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#3 Sarri got the best out of him
Gonzalo Higuain has been a pretty prolific striker for the majority of his career, but it’s hard to deny that the man who got the best out of the Argentina international is Chelsea’s current boss, former Napoli manager Maurizio Sarri. Higuain hooked up with the Italian boss in the 2015/16 season and the results were simply magical.
Higuain was in his third season with the Neapolitan club after his £35m move there from Real Madrid in the summer of 2013, and while he’d been highly successful from the off – scoring 17 goals in his debut Serie A season and then improving that to 18 in 2014/15 – nobody could’ve expected what he delivered under Sarri the following year.
The Argentine managed to deliver an absolutely insane haul of 36 goals in 35 Serie A games, while chipping in with 2 assists in the process. Napoli finished the season as runners-up to Juventus, but there was no question who was the league’s best striker – Higuain finished as top scorer, 17 goals ahead of his nearest rival Paulo Dybala.
Add in the fact that Higuain picked up 9 Man of the Match awards from WhoScored.com that season, and also averaged a career-best 5.2 shots on goal per game, and it’s safe to say that his style meshed with Sarri’s way of playing perfectly.
Sarri has thus far done a good job at Stamford Bridge of imposing his style of playing onto a very talented squad, but in terms of goalscorers, he’s clearly missing the final piece. Given how well he linked up with Higuain at Napoli, it makes perfect sense that he’d want to bring the Argentine to Chelsea to rekindle that magic.
