Hassan Chamas

It’s becoming rarer and rarer these days to see clubs revolving around one single player. While sides may be assembled around a certain core of players – AC Milan and their Dutch trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten in the 80s, the second Manchester United generation under Sir Alex Ferguson, which consisted of Gary Neville, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and co – it is nonetheless becoming a scarcity to find a one-man team. In fact, you have to go all the way to 1986’s World Cup to locate such a case, where a brilliant Diego Maradona single handedly carried a mediocre Argentinean team all the way to glory.

A man who has certainly garnered attention and was labelled with “Saviour” adjectives is none other than Atletico Madrid’s young Argentine Sergio “Kun” Aguero. Since his club record-breaking transfer fee back in 2006, Kun has done nothing but plant hope in his club’s mind of one day returning to old glory periods, to the point that he was swiftly dubbed the team’s saviour at a certain point. While holding undoubtedly raw talent, one needs to ask himself: “Is Sergio Aguero capable of living up to his attributed hype?”

One of the trivial pieces of data about Aguero is, as I said before, his huge amount of talent. While he wasn’t exploited to his maximum potential during his first season at the Vicente Calderon, Kun has flourished in amazing fashion in his second after the departure of Fernando Torres, forming a deadly partnership with Uruguayan forward Diego Forlan. As such, Aguero managed to finish the season on a high note, amassing 20 goals in the league campaign, in the process finishing in 3rd position behind Daniel Guiza and Luis Fabiano.

His intriguing goal exploits significantly helped Atletico Madrid in capturing that crucial 4th position, and returning to Champions League football for the first time since the 1996-97 season. His decent showing in Spain was followed by Olympic gold, as Aguero was part of the Argentina national football team that finished in first place at this summer’s Olympic Games in China.

After missing out on Europe’s prime club competition for more than a decade, pundits wondered how well Atletico would be prepared to swim among the big sharks once again. Needless to say, los Rojiblancos took the competition by storm, qualifying for the group stages in exhilarating fashion, disposing of Schalke 04, and comfortably defeating PSV Eindhoven in their first group game. There was more of the same in La Liga, where they managed some decent results, notably inflicting 4-0 trashings to both Malaga and Recreativo de Huelva. And yes, you’ve guessed it right, in all of Atletico’s remarkable victories, stood out an on-form Sergio Aguero.

Certain players get occasionally, even though inadvertently, affiliated with their club’s form. I remember such a case back during Barcelona’s famous double win of 2006. Ronaldinho was in the prime of his career, and was recognized everywhere as the world’s best. Last term, Barca suffered one of their most horrific seasons. One of the reasons: It was Ronaldinho’s worst ever season as a professional. The same can be said about other teams: Take Real Madrid for example. Current England manager Fabio Capello predicted during his tenure as a coach two seasons ago that, should Ruud van Nistelrooy be crowned Liga “Pichichi”, Real would go on to win the title. Well, “van Gol” finished as top scorer, and yes, you predicted right again, Real won the league.

Flipping the photo album to the most recent picture, Kun Aguero finds himself in a similar arrangement. After some nice displays on Atletico’s behalf, the Spanish media – with no job to do other than glorify Real or Atletico Madrid players – were quick to pronounce Aguero as the “Saviour” of Atletico Madrid.

It is a belief that Aguero is growing fast into becoming an symbolic footballer. While this Atletico side holds many names worth mentioning, Kun is quickly becoming his team’s very own Paolo Maldini. While there unquestionably is no shame in becoming a club’s “visage”, there are certain things that must be taken into account before proclaiming Aguero as the new Messiah.

One of the first is that Aguero has asked for none of this. After being trusted with messianic professions by Spanish tabloids “AS” and “Marca”, the player wanted to set the record straight by punctually stating that he is no saviour, attributing his team’s good results to teamwork and solidarity. However, his statements had deaf ears waiting, as the star player received continuous praise from team-mates and opposition alike.

But the merry-go-round doesn’t stop at this point. Adding insult to injury is coach Javier Aguirre’s controversial proclamation, where he declared that it was impossible to choose between Sergio Aguero and old homegrown hero Fernando Torres. While the latter is deemed something of a legend at the Vicente Calderon, Aguero’s arrival on the European continent happened only two years ago. Can you imagine someone like Carlo Ancelotti comparing Alexandre Pato to former AC Milan icon Franco Baresi? Not because Pato isn’t a good player, but because he has yet to contribute to the club in a similar fashion in the way the retired defender did.

At the moment, Sergio Aguero is currently relentless. It is no secret that whenever he’s on top form, Atletico would usually be steam-rolling their opponents. But establishing a direct reason-consequence relation between the two would be unfair to both the player and the rest of the team.

Whether Atletico Madrid found in Aguero the perfect replacement for Fernando Torres is another subject, but bestowing upon him such a heavy burden doesn’t seem like the proper thing to do at this point. I’m sure that the player won’t fracture under this huge amount of pressure, but trying to push him so hastily into filling an image is something that might eventually blow up in the player’s face. Instead, he should be left to mold slowly into the player he needs to be. While there’s no denying the player’s size, he may be put into shoes that he may find hard to fill at the moment.