It is now eleven years since a Spaniard last won the Pichichi trophy, the award for finishing
a LaLiga season as the competition’s top-scorer.
The Cristiano Ronaldo/Lionel Messi duopoly has harvested
eight of those, with Uruguayans Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez collecting the other two.
You have to go back to 2008 to find a native winner: Mallorca’s Dani Guiza.
Guiza was an archetypal flawed genius, a hugely talented forward blighted by a frequently
substanadard attitude and a fondness for nightlife. Born
in Jerez in 1980, he found initial success with his
hometown club in the Spanish Third Division, at a level where his extra-curricular activities
were neither quite as visible nor as prohibitive.
However, by 1999, he had shown enough potential to tempt La Liga side Mallorca into brining
him to the Balearics. It was a curious decision.
Guiza had a reputation for missing training and indulging is
as much off-the-field hedonism as the night would allow, so the chances of him fulfilling
his potential on a non-stop party island, at a club that
actively encouraged players to enjoy themselves off the pitch,
seemed remote. He spent his first season split between a
loan spell as Dos Hermanas, back in Jerez, and the Mallorca
B team. 19 goals across 37 appearances for the two sides convinced incoming Mallorca
manager Luis Aragones of his abilities, and he was promoted
to the first team. Aragones’ predecessor Fernando Vazquez had
handed a 19-year-old Guiza his debut at the back end
of the 1999-00 season, and while it was predicted that Aragones, a notorious disciplinarian,
was the perfect candidate to curb Guiza’s excesses,
his impact was minimal, returning just a single La Liga
goal in 2000-01 and slipping back into B team football at the season’s end.
Again he lit up third tier, with 28 goals in two seasons, but the growing sense was
of an illusory talent, which had possibly found its proper level.
Mallorca sanctioned another loan, in 2002, to Recreativo de Huelva, with the intention
of exposing Guiza to the top-flight, but without the distract
of island life. But four scoreless appearances later he
was back and was released on a free-transfer. An unlikely lifeline was thrown by Barcelona’s
B team. Guiza was ultimately unsuccessful, scoring at
only a modest, one-in-every-three rate during his only season with the club, but the move
began a chain reaction of events that ultimately resurrected
his career. After missing out on promotion to the Segunda
Division, Guiza’s late season goals for Barcelone B
caught the eye of Ciudad de Murcia – who were promoted that year from Segunda B – and
they brought him down the coast to fortify their
side for life in the Segunda Division. Given Guiza’s early promise, it was a signing
which attracted plenty of fanfare. He was still a known
commodity in Spain and represented unrealised potential. Nevertheless, he again cut a distracted
figure, something which the club bizarrely managed to spin into a positive.
Manager Juanma Lillo had almost weekly anecdotes about Guiza’s off-field antics, despite
Murcia appearing to be the ideal antidote to 24-7
Mallorca. The carrot-over-stick approach worked well, with
Guiza happy to languish in the comfort zone of being an eccentric provincial star, scoring
36 goals in two seasons.
Murcia ultimately did not achieve their promotion, but Guiza did, being signed by Getafe, in
2005 under the management of Bernd Schuster.
It was a risk. Angel Torres, the club president, claimed that Guiza was, Ronaldo aside, the
best finisher in the division, but the player’s
personal life was a natural caveat - and so it proved. Prior to
the move, he suffered a complicated divorce from the mother of his eldest child, a scandal
which captured national media interest. Socially,
The 25-year-old clearly struggling in the South of Madrid
and those issues manifested in one bizarre episode after another, culminating in the
club imposing a liquid food diet on the forward, after he
contracted a stomach infection from suspected alcohol
poisoning. The soundbytes attached to the time cast him
as a jovial figure - he once famously told a journalist
that ‘the night time confused him’ - but his career was very clearly in danger and
Guiza needed help. it arrived in form of his partner, Nuria Bermudez,
Guiza was stabilised by his partner, Nuria Bermudez, who took hold of his life, as both
his companion and his agent. In response, Guiza showed
the most consistent form of his top-flight career, firing Getafe into the UEFA Cup in
2007, with 17 goals in all competitions.
Bermundez negotiated a deal to return to Mallorca that summer, briefly, the stars aligned for
the first time in Guiza’s career. Manager Gregorio
Mazano stated his aim to construct the team around
Guiza’s strengths and the player responded, working incessantly for Mazano, scoring goals
and elevating Mallorca back to the heights they
enjoyed during his first spell. He ended the campaign with 27 La Liga goals,
despite not being the side’s penalty taker, and picked
up the Pichichi ahead of Sergio Aguero, Raul and David Villa, despite Mallorca only finishing
7th. It was a run of form which also earned him
a place in Spain’s Euro 2008 squad, alongside David Villa
and Fernando Torres. He would score a late winner against Greece in the group and provided
one of Spain’s three against Russia in the semi-final,
also coming on for the final twelve minutes against
Germany, as Spain won a narrow final 1-0 in Vienna.
He would only be capped another nine times. Theoretically in his prime, his form at the
European Championships - and throughout the season
prior - attracted plenty of interest, including from Premier
League side Tottenham Hotspur. He would ultimately move to the newly wealthy Super Liga in
Turkey, though, joining Fenerbahce in the summer of 2008.
He would be successful, maintaining a healthy strike rate over the next three years, winning
the Turkish Cup in 2009 and the Super Liga title
in 2011, his final season before returning to Spain with
Getafe. Guiza would never repeat his performance in
2007-08. In fact, he would never again score more than
eleven league goals in a season. Nevertheless, his achievement endures: he remains the only
Mallorca player in the Spanish footballing history
to have won the Pichici trophy, and one of just three
Spaniards to have done so since the turn of the decade.