Michu latched onto the loose ball on the halfway line. He took one, long, beautifully-weighted first touch, then took two more. With his eyes fixated on Wojciech Szczesny, he typically caressed the ball with the inset of his left boot to the keeper’s right.
Beneath the raucous travelling Swansea City fans, the Spaniard took to his knees and calmly twisted his hands beside his head, as if mechanically configuring his brain.
Indeed, for the Premier League’s 2012/2013 season, Miguel Perez Costa – known as Michu – was a goal-scoring machine. Bought for £2million by Swansea from Rayo Vallecano, he arrived in the summer of 2012 a relative unknown.
Four astronomical seasons later, he was the league’s fifth top scorer, The Jack’s cult hero and fantasy football nerds’ favourite thrifty commodity. Four football seasons later, he retired from football, never reaching those heights again.
The name Michu is now ingrained in football’s shorthand textbook for ‘one-season wonder’. There is a certain allure to footballers – usually foreign, pugnacious strikers – bearing trees of fruit for one season and then not even having seeds the next.
It suggests that they can flick a switch when they want, which, despite highly frustrating, is very cool.
It is clubs in the less glamorous half of the table who tend to acquire these fleeting forwards. Presumably, with shallower finances, they gamble on more affordable – but less known – strikers from abroad, trying to maximise the risk-reward test.
One such example is a player who former Wigan Athletic chairman Dave Whelan described by saying: “He does remind me of Shearer.”
Enter the Latics legend that is Amr Zaki. Despite being Egyptian, Zaki is best described as a South American-style centre-forward – he had a low centre of gravity, generated ferociously powerful shots and was an eclectic finisher. For three months, at least.
By early October he was the league’s top scorer for Wigan – perhaps prompting Whelan’s somewhat hasty comparison to the Premier League’s greatest ever goal-scorer.
The circumstances of Zaki’s departure are especially bewildering. Having not scored since December, Zaki went on international duty in April and did not return. It led to Steve Bruce branding the on-loan striker as “highly unprofessional”.
Barring a goalless loan spell in 2010 at Hull City – perhaps reflecting English clubs’ reluctance to contractually commit – Zaki never step foot in the Premier League again. He was ironically last recorded playing for suspect-Wikipedia-page Egyptian side Arab Contractors.
Making the fearsome triumvirate of the best fleeting forwards is Roque Santa Cruz. Half because he wore a Santa Claus hat after bagging a hat-trick against Wigan in December 2007 (and ended up on the losing team), half because he wouldn’t look out of place in a run-of-the-mill GQ ad page.
The Paraguayan spent a peculiar eight seasons on Bayern Munich’s bench, before a modest £3.8m switch to Blackburn Rovers. The technical striker was consistent throughout the year and finished the league’s fourth top scorer with 19 goals.
The following season, he could only manage four, before being picked up by, at that time, the league’s resident suitors of any player exceeding their expectations for mid-table sides (before the mantle was passed to Liverpool), Manchester City.
Three league goals in a two-year spell says all you need to know about the calamitous £17.5m move, and even an attempted loan renaissance at Blackburn couldn’t relight the fire.
Ever since the influx of creative foreign playmakers in the mid-90s – borne from the success of Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola and Dennis Bergkamp – the provision of unknown forwards joining the world’s most lucrative football league.
For every Michu, you have your Manucho, yet for every Zaki, you also have your Chicharito. Here’s to the 17/18 season, and many more flings up front.
