Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [56]
I wasn’t the only one who was impressed with Kaká; he’d also made quite an impression on his teammates. All of them. And you can imagine how many magnificent footballers they’d seen passing through. He’d even made a strong impression on Maldini, who, to mention just one name, had played with Marco van Basten. From the swan of Utrecht to the young preacher of Saõ Paulo. Kaká immediately made friends with Gattuso. They became very close, and soon they began kidding around. Oil and water—or, perhaps, devil’s oil and holy water—they made an unlikely but magnificent pair. (Just to make clear what a character he was, Gattuso once ate a live snail at Milanello during a training session.)
Over the last few years, the scenario has pretty much remained the same. Kaká runs toward Gattuso. Gattuso runs toward Kaká. They seem to see one another at a distance, and then move inevitably closer, like a shootout in a Western. They may not have holstered pistols, but they start their duels with mockery. In general, Ricky is the first to speak: “You uncouth southern peasant.” Rino doesn’t say a word, but he chases after him, catches him, and swings a straight-armed slap at the back of his head. Kaká must have been head-slapped a thousand times since he arrived. A normal person would be completely dazed and dizzy, but it is Kaká’s good fortune that he is normal only in terms of manners and appearance. Otherwise, he does things on a regular basis that others frequently have a hard time even thinking.
Pato made quite an impression on me the first time I saw him play, too, but nothing like what happened with Kaká. I got to know Pato over time, one training session after another, but with Ricardo it was a bolt from the blue—a sudden and total conversion. What immediately struck me about Pato was his sheer speed; he’s a hundred-meter sprinter on a soccer field. What struck me about Kaká was, simply, everything. Every single thing. My Lord, what a soccer player You sent down to us here on earth. The day he arrived, he completely changed A. C. Milan, for the quite reasonable fee of eight million dollars. A dream, at a bargain-basement price.
In a fairly static team—Rui Costa and Rivaldo generally played with the ball between their feet—we tampered with the speedometer. Now we were traveling much faster than the machine was designed to go. Kaká was extraordinarily dynamic, although we were bounced out of the 2003–04 Champions League when we lost a disastrous match at La Coruña, in the Italian championship season we basically had no rivals. It was a stroll in the park. We were the champions of Italy, thanks to a player I’d never heard of. And there is one thing for which Kaká never forgave me: “Coach, I have to ask, had you lost your mind that day? You compared me to Cerezo …” And indeed the two players have absolutely nothing in common, but that day at the press conference, I couldn’t know that yet. All of the strongest soccer teams on earth have always followed Kaká, and rightly so: there are no other players like him on the circuit. The sheikhs want him. So do the merengues. So does Chelsea. A universal object of desire, and, as such, he is now expensive—very expensive.
When Kaká joined Milan, he immediately helped us win the Scudetto. Immediately. Galliani celebrated, but he didn’t take the Italian tricolor cup to bed. He’d left his heart in Manchester; he could never forget his night of passion with the European Cup, because the Champions League is more important than anything else. There’s only one class of people who would disagree with me: those who haven’t been able to win it.
CHAPTER 22
The Truth from Istanbul: You Have to Fall to Rise Again
That evening, May 25, 2005, there was excitement in the locker room at Atatürk Stadium in