Gonzalo Higuain has a point to prove against Real Madrid

There will be plenty of memories of last year's Cardiff Champions League final on Tuesday in Turin, especially if — as expected — Zinedine Zidane picks the same Real Madrid team that won so convincingly last June.

Gonzalo Higuain's mind might also wander back to that final 10 months ago. It was yet another big chance for him to finally make his mark on Real Madrid and once again he passed it up.

He is running out of opportunities, perhaps destined to go down in history as nothing more than the player they sold to help finance the £85.3million purchase of Gareth Bale in 2013.

Higuain has been gone five years now and Madrid have never really regretted his sale or feared his revenge. With every passing year he slips a little further back in the Madrid archives.

He did little of note in last year's Champions League final and only last week, back in Madrid with Argentina, it was his two first-half squandered chances that helped pave the way for a 6-1 home win.

For a player who spent over six years at Real Madrid, there is very little love or enduring respect for him as a player in the Spanish capital.

Maybe they should remember him more affectionately. He was only 20 when Real Madrid signed him from River Plate in the winter transfer window of the 2006-07 season. He arrived with 19-year-old Marcelo, but it was the latter who would become a club legend.

He was a gamble at the time, having only played 31 senior matches in Argentina. He scored just twice in that first half-season, and it looked like a big mistake by the club.

Team-mates did take to him however. When Higuain got his first home goal in an amazing late comeback against Espanyol, Ruud van Nistelrooy held the youngster's shirt aloft to supporters behind the goal as if to say: look what this kid has just done.

Coaches liked him, too. He helped Bernd Schuster win the league in the 2007-08 season and then top-scored under the same manager the following year.

And although in his fourth season the club had signed Karim Benzema to replace him, when Jose Mourinho arrived in 2010 he made little secret of preferring the Argentine.

The Portuguese famously said in one press conference when Higuain was not available and he had to pick Benzema: 'If you can't go hunting with your dog then you have to take your cat.'

But supporters and the board never really felt the same way as his team-mates and coaches. He never played the political game off the pitch. At the end of Mourinho's first season when Madrid only managed to win the Copa del Rey, Higuain complained about what he said was a 'needless' town-hall reception.

Mourinho might have agreed, having missed out on the league but Real president Florentino Perez and his friends inside Madrid's town hall did not.

Higuain left the club having scored 100 goals for Madrid in just 179 games — only club legend Raul had done it younger— but there were few tears shed.

Rafa Benitez took him to Napoli along with winger Jose Callejon and defender Raul Albiol and those departures helped finance the signing of Bale.

Higuain's career has not petered out away from Madrid. The son of a professional footballer he has been well schooled in longevity.

He followed Lionel Messi's lead by seeking out the help of Italian nutritionist Giuliano Poser to help him with his weight and injuries and he is still Argentina's first-choice No 9 aged 30.

He scored 91 goals in 147 games at Napoli but there is little lasting affection for him there either because his form was just a springboard for a move to Juventus.

When he left Madrid he said: 'They try to sell me every pre-season so I need to go somewhere where I am truly wanted.'

Madrid didn't want or need him then because they had Cristiano Ronaldo in full flow by 2013. The club has since won three more Champions Leagues while Higuain is still without the biggest club prize in football.

Tuesday will be a familiar test. If he wants to keep his European dream alive he has to get one over Real Madrid.

No one from his old club expects him to manage it. Perhaps this time he can surprise them.