Noughty Boys: Celebrating Kaka, one of the football greats of the 2000s

Kicking off our series celebrating noughties football icons, Carl Anka remembers the majestic beauty of Kaka - the last winner of the Ballon d'Or pre-Messi and Ronaldo

It was at an awards ceremony in Zurich, where Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite inadvertently offered up his own epitaph.

In front of the footballing world’s elite, the man more commonly known as Kaka, said: “This is a new era in football, a new cycle is starting. There were great players before, but now the new players are starting to make history."

It was December 2007, and the Brazilian had just won the Ballon d’Or for best footballer in the world.

To this day, this was the last Ballon d’Or given to a player other than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, and Kaka was seemingly aware that his career would reflect the rapidly changing nature of world football.

Kaka was the last great player of the pre-continuous-football-coverage and pre-social-media age, and the first of the modern-day, do-everything, stats-breaking, all-action attacker.

One of only eight players to have won the World Cup, the Champions League and the Ballon d'Or, Kaka stands with Sir Bobby Charlton, Gerd Muller, Franz Beckenbauer, Paolo Rossi, Zinedine Zidane, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, as the eighth wonder of the old footballing world.

Remarkably, Kaka was very close to a being never-was or could-have-been.

Aged 18, he suffered a career-threatening and potentially paralysis-inducing spinal fracture when he hit his head on the bottom of a swimming pool. So the story goes, Kaka miraculously recovered from his injuries in just one week.

“The doctors said that I was lucky to be able to walk normally,” he said. “They were talking about luck and my family was talking about God. We knew that it was His hand that had saved me.”

Be it luck or the hand of a higher power, Kaka was saved and he soon turned his extraordinary skills to the Brazilian league with Sao Paulo.

Standing at 6ft 1in tall but blessed with fantastic acceleration and balletic grace, Kaka’s forward momentum allowed him to dribble past defenders with ease. Couple that with an incredible eye for a pass, and Kaka was the prototypical modern number 10.

Before the 2002 World Cup, Brazil and Barcelona legend Rivaldo found himself cornered by members of the press interested in what wunderkinds they should look out for.

"There's a young guy who plays for Sao Paulo called Kaka who plays just behind the front two. You don't know anything about him in Europe, but watch him if he is chosen for the World Cup," he answered.

The journalists were confused. "But 'kaka' means 's***' in Spanish," they queried. (Kaka’s nickname comes from his younger brother Rodrigo's inability to pronounce 'Ricardo' when they were young.) Rivaldo smiled and replied: “I know, but he's definitely not. He has the qualities to be a big star.”

Kaka’s opportunities in South Korea and Japan that summer may have been limited to a single substitute appearance, but he still ended the tournament as a World Cup winner.

A season later he was picked up by European champions AC Milan for €8.5m (around £6m back then). Milan's owner Silvio Berlusconi said the fee was 'peanuts', and he was soon proved right.

Kaka broke into the first team within a month but it was the following season at Milan where Kaka transformed from enigma to luminous talent.

Manager Carlo Ancelotti called him the new Michel Platini, Pele dubbed him the new Johan Cruyff, Brazilian legend Socrates compared him to another, Zico.

Working as part of a midfield five with Gennaro Gattuso, Clarence Seedorf, Andrea Pirlo and Massimo Ambrosini, Kaka’s breakout 2004-05 season ended in disappointment: second place in Serie A behind Juventus and victim to Liverpool’s 'miracle of Istanbul' comeback in the Champions League final.

As it happened, 2006-07 was the season of Kaka. At 24, he inspired AC Milan to a revenge victory over foes Liverpool in the Champions League final, but what truly stuck out was a goal he scored in the semi-final tie against Manchester United, external at Old Trafford.

Kaka seized on a long ball to the left flank of the pitch. After nudging it past Darren Fletcher, he then turned his sights to embarrassing an onrushing Gabriel Heinze, hooking the ball over the Argentinian's head. Patrice Evra tried to help, only for Kaka to nod the ball past him and into the penalty box ahead, leaving Heinze and Evra to collide with each other in his wake. Kaka then sized up goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar and coolly finish past him. 

It was a goal that required speed, strength, quickness of thought and grace under pressure. It was a goal that only Kaka could score. That Manchester United would win that first leg 3-2 meant little - they would end up being humbled 3-0 in the return fixture.

Nothing was stopping Kaka winning the Champions League. He was the stand-out player in the world and won the Ballon d’Or for good reason - the boy had fulfilled his potential.

Unfortunately, soon after his Champions League-winning zenith, Kaka sustained a series of injuries that took much from his game. Knee and groin problems sapped him of the explosive half-yard burst he needed to navigate the corridors of midfield uncertainty.

By the time clubs came calling for their customary 'buy the best player in the world' attempts, Kaka was already on the wane.

Manchester City, flush with money from the Abu Dhabi United Group takeover, sought to make Kaka the crown jewel of their new project. Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi mulled over a potential £100m offer to take Kaka to the Premier League, and for three days it looked like the rossoneri's golden boy could be headed to the Premier League. 

Eventually, Kaka emerged from a window of his apartment in Milan holding his red and black shirt up to jubilant fans. He gave thanks to God before giving lip service to his team-mates for convincing him to stay. Manchester City bought Craig Bellamy instead. Kaka would never set foot in the Premier League. 

In time, however, Kaka would leave Milan. A 2009 transfer deal to Real Madrid worth £56m saw him briefly become the most expensive footballer in the world… until Cristiano Ronaldo broke the record by signing for the same team for £80m less than a week later.

Kaka would never be the main man at the Bernabeu, and by the time he returned to AC Milan in 2013, his time at football’s top table had finished.

A final transfer to Orlando City in MLS (with a small loan to Sao Paulo) followed before Kaka’s eventual retirement in December 2017 as the last pre-Messi/Ronaldo great.

In Messi and Ronaldo, we now have two all-time greats playing at the same time, breaking record after record. All prior work is distorted, lost in the standard-definition haze of YouTube highlight packages set to thumping Eurodance soundtracks.

Kaka, the last wonder of the old footballing world, perhaps suffered the most for this transition.

Born too late to exist solely in player quotes and wistful DVD compilations of the greatest ever, yet just before the age of social media hagiography accounts and week-to-week coverage of his play on foreign shores.

Towards the end of his playing career, Kaka was asked which of his goals he was most proud of. The Manchester United effort was a candidate, as was a thunderous strike he netted against Empoli in 2003. But in his opinion, Kaka thought the greatest goal he ever scored was for Brazil against Argentina in 2006.

Picking up the ball slightly inside his own half, Kaka sprints down the centre of the field, outgunning Lionel Messi no less, before bamboozling two Argentine defenders. By the time goalkeeper Roberto Abbondanzieri is wise to the threat, Kaka had already dragged the play wide-right, where he calmly finished his mesmerising run with a goal.

A worldie against your nation's greatest rivals in a World Cup year. Why weren’t more people familiar with it? It was because Kaka pulled off his slaloming run in a international friendly at the Emirates Stadium.

In a way, it was what Kaka was all about - his greatness was just out of sight.

This article was first published on 18 September 2018.

MORE NOUGHTY BOYS:

Andriy Shevchenko, an elite striker whose powers slipped away in a single moment

Ronaldinho, the magician at a kids' party

Pavel Nedved - much more than just a haircut

Adriano, the striker outshone by the video game version of himself

Ruud van Nistelrooy, the goal-machine whose future hung in the balance