The UEFA Champions League is Europe’s premier tournament. Players dream of feeling the rush of playing in that highly competitive environment where heroics for your team will be long remembered by faithful fans, A competition dominated by superstar players such as Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentina's Lionel Messi.
Very few Mexican players have had the opportunity to play in the Champions League. Mexico only has 16 well-known European-based internationals.
With the 2014-15 UEFA Champions League season having wrapped up with Barcelona taking the home the trophy, who was the standout Mexican player in the competition? Was it Chicharito, who scored the deciding goal for Real Madrid in their quarterfinal clash against Atletico Madrid, sending them to their semifinal match against Juventus?
Was it Raul Jimenez, who played a bit-part role in Atletico Madrid's season? Or might it have been Diego Reyes or Hector Herrera, both teammates at Porto? I won’t yet say. But I will say that It’s been some time since Mexico had a great representative in UEFA competitions.
It’s been a while since the likes of Hugo Sanchez lifted the UEFA Cup, now known as the Europa League Cup, in celebration of Real Madrid's victory. That day he shined a light on Mexican players in European competitions. That day was close to 30 years ago. The closest a European-based Mexican player has gotten since was Chicharito starting in the 2011 UEFA Champions League final against Barcelona. A Messi inspired Barcelona would go on to win that competition. Chicharito would hardly start in the competition the following season.
In the latest edition of the UEFA Champions League, only four Mexican players played on teams that were involved throughout the competition. I already mentioned them above but here they are again: Real Madrid’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, Atletico Madrid's Raul Jimenez and Porto duo Hector Herrera and Diego Reyes.
Of these four, Mexico’s standout player was truly Porto’s Hector Herrera. He had a season to remember with the Dragões. He scored in their first match, a group stage qualifier against Lille, A goal that would serve them well in the 2nd leg, winning 3-0 on aggregate.
His goal in the first match foreshadowed a great campaign for Porto. He appeared in 12 UEFA Champions League matches, starting 11. He scored four goals and provided four assists. Porto would make it as far as the quarterfinal stage, where a highlight of their campaign was the 3-1 first-leg win against favorites Bayern Munich. Even though Herrera’s Porto was knocked out by Bayern in the 2nd leg (losing 6-1 in that match), his contribution to their first leg win against the German giants shows that he deserves the amount of praise he’s receiving for the great season he had.
Chicharito may have scored the winner against Atletico Madrid, taking them to the semifinal stage of the competition, but he only became influential in the latter stages of the competition. Not because he didn’t want to but because Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti had other options at the time. He played 11 matches in the competition, starting 2, and scoring once in the whole competition, that goal against Atletico Madrid.
That goal was worth a lot for Real because it gave Real Madrid the opportunity to move on in the tournament, but his contribution as whole wasn’t as much compared to Herrera’s. Raul Jimenez appeared only one time in a continental competition and Diego Reyes played 4 times in the competition. Overall, Mexico’s best player in Europe's premier tournament was not Chicharito, but Hector Herrera.
His great performance this season for Porto has sparked rumours of him joining one of Europe’s elite clubs, with Porto setting a €40M summer price tag. Will he be on the move this summer? We can only speculate as to how the summer transfer window will playout. What we do know is that Herrera will play a large role for Mexico at the Gold Cup. The versatile midfielder will be making El Tri tick and will hopefully be celebrating any summer club move with a Gold Cup trophy as well.
Check out one of Hector Herrera’s best goals in the Champions League, scored against Basel:
