Cristal in 1992 at the age of 17. He made his league debut on 13 April 1992 in his team's 2–0 win against San Agustín. Towards the end of his first season at Sporting Cristal, he signed a one-year contract with Deportivo Municipal, before returning to Cristal at the end of 1993. He was part of the Sporting Cristal squad of the 1990s during which the club won the Peru Primera División Championships (1994, 1995 and 1996) and reached the finals of the 1997 Copa Libertadores. Along with Roberto Palacios, Flavio Maestri, Julinho and Jorge Soto, he was one of Sporting Cristal's most recognized players of the era. Boca Juniors In 1997 aged 22 he signed for Argentinian side Boca Juniors where he became a teammate of Diego Maradona, who nicknamed Solano the 'Maestrito'. Solano said in 2004 that he would like to play for Boca Juniors again, but admitted he was perhaps too old for the ambition to be realized. Newcastle United In 1998, Solano became the first professional Peruvian footballer to play in England when he signed a contract with Newcastle United for £2,480,000. Interest in his first appearance for Newcastle reserves was so substantial that the kick off was delayed to accommodate the large crowd, many of whom had been delayed after a lorry had shed its load blocking one of the major routes into the city. Solano marked the occasion with a goal. His first team debut for Newcastle came in a Premier League match against Chelsea on 22 August 1998, when he came on after 67 minutes as a substitute for goalscorer Andreas Andersson. In June 2001, he signed a new five-year contract with the club. A month later he scored what he later described as "the best goal of [his] career" with a solo effort against 1860 München. During this first spell at Newcastle, he played in the 1999 FA Cup Final. Aston Villa Solano joined Aston Villa in January 2004 for a fee of £1.5 million and signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with the club. He attributed his leaving Newcastle to a "strained relationship" with manager Bobby Robson. He made his debut in a 5–0 win over Leicester City on 31 January, ended the 2004–05 season as top scorer, and was elected the club's Player of the Year by the supporters, his teammates, and the local press. In what was Solano's last appearance for