Real Madrid had both Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema in their forward line in 2009-10. They had club legend Raul too. Six Ballons d’Or, 12 La Liga titles, 13 Champions League wins between them – and counting.
Yet their top scorer in the Primera Liga that season didn’t come from that triumvirate. Their top scorer in the Primera Liga that season was Gonzalo Higuain, a man who never received the personal accolades of his more appreciated teammates but who achieved magnificent feats across Europe all the same.
The Argentine scored 27 league goals that term, adding to the 22 he’d scored the previous season. Following a tough first 18 months in Madrid after leaving boyhood club River Plate, Higuain was really beginning to hit his stride.
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He went on to score 121 goals for Madrid before moving on to Napoli the summer before the Blancos finally achieved La Decima – their 10th Champions League crown – and it was at the San Paolo that he truly enjoyed his greatest times on a personal level. The feature of a stirring Partenopei front line, Higuain scored 24 and 29 goals in his first two seasons as Napoli racked up a third place finish in Serie A, alongside their fifth Coppa Italia win in history and a Supercoppa Italiana success.
The next season – 2015-16 – Higuain scored 36 goals in 35 Serie A games as Napoli finished second behind Juventus. Nobody has ever netted more in the long history of the Italian top flight. Had he not missed three games through suspension after a red card against Udinese he would surely have troubled the 40 mark.
In a team featuring the likes of Marek Hamsik, Dries Mertens, Lorenzo Insigne and Jorginho, Higuain was absolutely relentless. It wasn’t even as though he stat-padded. His only hat-trick came on the final day of the season against Frosinone as he notched 10 doubles as part of 25 goalscoring appearances. In any league, that would be a hell of a feat. In the Italian top division, it was simply unheard of.
That form earned him a move to Juventus, drawing the ire of the people of Naples. At the Allianz Stadium he won three Scudetti over the next four years, interrupted only by a year out on loan between AC Milan and Chelsea as the arrival in Turin of Ronaldo resulted in the Argentine being shoved aside.
Off he went in 2020 to Inter Miami to spend time playing alongside elder brother Federico, adding another 29 goals to a career total of 366 in 786 appearances for club and country. But on Monday night Higuain was left in tears. Having announced that the 2022 campaign would be his last, the 3-0 play-off defeat to New York City marked the end of what has been an incredible career.
He leaves the professional stage as a player who never quite got the recognition he deserved. Perhaps it was the fact that he eventually got forced out of both Real Madrid and Juventus due to the sheer weight of options in attack. Maybe it was because of his crucial one-on-one miss in the 2014 World Cup final against Germany. Even the Napoli fans for whom he did so much reflect more these days on his departure to the much-hated Juve than on his goalscoring accomplishments.
Whatever the reason, as Higuain waves goodbye to football he deserves to be remembered for some of the astounding football he played. Six league titles and 366 goals is nothing to be sniffed at.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
