Gonzalo Higuaín, during his time at Inter Miami. /
The Argentine striker, formerly of Real Madrid, Naples, Juventus or Milan, among other teams, retires at the age of 34
Point and end. Gonzalo Higuaín, an Argentine forward who went through the ranks of Real Madrid, Naples, Juventus or Milan, among other teams, announced on Monday his decision to hang up his boots for good. “The day has come to say goodbye to football, a profession that gave me so much and I feel privileged to have lived it with its good and not so good moments,” explained the hitherto Inter Miami attacker at a press conference that put the finishing touch to more than seventeen years in the football elite.
“The decision was made three, four months ago that I communicated it to the club, we reached an agreement, but I had been thinking about it for years. When I came here to Miami I came for the pleasure of enjoying soccer, my family, my brother,” recalled Pipita, who since 2020 successfully represented the interests of the club owned by David Beckham and with whom he scored 27 goals. in 65 Major League Soccer (MLS) games. «The people here made me enjoy football again. This year I am having the best moments of my career. It is time to say enough. It is time to start other adventures, “added the 34-year-old striker.
Born in the French city of Brest, where his father defended the Stade Brest team at the time, Pipita was trained in the River Plate youth academy and went through different divisions of the millionaires until he made the leap to the first team in May 2005, by the hand of Leonardo Astrada. His meteoric rise, which included a double against Boca Juniors in the Argentine soccer superclásico, caught the attention of several of the main teams on the European continent, but it was Real Madrid that took the cat to the water.
In December 2006, the club chaired by Ramón Calderón at the time tied up the pass for the promising attacker in exchange for twelve million euros. It was one of the three incorporations that the sports management headed by Pedja Mijatovic undertook in that winter market, along with those of the also Argentine Fernando Gago and the emerging Brazilian side Marcelo. Gago was the one who had the most posterity at that time, being considered the natural heir to Fernando Redondo, but while the Ciudadela midfielder did not fully meet the expectations created, Higuaín and Marcelo would carve out a fruitful career in the Chamartín team , especially in the case of the latter.
Higuaín made his debut with Real Madrid on January 11, 2007, in a Copa del Rey match against Betis. Fabio Capello was in charge of giving the alternative with the whites to a footballer who would remain seven seasons in the Chamartín team, in which he played 264 games and scored 121 goals. Especially significant was his contribution to what was known as the ‘League of the nail on fire’, with decisive performances against Espanyol and Mallorca.
“When I arrived at Real Madrid, the club’s idea is that I play with the reserve team or go out on loan. However, there was a friendly in which the veterans were at 50% and I lost my life and thanks to that match, Fabio Capello said that I would stay in the first team. That game changed my destiny at Real Madrid. The coach decided to stay with me and after four days I was a starter in the Copa del Rey », he recalled about those days in the intervention in which he gave an account of his decision to leave football.
Rivalry with Benzema
Later came the competition with Karim Benzema for a position in the schemes, first Manuel Pellegrini and then José Mourinho. The Argentine managed to overshadow who today is a living legend of Real Madrid, but the Frenchman ended up taking the cat to the water -never better said taking into account that famous phrase by the Setúbal coach- and Higuaín had no choice but to do the suitcases in the summer of 2013 and head to Italy.
At Napoli he made history registering 91 goals and distributing 26 assists in 146 games. His greatest brilliance was achieved in the second campaign with the Partenopeo team, which he promoted to the runner-up spot, crushing, with 36 goals, the Calcio record for goals in a season.
His signing for Juventus in the summer of 2016 raised a wide cloud. The Bianconeros paid 90 million euros for the striker’s services, becoming at that time the third most expensive transfer in history behind those of Gareth Bale (101 million euros his transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid cost in 2013) and Cristiano Ronaldo (94 million euros paid by Real Madrid to get him out of Manchester United in 2009). In the three campaigns that he wore as a bianconero -with two assignments in between to Milan and Chelsea-, Higuaín recorded 66 goals and 16 assists.
Runner-up with Argentina in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Higuaín chose in 2020 to go to the United States to live the last stage of his career as one of the main claims of Inter Miami, then becoming the highest paid soccer player in MLS. There, at 34, a scorer who left no one indifferent has been fired.
