Chelsea have this week announced the incredible loan signing of Gonzalo Higuain from Juventus, with the option to buy him for £31.3m at the end of the season
Their £60 million man Alvaro Morata, has been cast out, unable to fall under Maurizio Sarri’s favour, dejected and bereft of confidence and it is now down to Higuain to reinvigorate a Chelsea season that has been in danger of becoming stale.
With Higuain, Chelsea are not only reuniting student and teacher, but are course acquiring one of the finest marksmen on the continent of the past decade, and if his history is anything to go by, Blues won’t have to wait long to see the Argentine register his first goal for the club.
Beginning his professional career in his homeland, Higuain started 2005 with a bang.
For River Plate, the then 18-year-old scored in his fourth game and second full start, in the 79th minute in a 3-1 home win against CA Banfield in the Torneo Final after being promoted to the senior team at the back end of 2005. In the second tournament of the season, the teenage Higuain eventually scored five goals in 12 games, or five in 11 starts.
After his €12 million move to Spanish La Liga giants Real Madrid at the tail end of 2006, the striker was a bit slower to get off the mark, although he did contribute the imperative assist for Ruud van Nistelrooy in a 1-0 win over Real Zaragoza.
In his fifth start, he endeared himself to fans in one half of the Spanish capital with the equaliser in the El Derbi Madrileño. However, in his first full season with Real, Higuain only needed to wait 40 minutes to open his account in the Spain top tier with Los Blancos, in a 3-1 home win against UD Almeria after coming off the bench. The first of two in his four. Benched and dropped altogether sporadically before picking up a fine vein of form towards the latter half of the 07/08 season, scoring six goals and contributing three assists in 11 games.
Higuain’s move over to Italy in 2013 after six years with Real Madrid was greeted with much fanfare in Naples. Though he had netted in his Napoli debut in pre-season (a friendly win over Benfica), it was his goal in his second Serie A game against Chievo Verona, wherein he also provided an assist. Napoli won 4-2.
Higuain then went on to score three in three games (three in first four) with a goal against Atalanta and AC Milan (2-0 and 2-1 wins). He eventually tallied 17 league goals for the season, becoming joint-fourth top scorer in Serie A, behind Carlos Tevez, Luca Toni and Ciro Immobile.
Higuain rewarded his eye-popping 2016 – Juventus – Scored on his debut, first game of the season since completing monumental £75.3million (€90million) move across Italia to ‘The Old Lady’ Juventus in 2016 by scoring in a 2-1 home win against Fiorentina.
He didn’t miss a single league game that season, and registered 24 for the season, again the fourth top scorer
After old teammate Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival in Turin in summer 2018 inevitably displacing him out of the team, Higuain had to wait a bit longer after his loan move to AC Milan for his first goal, despite playing the full 90 minutes against former club Napoli and AS Roma, it was only the third game – the equalising goal in a 1-1 with Cagliari.