For many seasons the Mexican championship was dominated by a deadly quartet of strikers. Home-grown sharpshooters Jared Borgetti and Omar Bravo regularly fought it out at the top of the scoring charts with Paraguayan poacher Jose Cardozo and Argentinian marksman Cesar Delgado, the four of them bringing joy to fans up and down the country year in, year out.

The 2007 Apertura championship has seen three new faces emerge, however, a trio of target men who have surprised everyone with their predatory instincts, commitment to their respective causes and sheer dedication to their trade. Read on as FIFA.com presents three strikers causing quite a stir in Mexico.

If at first you don’t succeed … Alfredo Moreno first hit the headlines as a 20-year-old back on 23 March 2000 when he achieved the improbable feat of scoring five times for Boca Juniors in a Copa Libertadores tie against Blooming of Bolivia. It was a unique achievement that had the critics purring and augured a brilliant career with the Buenos Aires giants.

Unfortunately, things did not quite turn out quite that way for the kid they called Chango. Moreno struggled to hold down a first-team place and just a year on from his five-star performance he was loaned out to Mexican outfit Necaxa, where he played in a couple of league championships before returning to Los Xeneizes. But after yet more disappointments in the famous blue and gold jersey, he was sent back to Necaxa, this time on a permanent deal.

While an important player for Los Rayos, Moreno never quite delivered the volume of goals expected of him. His first season, the 2003 Apertura, proved to be his most productive as he registered a ten-goal haul. The following four campaigns brought ever-diminishing returns, however, and after hitting rock bottom in the 2007 Clausura, when he notched a solitary goal, the luckless forward was farmed out to unfashionable San Luis.

Far from marking yet another downturn in his career, the switch has turned out to be the making of Moreno. Under the wing of Raul Arias, the coach who brought him to Mexico in the first place, Chango has rediscovered that scoring feeling and sits proudly atop the charts with a handsome tally of 12 goals in nine games. Not that the in-form finisher is getting too carried away about his purple patch. “Things are going just great for me but I’m trying not to think about it too much. The goals are coming thanks to my team-mates,” he said.

A leap into the unknown While Moreno at least had some knowledge of Mexican football to draw on, the same cannot be said of the second of our super strikers, Venezuela’s Giancarlo Maldonado. Star signings from less competitive leagues can find it difficult to adapt to the faster pace of the Mexican game, and with most stadiums well above sea level, altitude also poses a problem to foreign imports trying to catch their breath in a challenging environment.

Nevertheless, the Atlante hotshot quickly brushed aside those problems and got down to business straightaway, opening his account for his new employers in the first minute of his debut appearance. In nine games since that stunning entrance, Maldonado has found the back of the net ten more times, a hot streak that has catapulted his unfancied side into second place in the table and endeared him to the home fans.

Yet, like his main rival in the race to become the season’s top scorer, the Venezuelan international is quick to give his colleagues the credit for his stunning form. “The fact is I never imagined I’d be among the top scorers, particularly as the competition is so strong here,” commented the unassuming striker. “I’ve been able to adapt very quickly thanks to my team-mates, though. They’ve given me terrific support since I arrived at the club.”

Straight out of nowhere Despondent Pumas fans have been praying for a goalscoring hero to emerge ever since the halcyon days of Francisco Fonseca and Bruno Marioni. The university side, the fourth biggest club in the country, have found goals hard come by in recent campaigns and could be forgiven for thinking a curse has been hanging over their front line since the departure of the deadly duo. The figures tell the story. After racking up 56 goals in the 2004 Clausura, the increasingly toothless Pumas scraped together a miserable 15 in the 2006 Apertura and fared little better in amassing only 22 in the 2007 Clausura.

Much to the astonishment of Auriazul fans, the club’s directors turned to the Cypriot league for a solution, snapping up Esteban Solari from APOEL FC. And how the Argentinian has answered the sceptics, bagging eight goals in 11 games so far to spur a Puma revival.

The youngest member of a great footballing dynasty, Esteban’s older brother is none other than Inter Milan star Santiago, who, perhaps in recognition of the arduous path his lesser-known sibling has had to take, has become a diehard Pumas fan. “I know what Esteban’s been through,” said the Argentinian international, “and I know what he’s capable of. He just needed a platform to show he can succeed and that’s exactly what he’s doing now.”

So there you have it. Three front men, three similar stories and one common denominator: an unquenchable thirst for goals.

Source:Soccer News