Looking for Redemption: The story of Gonzalo Higuaín

As you may have heard by now, the city of Miami is eagerly waiting to Spanish it up and yell out ¡GOOOOL! as international star striker Gonzalo Higuaín is finally set to change the narrative of this franchise forever.

Pizarro was a nice first step as the team´s original designated player, and Matuidi bolstered Beckham´s credentials as someone who can bring quality, World Cup-winning talent to South Florida. Higuaín, however, is the game changer.

The former River Plate, Real Madrid, Napoli, Milan, Chelsea and Juventus forward claims the title of the best striker in the MLS without having played a single minute in the league yet, and he could even have a bigger impact in the league than Zlatan Ibrahimovic ever had in Los Angeles.

What makes me so sure? Simple facts.

Zlatan arrived in L.A. as a 36-year-old and scored 52 goals in 56 matches, becoming an All-Star and setting himself apart with his outsized personality. Higuaín is only 32 and can easily match those stats, since we are talking about a guy that has 250 career goals in 463 matches playing for the most important teams in the world’s top leagues.

Most importantly, he is a team-first instead of “me first” kind of teammate, unlike Zlatan.

In fact, the 2015-16 season saw him be Serie A’s “capocannioneri” (the league’s top scorer) with 36 goals in 35 matches before being named Juventus’ MVP the following two years in 2017 and 2018 as the Vecchia Signora won consecutive Serie A titles with “Pipita” scoring 40 times in 73 matches against some of the world’s sturdiest defenses. That wasn´t long ago at all.

LAFC’s Carlos Vela set an MLS record with 34 goals last year, and Higuaín is vastly superior to him when it comes to being an animal inside the box. His ability to topple and outplay naïve MLS defenders will be second to none.

Vela played for a middle of the road team like Real Sociedad between 2011 and 2018 and had just 66 goals in 219 matches there before setting the MLS on fire. Imagine what Higuaín can do.

Just like 31-year-old Jimmy Butler arrived in Miami and helped steer the Heat back to prosperity, Higuaín can and will guide Inter Miami to the playoffs as a potential title contender. And just like Jimmy Butler, he arrives in South Florida looking for peace in a city that will allow him to be himself.

For all the accolades and amazing numbers I just presented you with, you also should know he is sort of…well, broken inside.

Because of this:

The three potential championship goals that never were. If he made those, he would still be playing for Argentina as its undisputed starting striker and national hero responsible for the 2014 World Cup as well as the 2015 and 2016 Copa America titles for the decade´s new dynasty with Messi by his side.

Instead, he missed them all in the clutch and became a national pariah that almost retired because of it as a 26-year-old in his prime back in 2014.

‘It’s not easy to be told “this guy’s no good anymore, he’s a failure, he can’t play football,'” he told the Spanish newspaper Marca, a notorious pro-Real Madrid outlet. ‘It hurts. Yes, it’s true that we didn’t achieve our objective, but to have been a failure? Reaching three finals isn’t failure. I was about to stop playing, but my mother (Nancy) told me to keep going. If it was up to me, I would’ve quit football…she said she wouldn’t let me to leave what I love.”

The pain was real, and so were the memes:

Yo soy un agradecido de Higuaín pic.twitter.com/2dHEINiTZD

— #APRUEBO (@ManuCliff_Booth) March 28, 2019

Higuain’s legacy as Argentina’s sixth all-time scorer with 32 goals has been overshadowed by his reputation as a choker in the clutch and the disdain of 40 million people who hold him responsible for the continuation of a title drought that spans 27 years and counting.

An entire country that ha had devoted an entire decade to, that he became only the 48^th player ever to score a hat-trick in a World Cup for in 2010, that he had helped get over the quarterfinals hump with his goal for a 1-0 win against Belgium in 2014, had turned his back on him. He didn’t score at all in three group matches before being benched in the Round of 16 of a tortured 2018 WC and finally said “I’m done” quitting the national team for good in March 2019.

If you think that didn’t affect him, the 2019-20 campaign was the worst of his career with just eight goals in 32 matches for Juventus.

So what can Miami give him in return for his goals? Peace, understanding and, more than anything, love.

Let’s embrace him and make him remember how fun soccer can be, and how he can go out on the street without having people look at him like he just slept with their significant other multiple times in front of them.

Let’s make Higuaín great again. Because once he is, nobody in the United States will be able to stop him.