LEVERKUSEN, Germany — They all giggled at first. Sitting around a conference table this summer, top officials for Bayer Leverkusen initially used Javier Hernández’s name as a placeholder, a symbol for the kind of forward they were hoping to add during the transfer period.
Hernández, a Mexican star known as Chicharito, or Little Pea, is a small, quick, savvy striker who excels at artfully reading the spaces between defenders and fiercely poaching goals when opportunities are presented. A player like that would be perfect, all the Bayer executives agreed, as a complement to Stefan Kiessling, the 6-foot-3 German who has led the club’s attack for nine years.