’s explosion began on Day 2 of Apertura 2016: he scored the first of his three hat-tricks he would score in the 4-1 win over Unión Comercio. “Hook” established himself as undisputed, never being substituted in the 38 games he played.
His spectacular season allowed him to return to his country to play with Junior at the Libertadores where he started great as a regular and scored twice in the previous stages. However, it faded as the dates expired, he scored just one more goal and left for Millonarios for the second half of the year. In this team he added practically no minutes.
Robinson Aponzá scored his only goal for Sport Rosario in his first game. Photo: GLR archives
After a far from brilliant year in Colombia, he was announced as a new signing for Sport Rosario in 2018. But things got worse: he only played two games and scored one goal, hampered by a knee injury that forced him to land surgery on his knee. He also denounced that the club owed him $16,000 at the end of the year and also gave him bad checks at the time.
What happened to Robinson Aponzá?
The bad experience with Sport Rosario meant that he played the second half of 2018 at Jaguares de Córdoba, where he also failed to find regularity. His last season in Peruvian football was in 2019 when he played the Apertura with Alianza Universidad. Here he added more minutes and a few goals but never matched the Aponzá who broke him at Alianza Atlético three years ago.
In 2020 he was said to have signed for Santos de Nazca but never made his debut due to the pandemic and left for Delfines del Este in the Dominican Republic in the middle of the year. In this club he played only one full game. Robinson Aponzá’s last team was El Salvador’s Municipal Limeño, with whom he scored on February 17, 2021 after almost two years.
Robinson Aponzá when he scored his first goal with Municipal Limeño in El Salvador. Photo: Urban Lima
Although the Colombian started as a regular and found the goal again, he was banned for six games on 21 April for assaulting the referee in the 1-1 draw with Águila. A week later, the club announced that they would mutually terminate Aponzá’s contract as the player had to return to his country for family reasons.