Thank you and goodbye, Higuain – You’ll forever be in our hearts

Higuain had scored his first ever goal at the Santiago Bernabeu. And what a goal it was. A goal that gave us the lead in La Liga, a lead which went on to stay till the end of the season. Ruud van Nistelrooy, Higuain’s mentor, capped the move perfectly by picking up Higuain’s shirt – which the Argentine had thrown in the air while celebrating – and holding it up to the crowd, showing the name at the back. It was like van Nistelrooy saying to us: “Remember the name, people.”

“Goals,” like van Nistelrooy said to his disciple Higuain, “are like ketchup; sometimes as much as you try, they don’t come out, and then they come all of a sudden.” This advice helped Gonzalo when he was struggling to find the net in his early days at Real.

Gonzalo Higuain (R) and Ruud van Nistelrooy

Higuain has a knack of scoring crucial goals at crucial times. His winning goal against Osasuna, in injury time, in the 2007-2008 season won us the league mathematically with three match-days to go. That, however, wasn’t the best part about that goal. The best part was that we had to play against Barcelona the next game and they had to give us a ‘pasilo’ – a guard of honour.

Higuain’s goal gave Real Madrid their second ever pasilo from eternal rivals Barca – something which the Madridistas of our generation had never witnessed (the last time Real got a pasilo from Barca was in 1988). A special occasion gifted by a special player.

Some Madridistas’ treatment of Higuain reminds me of this quote by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight:

“They [the people] need you [The Batman] right now, but when they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.”

When Higuain was at the top of his game in the 2011-12 season, the crowd at the Bernabeu chanted “Pipita, quedate” (Pipita, stay) during the title celebrations. They needed him, they chanted for him. Fast forward a year, after an average season; they no longer wanted him, they booed him, they wanted to cast him out. Their morals is a bad joke which has, at the end of the day, left many Higuain aficionados in tears.

Real Madrid will be without Higuain this season. Not watching Higuain in the White Shirt any more will take a lot of time to sink in as almost every Madridista of this generation has seen his arrival and rise at Real Madrid. He bled Madridismo, he represented everything it stood for, he gave his blood, sweat and tears whenever he played. We might get a better player than him, but a better Madridista? No chance.

After six-and-a-half-years of battling hard for the cause, he knew that no matter what, he is never going to please them; he had learnt that proving himself to people is futile as the people who love him don’t need him to prove anything and the people who hate him won’t be convinced in any case.

And he didn’t want to try any more. And we fans probably didn’t deserve him any more.