Chicharito: The Art Of Goalscoring

Javier Hernandez has shown his predatory skills to great effect recently: as a substitute against Stoke he bagged a late, headed winner, then against Norwich he started and scored twice to spark a 4-0 win. So, we decided to try to understand the mind of the Reds’ archetypal poacher...

Make no mistake, Chicharito loves scoring goals. “It’s the best feeling for a striker to score,” he says. But part of the reason that makes him so valuable to United is that he blends ruthlessness with a selflessness that is uncommon among strikers.

“I enjoy making a good pass or giving an assist,” he adds. “You have to enjoy those things as much as scoring goals. I never play just to score; I’m not upset if I haven’t scored in a couple of games. I don’t think, ‘I have to score in the next one’, because I know football can go like that sometimes. As long as the team is winning, that’s the most important thing. It’s part of our job as strikers to score goals, but I train and play the game to enjoy every pass, shot, movement, assist and goal. I try to experience all the things that football can give you in the same way.”

Yet there’s no denying his instincts and the way he reacts when the ball is anywhere near the goal. Is that nature or nurture? “That’s a tough question,” he says, weighing up his response. “Some skills come more easily to some people, but I think you always have to work hard to improve. I have always tried to work hard. It’s not necessarily the case that I was born that way… I didn’t just come here and train and play and score goals. Every player in the world, including players we have here like Wayne [Rooney] and Robin [van Persie], works hard to be the best they can be.”

It’s clear speaking to Chicharito that he is a connoisseur of his craft, so we pitched him in specific scoring scenarios, with examples of goals he has scored for United, and asked him what is running through his mind at the time, and this is what he said…

One-on-one v Chelsea, Premier League, May 2011
“It’s about intuition. You don’t really think about what you’re going to do, it’s just in an instant that you do what you do. When I received the ball for this goal I didn’t think, 'what will I do next?' I just looked at the ball and the keeper and chose which side I wanted to shoot. It’s not like when we sit here now and I say ‘I had this option and that option,’ you just do what you do at the time. You do it in even less than a second. It’s a very quick process. I loved that game – it was phenomenal for me because that goal and that win helped us win the title.”

Set-pieces v Liverpool, League Cup, September 2013
"I like to move a lot because I’m not the strongest or the tallest guy so I try to move around so I can be first to get into position ahead of the defenders. This kind of goal is about coordination as well. I saw Wazza was about to take the corner and I started moving. Thankfully the ball came to me and I found the gap I needed to score."

Improvisation v Stoke, Premier League, October 2010
“This one is interesting because I probably thought more about this one than I did about the other two we just talked about. If I remember rightly we had a corner which was played short. Then the cross came over and I remember Vida going in for the header at the back post. When I saw the ball going towards Vida I ran towards where I had an instinct the ball would come to. It came behind me but all I thought was, ‘I have to head this ball.’ I was 100 per cent certain that I was going to get there. I had worked on little things with heading through the head tennis we play here and in Mexico and I managed to make contact with the ball, then turned and saw it had gone in. It was a great moment.”

Headers v Chelsea, FA Cup, March 2013
“I didn’t think about the pace of the header for this goal or where I was going to put it. I just remember seeing the goalkeeper close to me and thinking that he was a little bit more out of his goal than he usually would be so my first thought was I wanted to head it over the top of him. Thankfully it went in.”

Poaching v Wigan, Premier League, January 2013
“Sometimes you are lucky and the ball comes to you. For these two goals I was standing hoping the ball would come to me and I reacted. Sometimes you know when a ball might come to you. For my goal against Chelsea in the 3-2 win [in October 2012] I moved towards the ball because I had an inkling where it would go. But for the Wigan goals the ball came to me both times from rebounds. Every goal is different. Some you think a bit more about and others you just react or use your intuition.”