Gignac and his celebration with dedication to ‘Piojo’ Herrera for telling him that he was old

André Pierre Gignac got even with Miguel Herrera in a timely manner. He did not respond when the coach blamed the age of the Tigres squad for the elimination from the last tournament. It had to be a scandal and it was: Piojo threw overboard any dress code and gave the team leaders a hand.

His words, in principle, did not have consequences beyond the predictable ones: outraging the fans for their irresponsibility and bad mood. Then, when he was fired a few weeks later and everything was colder, it became clear that his stoning of the campus effigies had not gone unnoticed. And there is no one more representative of the feline old guard than Gignac, the French super striker who has been imposing his hegemony on Mexican soccer for seven years.

And he took his revenge now, as he begins a new season as a starter, with a different coach, while Herrera is unemployed and once again campaigning in the media to be the technical director of the Mexican National Team. The Frenchman scored the second goal in Tigres’ victory over Santos Laguna (3-0) and the celebration could not have been more symbolic: he pretended to be an old man with back ailments. Direct answer to Herrera. He did it the way rematches work: when everything is cold, when time has tipped the scales for him.

“To me or to another who comes, it will be the turn of the generational replacement of this team that has grown old for football, if it is not me, it is the one that comes. Gignac is not eternal, he does everything, but he is not eternal ”, were the words of Herrera after the elimination of Tigres, last tournament, against Pachuca. The usual: blaming others when he loses, be it the referee or his own players, to whom he would have to give the basic tools to win. No: better point out and take responsibility.

Herrera believed for a long time that he could go around betraying his own players without anything happening, like when he publicly revealed the discussions that Jesús Corona and Guillermo Ochoa had had before Brazil 2014, all to see who would start the Mexican National Team , or when he exhibited Christian Benítez at a press conference for something as normal in soccer as missing a penalty.

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His last great rudeness, calling the Tigres squad old, the most luxurious he has managed in his career, was the straw that broke the camel’s back: the trigger for his departure, certainly surprising because it seemed that they were going to give him more time to that would give results… And now Gignac has shown that he couldn’t be more wrong or that, at least, he erred in his approach. Of course, Gignac is not eternal and one day he will leave, and then filling his space will be impossible. But as long as that day does not come, it should not be underestimated and that is a lesson that all Mexican soccer teams have learned… and now Miguel Herrera as well.

The Frenchman enjoys full football and we would be wrong to normalize it. It is not common for a striker to reach 37 years of age with the level he has and with such a decisive influence on his team. That is why it seems that he will be eternal, because he has been playing at such a high level for so long that it would seem that he can do it for a lifetime. That must be valued, it must be seen for what it is: an undoubted merit. And not a defect, as Herrera wanted to show.

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