13 minutes. That’s how long it took Mexican forward Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez to score against Ecuador and hand El Tri its first victory of the year. Most importantly, however, was that it only took him 13 minutes to silence thousands of haters and envidiosos worldwide.
The Little Pea’s story is familiar to all by now. The goal-poacher rode the bench for most of the 2013-2014 at Manchester United. A loan spell at Real Madrid gave him and his fans hope of seeing him play with some of the world’s best players. History repeated itself instead and Chicharito watched Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale, and others from the bench far too often.
The internet wasn’t kind:
Why then, asked the haters, did Mexico’s coach choose Chicharito to start the game alongside Giovani Dos Santos? The million euro bench-warmer…no way!
13 minutes into the game and they were all silenced. He played the full 90 and came close on numerous occasions at scoring a second, third, even fourth goal.
The internet responded in kind:
“Very important,” said Chicharito during the post-game conference when asked about getting 90 minutes of playing time. “It’s not easy to be four months without 90 minutes and the first time I have it, like I said, four months, and against Ecuador, a difficult national team and, thankfully, I gave a good game. I’m very happy and very pleased.”
The goal is Chicharito’s 39th with the national team and put him past Cuauhtemoc Blanco as the country’s second leading goal-scorer. Eight more goals and he will surpass Jared Borgetti as the country’s leading goal-scorer. It’s entirely possible he could do so this year by age 27. What then, haters?