One of the world’s great strikers whose trophy-laden career is ready for a brilliant last chapter in the Premier League?
Or someone who has relied on a friendship with Lionel Messi to keep his spot in the the Argentina team, who misses the most important chances, and who arrives in London five years past his best?
Chelsea will find out which profile best describes Gonzalo Higuain if they succeed in bringing him to England this month.
Higuain’s international career shows up all those contradictions. You don’t get 75 caps playing for a country that turn out new top-class strikers every season unless you're a pedigree player.
But in 2017 when once again Argentina were making hard work of qualifying for a World Cup finals, former fitness coach Carlos Dibos slammed a lazy over-reliance on those he termed ‘Friends of Messi’.
Dibos did not name names but supporters were unanimous in believing Higuain, Sergio Aguero, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Sergio Romero, Angel Di Maria and Javier Mascherano made up a core of senior players the captain wanted in the team regardless of merit.
Argentina made it to the tournament but flopped and Higuain now appears to be part of the old guard pushed aside to make way for younger talent. He has not retired but has been left out of recent squads.
If he has played his last game for Argentina it might improve his chances of being successful at Chelsea. He has been playing top-flight football since he was 19. International retirement might help a club career that has always seen him do a job for clubs in Spain and Italy.
Durable has been one of the words that has best suited him – hard to bump off the ball, and at a fiercely competitive Madrid hard to push out of the team.
As a kid he was schooled by his dad, a take-no-prisoners defender who enjoyed a career stretching almost two decades in Argentina.
Jorge Higuain coached Gonzalo’s development from the ‘Baby Football’ at local boys club Palermo Athletic to joining the youth ranks of River Plate when he was only 10.
He was in the first team by age 19 and when he scored two goals for them in a ‘Superclasico’ Real Madrid’s Sporting Director Pedja Mijatovic was watching and signed him.
It didn’t start well at Madrid. He arrived half way through the 2006-07 season and scored just twice. When the critics went for him it was team-mate Ruud van Nistelrooy who stuck up for him.
When Higuain got his first home goal in an amazing late comeback against Espanyol that helped Madrid win the title, Van Nistelrooy showed just what he thought of the young striker by taking his shirt from him and holding it aloft to supporters behind the goal.
Higuain improved and scored 22 goals in 34 games in his second full season at the club but when they signed Karim Benzema it seemed he might be edged out. He fought off the competition scoring 27 league goals that season as Benzema got just eight.
The following campaign when Jose Mourinho came in he never hid his preference for Higuain over Benzema. Mourinho once famously delivered the press conference line: ‘If I haven’t got my dog I will just have to go hunting with my cat.’ Higuain, who was injured at the time, was very much the scrapyard guard dog and Benzema the pussy cat.
Coaches always liked him at Madrid but he never became a favourite of the president Florentino Perez – in part because unlike Benzema, he had been signed by the previous regime. Higuain's lack of diplomacy never helped matters either. He once described a town hall reception for winning the Copa del Rey as ‘putting on a needless show’.
He was finally edged out in 2013 as Real Madrid sold several big names to finance the arrival of Gareth Bale. He left having scored 107 goals in 190 games. Only Raul had made it to a century at the club younger.
That was perhaps the moment when the Premier League would have seen the best of him.
He agreed terms on a four-year contract with Arsenal but ended up moving to Italy as part of a set of deals that also took forward Jose Callejon and defender Raul Albiol from Madrid to the San Paolo for €57m.
He was suited to Napoli and became their talisman tank striker scoring 36 goals in one season to get them into the Champions League. They loved him. Until he walked out on them for Juventus in 2016.
An unpleasant campaign followed, they even had toilet paper with his image printed on it made especially for his first game back at his old club.
He has generated plenty of money over the years and that transfer for €90m took the sting out of the sale for Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis who Higuain had, as with Perez at Madrid, fallen out with.
He did well at Juventus as they continued to dominate in Italy and reached the 2017 Champions League final. But he had little impact in Cardiff as they lost 4-1 to Real Madrid.
‘Same old Higuain,’ scoffed some Madrid fans. He does have a reputation for missing the biggest chances in the biggest games. It’s a label put on him by Argentina supporters too.
He missed a penalty in the 2015 Copa America final. There were misses in the same competition in 2016 and the World Cup final in 2014, too.
Ronaldo did not miss his chances that night when Real Madrid beat Juventus 4-1 in the 2017 European Cup final and it was no surprise in the summer that when they signed him, Higuain would have to make way.
He may never have reached Ronaldo’s heights at Madrid, or been as reliable in finals as the Portuguese. But for years Messi wanted him in the Argentina team for a reason.
He has done it week-in week-out, season after season. Chelsea will be hoping that it is not too late in his career for him to produce more of the same.
