Who Is the Mexican National Team's Most-Lethal Scorer Ever?

Quick, if I were to ask you who Mexican National Team's top goal scorers have been, I can bet you an arm and a leg that you will shout out some of the following names: Hugo Sanchez, Luis Hernandez, Enrique Borja, Luis Garcia and Jared Borguetti.

If you mentioned any of these names, let me congratulate you, because you know your futbol.  The actual list of Mexico’s top 10 scorers of all time in order is:

Player
Jared Borgetti	46
Cuauhtémoc Blanco	39
Carlos Hermosillo	35
Luis Hernández	35
Enrique Borja	31
Luis Roberto Alves	30
Hugo Sánchez	29
Luis Flores	29
Benjamín Galindo	29
Luis Garcia	28

But is it correct to analyze a player only on the number of goals he has scored over the term of his career for the national team? If you ask me, the answer is pretty simple: no way Jose.

So, how can we evaluate a player and compare him to his peers on the national team and decide which forwards have been Mexico’s most lethal on the national squad? For this, we can use statistics.

Before we get into the analysis, a couple of things to remember: 1) statistics are not as developed in soccer as they are in other sports (basketball, football, baseball); 2) as with any analysis, there are limitations on the analysis we do (more on that later); and 3) these statistics only use the list referenced above and don't include Mexico’s hottest goal-scorer this decade, Javier “El Chicharito” Hernandez, who has scored 21 goals in 29 games played.

Given the limited amount of data we have for soccer, I gathered some pretty simple information that is available such as: total goals scored with the national team and number of actual minutes played by the player (Note: we can use number of games played, but some players, especially forwards, don’t play the whole 90 minutes). Using these two statistics give us a fair rating scale to rate each player on an apple-to-apple basis. To be clear, this analysis does not take into account:

• Strength of schedule (playing Trinidad and Tobago counts the same as playing Argentina)
• Quality of players that each of them was playing with (Giovanni Dos Santos at this Copa America was a prime example when he played with inferior talent)
• Age at which they played each game (Hugo Sanchez was on the downside of his career in 1994)

After running the numbers the by order results are:

Player		Minutes	Mins x Goal
Jared Borgetti	46	6596	143.39
Luis Flores	29	4217	145.41
Enrique Borja	31	4815	155.32
Benjamín Galindo	29	4555	157.07
Carlos Hermosillo	35	5739	163.97
Hugo Sánchez	29	4939	170.31
Luis Hernández	35	6100	174.29
Luis García	28	5073	181.18
Luis Roberto Alves	30	5889	196.30
Cuauhtémoc Blanco	39	8032	205.95

The results suggest that the all-time best forwards scored every 143 minutes at best or in the case of Cuah Blanco, once almost every 2.5 games or 205 minutes. It seems like an OK result, but let’s put in El Chicharito to the data set. The results, again in order, would be:

Player		Minutes	Mins x Goal
Chicharito Hernandez	21	1959	93.29
Jared Borgetti	46	6596	143.39
Luis Flores	29	4217	145.41
Enrique Borja	31	4815	155.32
Benjamín Galindo	29	4555	157.07
Carlos Hermosillo	35	5739	163.97
Hugo Sánchez	29	4939	170.31
Luis Hernández	35	6100	174.29
Luis García	28	5073	181.18
Luis Roberto Alves	30	5889	196.30

El Chicharito scores every 93 minutes or almost once every game. Think about that for a minute: he scores once every single game he plays. That is unreal.

His goal pace is 50 minutes per goal better than the second and third players on the list, both Jared Borgetti and Luis Flores. At this stage in his career, can we say that El Chicharito has been Mexico’s best scorer of all time? Only time, pace and statistics will tell.