† Appearances (Goals).
Noel Eduardo Valladares Bonilla (born 3 May 1977) in Comayagua, Honduras, is a Honduran football goalkeeper, who currently plays for Olimpia, a Honduras football club based in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
He was a member of the national squad at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Prior to that experience he played as goalkeeper and forward for Honduras at the 1999 PanAmerican games in Winnipeg. He played as a striker for several seasons at Motagua.
Valladares is the first-choice goalkeeper for the Honduran national team and has earned more than 70 caps. He was an instrumental figure behind Honduras's qualifying run to the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals and played in all three games, conceding 3 goals against Chile (0-1) and Spain (0-2) before keeping a clean sheet and earning the Man of the Match award in the team's final game against Switzerland.
His nickname in the Honduran squad is 'The Secret' due to his shy personality away from the field. In 2010 he succeeded Amado Guevara as the captain of the Honduran national team.
In 2011, he won the award for "Best Goalkeeper in the Gold Cup 2011."
Famous quotes containing the word noel:
“I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence—this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)