The Long-Due Ode to Chicharito

“Did you, at any time, think the goal would NOT come?”

“Ha ha ha”

- Chicharito reacts to the Everton post-match interviewer’s clearly unnecessary question

To say this post has been long, long overdue would be an understatement. Chicharito initially caused approving murmurs of  ’this could be a good move after all’ among the Old Trafford faithful who caught him at the World Cup. He has since taken the red part of Manchester by such a storm that we are now in a state of ‘Rooney contract what?’ and ‘Berbatov who… again?’. This season has felt really long, simply for the amount of drama it has thrown up. If football was a soap, and who would deny that it feels like one so many times, then the writers just decided to pack in three seasons’ worth of material into one long super-season, most likely (I can’t hear the damned fat lady yet) culminating in the perfect finale of becoming the most succesful club in England. And in between all the super-episodes has snuck in a player who was not even part of the original title credits and at the most was expected to appear under the head ‘Special Appearance’. Oh they have been special.

That he was unburdened by the weight of price tags that Berbatov and, more recently, Torres had to carry so onerously might have worked in Chicharito’s favour. But it’s difficult to imagine if anything like that would have affected him even otherwise. He’s young, he’s effervescent and he’s clearly not thinking about what he has to say/act/do after the game, another burden that the English players especially have to carry. He is a professional footballer, much like all of us are a professional whatever-we-do-in-our-dreary-lives, and not a super-idol who will get banned for saying whatfuckinwha because, oh, won’t someone think of the poor kids! And all of that has worked in his favour.

This post, as I already mentioned, could have come so many times before, in the season. The backward flicked header against Stoke was a winning goal, and what a winning goal too! Starting from that game, Chicharito has scored in all of United’s away wins, last wrapping up the 4-2 comeback at West Ham. He then turned to the League Cup and pulled a hapless United side through to the quarters with another late winner against Wolves – those were the days when Macheda led our frontline before he was politely asked to play some football at his level and then come back. Add the 2 goals against Marseille, that prevented any embarassing slipups at home that could have knocked us out of the Champions League, and he is surely among the most impactful players for us this season.

It's late, it's the winner, it's oh-so-United

 The best part is the way he has so quickly, so effortlessly settled into the United setup – and that I think can happen only when there is some part of player-club character match. You can’t simply pluck a plyer out of nowhere and drop him into a setup that is, simply, not how he plays. Every club has a character – either driven by history, or the manager, or Russian and Middle Eastern petro-dollars (couldn’t resist that). And the more you think about it, the more you realize Chicho and United have a lot in common – the incessant, annoying (to the opposition) plugging away, the complete faith in that age old saying ‘it ain’t over till it is bloody well over’, and the sheer desire to just keep winning. That’s what he showed in the Everton game. It didn’t matter that Howard was proving a point to his old employers. It didn’t matter that Jagielka and Distin were having a blinder and Rooney not so much. It didn’t matter that United had barely any height, and yet insisted on keeping on crossing the ball into the box which usually had 7 Everton players at any time. His job was to run off the last defender and keep jumping till the ball went into the net. He kept jumping. Inevitably, as even the commentators agreed, it simply simply had to come.

Looks like the Arsenal quarter of this blog had thrown in the towel even before the Bolton game, as Nicks provided us with a look at the Champions League semis (that they aren’t even involved in) as opposed to discussing how they will keep the League title alive (that they aren’t involved in anymore). Slight bit of bother that Chelsea are putting together the run that they did in the beginning of the season, when it looked like the rest of us could just head South for the winter and hand Chelsea the title. But given that we play them at home, it should seem that it’s all still firmly in our hands.

So the only problem right now is German opposition in the Champions League. Germany+Champions League is our Kryptonite, but if Super Chicho can go past twenty for the season on Tuesday, then we can be all set to face Mourinho’s men at Wembley (yes, you heard me right). Schalke, here we come!