Félix Alberto Gallardo Mendoza (28 November 1940 – 19 January 2001) was a Peruvian football player and manager who played as a forward.

For years he was a renowned left wing of Sporting Cristal and the National Peruvian Team from where he launched strong shots with either of the two profiles.

Gallardo played 14 seasons with Sporting Cristal, scoring 148 goals in 261 games,[3] won the Peruvian Primera División four times and became the top scorer twice in the championship.

[4] In 1963, he stood out in the Copa América by scoring four goals and, for the following season, joined AC Milan which was the current European champion at that time.

Within the Peruvian national team, he played 37 games[1] in which he scored 11 goals,[2] participated in the 1960 Summer Olympics, the 1963 South American Championship and the 1970 FIFA World Cup.

Due to the poverty of his home country, it was very difficult for him to play sports as a child which was why he had to train much more than other young athletes to stand out in his school.

In life, he was married to Carmen Ferreyros in 1964 and the couple had three daughters and lived in the Santa Catalina urbanization, in the La Victoria district.

[7] He passed away on 19 January 2001 at 6:40 p.m. after long hours of stay in intensive care at the Javier Prado Clinic due to internal bleeding caused by a ruptured spleen complicated by a severe appendicitis condition.

He signed for the modest Mariscal Castilla after being observed by some directors in a match played by his school in the city of Huacho and which caught his attention due to the enormous potential they saw in him.

[11] Among them were Orlando de la Torre, Eloy Campos, Roberto Elías, Alberto Ramírez and José del Castillo.

[14] Gallardo managed to score thirty-seven goals in thirty games played, 18Of which the club won twenty, drew seven and lost three.

His good performances made several foreign clubs take notice of him and by the middle of the year, Gallardo signed for AC Milan.

Gallardo would play for AC Milan beginning in the 1963–64 season which recently became the champion of the 1962–63 European Cup and alternated with great figures of the time such as Cesare Maldini and Gianni Rivera.

He had a brief return to Peru to play a friendly match between Sporting Cristal and FC Barcelona on 25 July 1964 to raise funds after the Estadio Nacional disaster.

One of the most memorable matches of Gallardo was that of the 1968 Torneo Descentralizado final against Juan Aurich, often considered to be the "revelation" team of the year.

He participated in the match against Boca Juniors that ended with a pitched battle at La Bombonera where he would kick Rubén Suñé in the face after he attacked Gallardo with a corner flag.

But equally the team from Bajo Pontino achieved its fourth crown under the leadership of the Peruvian director Marcos Calderón.

When he had retired from football again, the Cristal managers asked him to play the remainder of the 1977 Copa Libertadores because the team was performing poorly.

1978 was the year of his final retirement, his last official presentation was on 19 February, at age 37 against Unión Huaral at the Julio Lores Colán Stadium.

[28][29] His debut with the senior team occurred on 10 March 1963, 1 in the match against Brazil in the 1963 South American Championship, which ended 1–0 in favor of the cariocas.

Then, he went on to manage the club's lower divisions while working as an assistant to coaches Roque Gastón Máspoli, José Fernández and Marcos Calderón who would later achieve Cristal's first two-time championship in 1979 and 1980.

The following years he led clubs in the Peruvian Segunda División, obtaining promotion to the first division with all of them with Unión Huaral in 199 , Guardia Republicana in 1995 and Alcides Vigo in 1996.

He nearly achieved the Copa Perú title in 2000, managing Coronel Bolognesi but they lost in the final of the tournament against Estudiantes de Medicina.

For his recognized work with youth clubs, he was the coach of the U-20 National Team that was planned to participate in the 1981 South American U-20 Championship in Ecuador but would withdraw.