When Andre Pierre Ziniak signed for the Mexican Tigers "no one knew who it was" • Six years after the striker was considered a legend in North and Central America
Andre Pierre Giniak.
The legend of Tigers
Photography:
Reuters
Presumably the most common search in Google Mexico in the summer of 2015 was the name Andre Pierre Ziniak.
Although even then he was a senior French striker, national team player and Marseille, but the country of Sombrero and Tacos is not Europe.
Giniak was anonymous to many there, so when the news came out that Tigers had decided to gamble on it as its big acquisition everyone ran to the search engines.
"No one knew who it was," said the team's contact at the time, Jose Francisco Torres, "so the first thing I did was search for him on YouTube."
Torres clicked on the video and before his eyes we discovered, he said, "a killer striker, exactly what the team needs."
This week, after Ziniak made Tigers the first representative from the Concave Association (North and Central America) to play in the Club World Cup final, it is clear to everyone that the Frenchman is everything Tigers needed, wanted, and even more.
It was an unprecedented transition.
In the past, European stars came to Mexico at the end of their careers - so it was with Pep Guardiola, Emilio Buttergenio, Brand Schuster and Luis Garcia - while Giniak arrived at the height of his years, at 29 and after finishing as the French league's top scorer with 21 goals and ahead of Zlatan, Cavani and Kaban Eider.
Marseille got into a managerial crisis and had to release it, but instead of landing at another destination in Europe - and there were quite a few who wanted to - the striker surprised everyone and chose the Mexican Tigers.
why?
The prevailing claim was easy money and an escape from the high demands of European football and the fans who mocked his overweight.
Whatever the reason, in the six years ahead it is hard to believe that Giniak could have chosen a better destination.
From the moment the Frenchman's feet through Monterey began to be written one of the special football stories of our time.
Giniak immediately acclimatized, on and off the field, and after announcing "I promise to give everything on the field," he began to abide.
The first step was to lead the Tigers to the Copa Libertadores final, where they lost to River Plate, and since then he has been primarily responsible for the most successful period in the club's history.
In 246 games the Frenchman has scored 147 goals and cooked up another, 35 climbing rapidly to the top of the club’s all-time scoring table.
Thanks to his many goals, Tigers has won four of its seven championships, two Champions' Cups and for the first time in its history won the North and Central American Champions League Cup.
The Frenchman scored in all stages of the knockout, the winning goal in the final and was crowned the king of goals and the outstanding.
This win brought the Mexicans to the World Club Championship in Doha, where Ziniak scored all three goals that sent the Tigers to the final.
The Mexican experience did not particularly change Zeniac's status in France.
He was called up to Euro 2016 and almost scored a winning goal in the final, but has not been called up since.
On the other side of the world, however, the 35-year-old striker has earned a status few get in their sporting lives.
In North and Central America, Ziniak is a legend, a hero, a consensus, one of the greatest in history - and he could be much more if he manages to beat Bayern Munich and Robert Lewandowski tonight.