Andre-pierre gignac tigres

Andre-Pierre Gignac. That is a name Jose Francisco Torres had never heard before.

It is the summer of 2015 and Torres, a U.S. men's national team World Cup veteran, is a key midfielder at Tigres, a club that is on the precipice of reaching the top of the Mexican game.

They had topped the table during the that year's Clausura, only to fall in the first round of the playoffs to eventual champions Santos Laguna. They were so close, but still so far away from what could have been their second title in four years, one that would have truly established them as an elite force on home soil.

So that summer, Tigres made a splash by bringing in what they thought was the missing piece: Gignac.

It was an unusual transfer from the start. European players generally do not pop up in Liga MX and, if they ever did, they certainly did not head there in their relative prime.

Pep Guardiola, Emilio Butragueno and Luis Garcia had once called the league home as they closed out their respective playing careers. So too did Portuguese icon Eusebio way back when, with the former Benfica star making a brief stop in Monterrey as part of his late-career world tour.

But Gignac, from the very beginning, was one that felt a bit different.

In the five years since, Gignac's transfer has become a turning point in Tigres' long history. His arrival began a period of unprecedented success, one that has vaulted the France star into a space all of his own in Mexico's sporting culture.

He has led the club to four Liga MX titles and, most recently, a CONCACAF Champions League crown. He is the club's all-time leading goalscorer with 145 goals, and by the time he is finished, he may just crack Liga MX's top 10 despite spending the first half of his career in his homeland.

His playoff exploits have earned him the nickname "Mr. Liguilla", and his desire to truly embrace his adopted country&

Football is nothing without its mavericks. Unfathomable men and women whose exploits on and off the pitch keep opponents and teammates alike guessing. Players whose downright unpredictability forces fans to fall in love with them.

In 2015, coming off the back of an impressive 21-goal haul for Marcelo Bielsa’s Marseille, André-Pierre Gignac rejected El Loco’s offer to prolong his time on the French Riviera and did something thoroughly unexpected, moving 6,000 miles west to Monterrey, Mexico.

Narrative is a powerful thing. Gignac had plenty of options, most notably from Italian giants Inter and Napoli, but offers from the two Serie A sides, as well as opportunities from Saudi Arabia, were rejected out of hand in favour of a move to North America. Turning down such offers ensured that Gignac had carved his name into the heart of every Tigers fan before he even kicked a ball.

Gignac was swarmed by fans as he touched down in Mexico. This was the first time a top European player had chosen a Liga MX side since Pep Guardiola, but this had a different feel to it. While Guardiola was joining in the autumn of his career, Gignac, a player best described as a big man up top, decided to join at the peak of his powers. Here was a man who had left his comfort zone with the aim of taking a wildly different footballing culture by storm.

Europeans, more specifically, Central Europeans, have a habit of looking down their noses at leagues outside the traditional big five. While it’s fair to say that these nations boast the best players and an incredible amount of financial clout, it’s unfair to suggest that they are the be-all and end-all.

Mexico lives and breathes football. Luchador masks with club and national team colours, oversized sombreros, and full-back tattoos are often seen in the stands. It’s a nation that takes the beautiful game very seriously.

The Frenchman arrived with ambition. “I’m very happy. I’ve come to win the league and the Libertadores.” Gignac’s

When we think of the dream football career, we often fantasise about a lengthy spell with our boyhood side, or perhaps a Galactico move to Spain and a period with weird, long hair. And in doing so, we’re doing it completely wrong.

With age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes the ability to swallow your pride and admit you were incorrect.

Having grown older and wiser, everything we know and love about football has shifted. While we grew up on wet-look gel spikey hair and dreams of playing for the biggest clubs on the planet, nuance has us realising that the perfect career – and the ultimate ambition – is to not be very good.

The dream is to be tremendously average. Perhaps just a bit above average.

Forget everything everyone’s ever told you about striving for basics, remove every pretentious LinkedIn post about being the best version of yourself from your mind and focus on being as average as possible, but crucially punching above your weight.

That right there is the formula to the perfect football career. And Andre Pierre-Gignac has cracked the code.

While we’re not here to call Gignac average – far from it – what we are here to do is to use his career path and crucially his decision-making as a beacon to fuel our footballer pipedreams, giving us a glimmer of hope that there’s still a chance we make it in a beautiful corner of the world where the quality is lesser.

The striker that Europe forgot, the handsome Frenchman had been scoring goals and smashing the statistics early on in his career. Finishing as Ligue 1’s top scorer in 2008-09 ought to have been the catalyst for stardom, but it simply wasn’t.

Gignac remained a big deal domestically, signing for Marseille in 2010. But was that really enough for a striker capable of firing in 24 league goals throughout a single season, with an entire career ahead of