Memo Ochoa after saving Lewandowski's penalty in Qatar, this Tuesday.Charlotte Wilson/Offside (Offside via Getty Images)
About Memo Ochoa (Guadalajara, 37 years old) weighs one of those statistics that torment soccer players.
He has the worst record of a goalkeeper in Spanish football with 82 goals in 39 games for Granada (2016-2017).
On average he conceded two goals in each match.
What those numbers reveal is that he was also the goalkeeper with the most saves that year with 162. He also showed it in his first experience in Europe, with Ajaccio, with more saves than wins.
But it is in the World Cups where he buries that data to establish himself as one of the most reliable goals.
In the goalless draw between Mexico and Poland there was a highlight: the penalty.
A foul by Héctor Moreno on Lewandowski caused him to be penalized from the VAR.
It was a sour pill for a Mexican team that had proposed and attacked more.
A total setback because it was the only opportunity Poland had in front of the goal.
Lewandowski shot to his right and there, with padded gloves, Ochoa denied him the goal.
One of the best strikers in the world was embittered by the goalkeeper with the worst statistics.
Ochoa played against reality itself.
“It's a good day for me.
We competed quite well, Poland was physically very powerful.
If we compete like this, we can aspire to the round of 16," the Mexican told TV Azteca.
Ochoa's debut in the World Cups had to wait eight years.
In 2006 he was called up as reserve goalkeeper and it seemed that in South Africa he would be the starter.
A bad streak of mistrust made Javier Aguirre, then coach, change his mind, and he preferred to put his old friend Óscar Pérez.
That wound for the Mexican goalkeeper did not close.
In 2014, the explosive
Piojo
Herrera confided everything to him.
and bingo.
Ochoa gave a festival of saves against the toughest rival of all: Brazil in Fortaleza.
No one could score a goal: not the center-back Thiago Silva, David Luiz, Neymar or Willian.
The Mexican took the palms.
He repeated the same against Croatia and, against the Netherlands, he was unable to save a last-minute penalty from Huntelaar.
In Russia, the goalkeeper trained in America was crucial to keep the goal clean against Germany.
Already in Qatar, the goalkeeper is together with Andrés Guardado one of the captains.
He is the main intermediary with Tata Martino and also one of his defenders.
Ochoa and his seniority was questioned by analysts in his country and for accumulating 34 goals in 38 games.
But soccer escapes the algorithm and Ochoa responded with the first penalty saved by a Mexican in 92 years.
The first to do so was goalkeeper Óscar Bonfiglio in 1930 in a match against Argentina, in a match that ended 6-3 in favor of the Argentines.
It will be against Argentina when the legend Ochoa returns to the scene and faces, for the first time in his career, the Albiceleste in a World Cup.
Messi's men, after losing against the Arabs, will go into fury mode.
And there Ochoa will wait.
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