Just watched Match of the Day, and have seen the travails of Hojlund. On twitter there were the usual “he just needs one to go in and he’ll be away” sort of posts.
But it got me thinking, what examples are there of players that struggled at first, but went on to be really important and effective strikers? Obviously, youth team players that came through the ranks don’t count. Really just big signings at big clubs.
benzi
So frustrating watching him miss so many his first few seasons.
Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo even had to defend him to the Real Madrid board, because they wanted to offload him at the end of the first season.
Højlund is already scoring at 1 in 3. Not world beater rate but not sure it counts as a struggle.
Gonzalo Higuain only scored 11 in his first 2 seasons at Real, but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them.
Sergio Agüero meanwhile only scored 7 goals in all competitions in his first season at Atlético before exploding the next year and not relenting until he left Citt
He’s got 5 in the champions league which is skewing his stats.
Higuain was youngster first two seasons. He was 18 or 19 when he came to Madrid, and Ronaldo didn’t even play there at the time.
He was a regular starter those 18 months, he’d only played about 10 fewer games when joining Real than Højlund had when joining Man Utd. €12million was a decent chunk of change too - he wasn’t a “youngster” he was signed for the first team and almost immediately started playing for them, replacing original Ronaldo
Hojlund is currently the top champions league scorer at 5 goals. The problem is that the team is shit and just cannot create enough.
Gonzalo Higuain only scored 11 in his first 2 seasons at Real, but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them.
Tbf Higuain was more of a winger or shadow striker than an actual one at the time. He was also 20.
Also iirc Van Nisterloy was scoring more than Raul at the time.
Scoring fewer than RVN is not exactly damning, the guy was a goal machine
Yeah obviously, it was just my answer to
but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them
But the guy clarified that he got confused and thought Ronaldo was playing then, while I thought he meant Raul was scoring all the goals, which wasn’t the case.
Diego Forlan. Took ~20 games to get his first goal for United, later in his career he won multiple European Golden Shoes
In the spirit of the question, I would say he’s not a good example. I’m more talking about players that make it at the club they initially struggle at.
Good question btw. I’m hoping to see more responses.
Diego Forlan
lewandowski at dortmund took a bit to really catch fire, was basically backup to lucas barrios for a season or so
drogba
Diego Forlan - went from 2 in 28 for United to Golden Boot winner with Villarreal.
Forlan
Salah
This might not be a super good example but once Gakpo scored his first for liverpool after about 6 games, he started firing
In Drogba‘s first season we all thought Marseille had conned us. They hadn’t.
Yeah, I remember he got booed a few times by Chelsea fans for diving too much.
But in fair Drogba had some seasons with awful goal tally. He was more like the big game merchant which shows in his Champions League record.
Cole at Utd struggled at first then was prolific and scored important goals, Forlan struggled at man U then went to Villareal and was top scorer in La Liga and Europe (tied with Henry)
Ian Rush at Liverpool. He actually asked to leave because he thought he wasn’t good enough, Paisley told him to be more selfish and stop thinking the other players were better than him and he ended up being Liverpools greatest ever goalscorer