Introducing Arkadiusz Milik: Successor of Gonzalo Higuain

If you were Aurelio De Laurentis how would you replace a near 40-goal a season striker who has jumped ship to your nearest rivals? The answer is simple; sign Arkadiusz Milik.
When Gonzalo Higuain left SS Napoli to join Juventus for an Italian record transfer fee after a season in which he plundered an astonishing 36 goals in 35 Serie A games, the question on the hearts of the club's agonizing fans was "who could possibly take his place"?
They should never have bordered. The President who brought Edison Cavani, Ezekiel Lavezzi and Higuain to the love club of Diego Maradona on a "cheap" only to sell each of them for a fortune knew exactly where to mine the next diamond.
Akadiusz Milik was picked up from Dutch side Ajax Amsterdam after a not so pulsating outing at Euro 2016 and immediately placed in the first team ahead of Higuain's erstwhile deputy, Manolo Gabbiadini.
Few would have expected the 22 year old former Bayer Leverkusen man to take to Italian football so seamlessly.
He immediately announced himself to the San Paolo faithful by scoring a double against AC Milan in the first Calcio game of the season.
Perhaps conscious of the fact that the Serie A does not enjoy the kind of ratings it used to get in decades past, Milik picked club football's biggest stage to deliver his most potent punch yet.
In his first Champions League game for Napoli, against Dynamo Kiev, he utilised every bit of his 6'1 frame to score two well-placed headers, handing the club a crucial 2-1 win at the NSC Olimpiyskiy. Watching in the stands was AC Milan, Ukraine and Dynamo legend Andriy Shevchenko, now Ukraine national team coach, who had come to see his birth club, now coached by another Ukraine legend Sergei Rebrov.
 Sheva, even if unhappy to see Dynamo lose, must have relished the loop in Milik's headers as well as the striker's positioning for those two goals.
It is notable that Milik did not come exactly cheap even by today's standards.
Transfer fee
After all he was plucked from Ajax for just under £30million, an amount only slightly surpassed by the gold chest emptied by Luis Van Gaal for Memphis Depay.
While that kind of money may not even get you Andy Carroll In the Premier League, it still represents a bold one for De Laurentis to spend on an Eredivisie striker - remember Afonso Alves?
In times past the Dutch Eredivisie was the bakery for football talent.
Things have not looked exactly that way recently with the steady decline of Dutch football itself.
While the likes of Ronaldo Nazario, Nwankwo Kanu and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are a few foreign talents to have nurtured their skills in the total football League not too many from there have taken football by storm recently.
However, one character that Milik may look to for inspiration is current Barcelona forward Luis Suarez who moved to Liverpool from Ajax Amsterdam and has gone on to become one of the most potent goalscorers in football presently.
In terms of playing style, Milik does not exactly possess the guile of the Uruguayan. If anything his greater strength lies in his muscle more than his brain.
His recent goals have shown that Milik is a striker for the tall order. He relishes an aerial contest knowing just how high his chances are.
His Napoli teammates understand this strength and try to play to it. In the Dynamo game they did their best to feed him crosses.
The two goals he scored resulted from such crosses, the first from full-back Faouzi Ghoulam  and the other delivered by Spanish wing-forward José Cajellon.
 Those two replicate his second goal against AC Milan headed in off another José Callejon cross.
Three headed goals and four in total, he sits with Callejon as the club's joint top scorer; and who is to say there isn't more to come.
A lot is said about the exploits of one Polish striker, Robert Lewandowski. Last night European football took notice of "the other Polish striker" signed to fill the boots of the great Gonzalo.
Higuain has taken to Turin as he took to Naples, but the feeling in Naples is nevertheless cozy. Ringing in the air is the vociferous chants of "Akadiusz', 'Milik"! "Akadiusz', 'Milik"!