Player Focus: Can Higuain Buck Scorer Trend & Lead Napoli to the Title?

To get the measure of Maurizio Sarri, consider this for a moment. He turned 57 on Sunday. Until last season, he had never coached in Serie A. He never played professionally. And yet upon being confronted with Gonzalo Higuain, the striker Napoli paid €38m for a couple of years ago, the second highest earner in Italy on a contract worth €5.5m a year, he didn’t hesitate in telling the Argentine exactly what he thought of him. And that was that Higuain was lazy. Particularly when it came to making runs to the near post when crosses came into the box.  

Just pause for a second and think about that. Higuain had been expected to leave Napoli last summer. They had missed out on the Champions League again. The guy who persuaded him to join the club, Rafa Benitez, had gone to Real Madrid. And this new guy, a former banker, with no illustrious track record to speak of was now telling him he was lazy. He didn’t have to stand for that. And yet Higuain claims that “a few minutes” with Sarri were enough “to convince me to stay… I’m happy I did.”  

One of Sarri’s outstanding characteristics, beyond his ability to get teams to defend well and play beautiful football, is that he understands people. His sense of humanity makes him a shrewd man-manager. In Higuain, he saw an animal wounded by misses in decisive games for Champions League qualification and World Cup and Copa America finals. Sarri knew Higuain had a point to prove. He wanted to see the eye of the tiger. He knew the player hadn’t yet fulfilled all of his potential. He agreed that even though Higuain had scored 53 goals in two seasons at Napoli, he had another gear to go to.  

The psychology Sarri applied was simple: Lots of backhanded compliments. “If Higuain doesn’t win the Ballon d’Or, he’s a dickhead,” Sarri said a month ago. Whether it’s because of the disappointments he has experienced and that he is out for redemption, defiantly refusing to be defined by them, the players’ focus has undoubtedly sharpened. “Above all, it’s my head that’s changed,” he told Sky Italia. “I’m calmer, more serene. Perhaps because the results are coming.” Higuain isn’t remonstrating with his teammates in-game nor allowing things to get to him like he did before. He is never out of a game. Three-nil down to Bologna in December, Higuain very nearly got them back into it with goals in the 87th and 90th minutes. “If it had gone on for another five minutes, Higuain would have won it for them” was Marcello Lippi’s assessment.  

He is the most decisive player in the league, the hinge on which the balance of power could swing in Italy just as Ibra was for Inter in 2006-07 then Milan in 2010-11, and Pirlo for Juventus in 2011-12. “In Italy, Higuain is like Messi in Spain and the Champions League,” Roberto Mancini explained to Il Corriere dello Sport, the morning after a Higuain brace had condemned Inter to defeat at the San Paolo. “In Serie A, there’s him, then the rest… behind him. He scores once or twice a game and can be decisive with every touch he makes.”  

It’s funny Mancini should bring up Messi. Because one of the theories doing the rounds about Higuain and his form, in addition to a fresh one reported in Il Corriere della Sera on Tuesday about him finding love, is his diet. Olé believes he visited Giuliano Poser, the dietician based in Sacile, north-east Italy, who Messi consulted with last season, becoming leaner and meaner, subsequently reclaiming the Ballon d’Or. Little red meat, lots of fish, no sugar [replaced by honey] is apparently the fuel optimising his performances.  

To digress from nutrition for a moment, there is a chicken and the egg debate being had here when there really shouldn’t be. Napoli are playing well because of Higuain but Higuain is playing well because of Napoli too. The team is an orchestra. Napoli have made 3,355 passes in the final third this season. They have created 262 chances, attempting 328 shots, 116 of which have been on target. It’s like feeding an ammunition belt through Higuain’s machine gun. There have been team goals. Partnership goals. Higuain and Insigne [26] have scored more between them than Inter have as a whole [24]. And jaw dropping individual efforts too like those against Legia Warsaw and Frosinone when Higuain has dribbled past one defender, then another and another before letting rip.  

Only Borussia Dortmund speedster and deserving African Player of the Year Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has scored as many goals in Europe’s top five leagues this season. Higuain has the same number of goals [18] as Luca Toni did at this stage in his Golden Boot winning season when he became the first Serie A striker to score 30+ goals since Antonio Angelillo in 1959. What’s more impressive is that Higuain is scoring at a faster rate [one every 89 minutes as opposed to one every 94 in Toni’s case] and has yet to go more than one match without a goal. Toni by contrast had a five-match drought between December 4, 2005 and January 15, 2006.

Relative to Serie A, the numbers are astonishing. Only five players in league history - Angelillo [24], Felice Borel II [22], Enrique Guaita [21], Aldo Boffi and Istvan Nyers [19] - have been more prolific at this juncture of a campaign. Should he stay fit - Higuain’s durability is underlined by missing only seven league games in two years - he will surely post a tally higher than Toni’s 31 a decade ago. One of the reasons is his knack for scoring braces. In little over a year, Higuain has scored 11 of them, including four in his last six games. “If Higuain does not win the Scudetto, I will kill him,” Careca, Napoli’s title-winning striker in 1990, joked.  

But here’s a curiosity: in the last decade the team with the Capocannoniere has won the title only once. That was Inter in Zlatan’s final season in 2008-09. Will Higuain, approaching his peak and maturing at 28, buck that trend? Will Napoli, balanced so well in defence and attack, be able to hold off a resurgent Juventus?

Can Higuain fire Napoli to the title this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below