Matías Damián Vila is a field hockey

Field hockey

Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...

 midfielder from Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, who made his debut for the national squad

Argentina national field hockey team

The Argentina national field hockey team represents Argentina in the international field hockey competitions. The team competed in every World Cup since the first edition in 1971, except for the 1998 edition which was held in Utrecht, The Netherlands....

 in 1997, and competed for his native country in the 2000 Summer Olympics

2000 Summer Olympics

The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

 and the 2004 Summer Olympics

2004 Summer Olympics

The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...

.

Vila started to play hockey aged seven. After the Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 Games he moved from Banco Provincia to a Dutch club which just promoted to the highest level, called Tilburg

Tilburg

Tilburg is a landlocked municipality and a city in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of Noord-Brabant.Tilburg municipality also includes the villages of Berkel-Enschot and Udenhout....

, together with fellow-international Tomás MacCormik

Tomás MacCormik

Tomás MacCormik is a field hockey midfielder from Argentina. MacCormik began playing hockey at age seven. He made his debut for the national squad in 1996, and competed for his native country in the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics...

. His younger brothers Rodrigo and Lucas

Lucas Vila

Lucas Vila is a field hockey striker from Argentina, who made his debut for the national squad in 2005, after having played the Junior World Cup in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Since the 2004 Summer Olympics, in which he didn't compete, he is playing for Dutch club TMHC Tilburg in The Netherlands...

are also field hockey internationals for Argentina.

External links

• "Pakistan, Argentina keep hopes alive", March 3, 2002. The Tribune, Chandigarh, India.