Argentine Players in the URC 2025-26: The Italy Connection and Every Pumas Name to Know
Argentine players in the URC 2025-26 are fewer than in the English Premiership or the French Top 14 — but the ones who are there tell a story that most rugby fans have never heard. Two of the United Rugby Championship’s sixteen clubs have a direct Argentine pipeline built over more than a century of migration: Benetton Rugby and Zebre Parma. And behind those clubs lies one of rugby’s most overlooked historical connections — the bond between northern Italy and Argentina that began in the 1800s and still produces international rugby players today.
Argentine Players in the URC — The Full Picture
The United Rugby Championship features sixteen clubs from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, and South Africa. For Argentine players, the primary entry point has always been through Italy — specifically through Benetton Rugby in Treviso and Zebre Parma, the two Italian franchises in the competition. The reason is historical: northeastern Italy sent hundreds of thousands of emigrants to Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their descendants — with Italian passports and Argentine rugby educations — have been moving between Buenos Aires and Treviso for decades.
Here are the key Argentine players in the URC for 2025-26.
Enrique Pieretto — Zebre Parma (Los Pumas International)
Enrique “Kike” Pieretto is the most capped Argentine player currently active in the URC. Born in Argentina on 15 December 1994, the loosehead prop joined Zebre Parma after his time in Argentine domestic rugby and has become a key part of the Italian club’s pack. Pieretto has represented Los Pumas at international level and brings front-row experience that Zebre cannot easily find elsewhere. He is exactly the kind of prop a developing franchise needs: physical, experienced, and technically sound at the scrum — the area where Zebre have historically struggled to compete with the Irish provinces and the South African clubs.
Giuliano Avaca — Benetton Rugby (Argentine-Born Fly-Half)
Giuliano Avaca was born on 25 February 2003 in Córdoba, Argentina, and joined Benetton Rugby’s academy before breaking into the first team. The fly-half is one of the most promising young backs in the URC’s Italian contingent — a creative distributor who learned his rugby in Argentina before crossing the Atlantic to pursue a professional career in Treviso. Avaca is not yet a Pumas international, but at twenty-three he has time on his side. Whether he eventually represents Argentina or Italy — the dual-eligibility pathway that defines so many players in this pipeline — will be one of the interesting subplots of the next World Cup cycle.
Thomas Gallo — Benetton Rugby (Born in Tucumán, Plays for Italy)
Thomas Gallo is not a Los Pumas player — he chose Italy and has been capped by the Azzurri. But he was born in Tucumán, Argentina, grew up playing rugby in Buenos Aires, and moved to Italy as a young man through the same Veneto emigration pipeline that has shaped Benetton’s squad for thirty years. As a prop, Gallo has developed into one of Italy’s most important forwards — mobile, aggressive, and technically polished in a way that reflects the high standards of Argentine domestic rugby. His story is the blueprint: Argentine-born, Italian-developed, international-level.
Why Italy? The Veneto-Argentina Rugby Pipeline Explained
Between 1880 and 1930, more than two million Italians emigrated to Argentina. The majority came from the Veneto region — the northeast corner of Italy that includes Treviso, Venice, Verona, and Vicenza. They settled in Buenos Aires, in Entre Ríos, in the pampas. They kept their language, their culture, their Catholic faith. And their descendants kept their Italian citizenship.
When rugby took off in Argentina in the 20th century, the children and grandchildren of those Veneto emigrants played it in Argentine clubs — Hindú, SIC, CASI, Alumni. They were Argentine rugby players with Italian passports. Benetton Rugby, based in Treviso at the heart of the original Veneto emigration zone, understood that pipeline before anyone else did. The club has systematically recruited Argentine-born players with Italian eligibility for decades — players who arrive with Argentine technical standards and Italian citizenship, eligible for both national teams.
It is one of the most elegant arbitrages in world rugby. And it is why Benetton and Zebre consistently punch above their weight in the URC’s Italian franchises — they have access to a talent pool that no other club in the competition can replicate. For more on Argentina’s rugby history, see our history of rugby in Argentina.
Argentine Players in the URC vs the Premiership and Top 14
The URC is not the primary destination for Los Pumas internationals. The English Premiership — where players like Mateo Carreras (Newcastle), Santiago Chocobares (Gloucester) and Julián Montoya (Leicester) have built careers — offers higher salaries and greater visibility. The French Top 14 has attracted Argentina’s most experienced forwards, with Pablo Matera, Marcos Kremer and others choosing Paris and Bordeaux over Treviso and Parma.
But the URC’s Italian clubs offer something the others don’t: a path for young Argentine players who hold Italian passports and want to develop in professional rugby without immediately competing at the highest salary level. It is a development route as much as a destination — and it has been producing test-level players for both Argentina and Italy for twenty years. See our full guide to Argentine players in the English Premiership 2026 for comparison.
What to Watch in URC 2025-26
The URC 2025-26 season runs through to June 2026, with Benetton and Zebre both aiming to improve on recent seasons. For Argentina fans watching the competition, the players to track are Pieretto at Zebre — whose scrum work will be key to the Parma club’s ability to compete with the Irish provinces — and Avaca at Benetton, whose development at fly-half will determine whether the Argentine-Italian pipeline produces another test-level 10 in the coming years.
According to World Rugby, the URC is one of the top three professional leagues in global rugby, alongside the English Premiership and the French Top 14. For Argentine players with Italian heritage, it represents the most natural bridge between their South American rugby education and European professional rugby.
Read More — Rugby Books on Amazon UK
📖 Pumas: A History of Argentine Rugby — the definitive story of Los Pumas in English, including the European chapter of Argentine rugby. Available on Amazon UK.
📖 Around the World in 80 Minutes — Ben Ryan’s tour of world rugby’s greatest clubs and cultures, from the URC’s Irish provinces to the Pampas. Waterstones Book of the Year.
🍺 Craft beer hampers on Amazon UK — perfect for a URC Saturday.
