Kaká's divine abilities can redeem Chelsea

Kaká would bring much needed imagination and class to Chelsea, on and off the pitch.

On a mild Milan day in May 2007, the World Player of the Year, Kaká, who Chelsea’s new head coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, has ‘personally requested the club sign’, was discussing Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team were about to meet Milan at the San Siro for the return game of the Champions League semi-final, holding a 3-2 lead. In the opening leg at Old Trafford Kaká had scored twice to give Milan vital away goals. Now, the devout evangelical Christian, who suffered a career-threatening spinal injury when he was 18 and donated the 2007 World Player of the Year trophy to a São Paulo church named Renascer (which means reborn), offered this assessment of United: ‘With players like Cristiano Ronaldo they perform in the Brazil way. Even more than Arsenal.’

From the boy from Brasilia who later that week destroyed United with yet another of the deceptively languid displays of artistry for which he is renowned – he scored the opening goal as Milan swept to a 3-0 victory, before masterminding the 2-1 success against Liverpool in the Champions League final in Athens – that was some compliment.

But it also offered a clue why Scolari, who gave him his international debut against Bolivia in January 2002 in the year Big Phil led his country to their fifth World Cup, is so keen to sign Kaká, despite the official denial from Stamford Bridge that they have made an offer for the player. For Kaká, Scolari and millions of their countrymen, football is a game of attack that should teem with the simple purity of flick, pass, and move. ‘Brazilian football is much different from Italian,’ Kaká says. ‘It’s a more complicated game here.’

It is precisely a thirst for this smoothly exhilarating football invented by Brazil, which can ravage teams and comes so natural to Kaká, that might finally lead Roman Abramovich to countenance the kind of signing his riches have always threatened but not yet delivered. Since he bought the club in 2003, the Russian billionaire has spent more than £500m on Chelsea, but has never yet landed a superstar with an already stellar career that could still ascend to a further high. Of Abramovich’s many purchases, it was arguably Kaká’s former team-mate at Milan, Andriy Shevchenko, who arrived with the biggest reputation, having won the Champions League and been voted European Footballer of the Year. But the Ukraine striker was nearly 30 when he joined the club two summers ago and has done little to suggest his £30.9m fee was good value.

Instead, Kaká has won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002, received his own Ballon d’Or – also last year – and, crucially, is keen to leave the San Siro ‘for a fresh challenge’, according to a close friend. ‘He is loyal to Milan, but he needs to leave to improve.’ As he is only 26 years old, Chelsea would be acquiring a player who hopes his very best years and performances are yet to arrive.

Joining Scolari, who is also a devout Christian, at Chelsea is certainly an intriguing prospect. ‘I will always be grateful to Big Phil because he was the first manager to give me a chance in the national team,’ Kaká says, before hinting that Scolari, whatever the official denials, will get his man. ‘But I do admire him for the way he sticks to his plans regardless of the pressure from the media and the public. He is also a winner and has proved so.’

Scolari, meanwhile, must be twinkling even more at the thought of how his first days at Chelsea are unfolding. Last week he was quick with the jokes when unveiling new right-back José Bosingwa and Deco, a gifted playmaker. Both have won Champions League titles, when together at Porto in 2004, and know Scolari well having played for him during the Brazilian’s five years in charge of Portugal.

Kaká, though, elevates the vision of what may happen over the coming seasons for Scolari and Chelsea beyond all previous imagination.

‘His reading of the game is uncanny and it seems he has already thought of what to do with the ball an hour before he even gets it,’ Scolari says. ‘I also admire his behaviour outside the pitch. Kaká is serious and serene, something important for a footballer in these days.’

It could also be vital in west London. Chelsea have hardly been loved during the first half-decade of the Abramovich era. Patience with the posturing of former coach José Mourinho thinned and the club’s image as a bloated, cash-soaked machine that lacks charm, has been hard to transform.

Kaká, a proud virgin in 2005 when he married childhood sweetheart Caroline Celico and who comes from a middle-class family, could well be the driving force behind a change.

Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, who was born in Brasilia on 22 April 1982, began life with myopia and a rare bone deficiency. His younger brother Rodrigo is also on Milan’s books. Their father, Bosco, was an engineer – he is now Kaká’s advisor – who recalls how his elder son’s academic abilities meant he was forced by his first professional club, São Paulo, to choose ‘between university and football’.

He has also proved resilient. ‘When I was small, I really was small,’ he says recalling his difficult childhood. ‘The doctors told me my body was about two years behind in terms of development. And until I got contact lenses at age 13 I always wore glasses. I really couldn’t see without them.’

The family moved to São Paulo when Kaká was seven and three years later he joined the club who play at the Morumbi Stadium, which was near his home.

‘He stood out immediately,’ says Milton Cruz, who coached Kaká from the age of 13 and is now São Paulo’s assistant coach. ‘He was so small and thin, but had talent. He was intelligent, he could see connections, but was not strong enough.’

This was addressed at 14 when the club drew up a special diet and fitness routine. ‘By 16 I’d filled out,’ Kaká says. ‘It’s incredible how much I grew in such a short space of time. And also I’ve now had laser surgery so my eyesight is better as well.’

In 2000, though, came a terrible back injury suffered while visiting his grandparents in Caldas Novas. ‘I slipped on a swimming pool slide on a water-toboggan. When I fell into the water I hit my head on the bottom of the pool and twisted my neck, which caused a fracture of a vertebra. The doctors could never explain what happened. With that kind of fracture, most cases end in paralysis. Yet somehow the vertebra broke without causing paralysis. And then, after much work, it healed perfectly.

‘The doctors were shocked. All they could do was tell me how lucky I was. I don’t see it as luck, I see it as God protecting me and saving me from what would have been a life-changing injury.’

Miraculously, Kaká had recovered by the following January and rapidly began his rise to prominence. ‘Until he turned 19, Kaká was unknown beyond his club,’ says Breno Tannuri, his former lawyer. Two years earlier he had also failed to catch Arsène Wenger’s eye when the Arsenal manager watched a São Paulo under-17s match. ‘The first time people started to take notice was in the final of the Copa Rio between São Paulo and Botafogo in 2001,’ Tannuri says. ‘He came off the bench and scored two fantastic goals to help win the game.’

A year later came his international debut, then a first goal for Brazil against Iceland in March and he was a member of Scolari’s squad that triumphed in South Korea and Japan. Having made a single appearance in the tournament, Kaká ran on to the pitch following Brazil’s 2-0 victory over Germany in the final in Yokohama wearing the ‘I belong to Jesus’ T-shirt he has become synonymous with. But, he says, ‘I don’t pray for victory. It may be tempting to some, but I don’t ever do that. That’s not something we should expect God to get involved in. It would be abusing our relationship with him. I do pray that he gives me the possibility to do well, but then, once I am given the chance, it’s up to me to do it. And, of course, I pray that neither I nor my team-mates, nor my opponents, get injured.’

The move to Milan came in the summer of 2003, ending three years at São Paulo that gave him 23 goals in 59 league appearances. Milan paid £5m – ‘peanuts’ as owner Silvio Berlusconi memorably said – and his five years at the San Siro have so far yielded 54 goals in 162 Serie A appearances, a Scudetto, the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup. Meanwhile, Kaká’s international record stands at 22 goals from 59 matches.

If Chelsea do sign him – though Milan are also denying the story, a representative from the club is thought to have been in London to meet the Stamford Bridge hierarchy – they may finally have landed a player and man who could dramatically alter the common perception of the club.

His favourite passage from the Bible comes from Philippians 4:13 and reads: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ He also says quite calmly: ‘I am a radical. That’s just the way I am. I have my life, I have my values. And, compared to much of society, especially football, I am a radical. In fact, I’m very radical.’

By all accounts Kaká is driven by these principles. Last New Year he and his wife attended a celebration at the Renascer church along with hundreds of locals, while 100,000 watched and listened by television, radio and the internet.

This visit came despite the church being led by a preacher, named Estevam Hernandes, who, with his wife Soa, was arrested in August 2007 while trying to go through customs in Miami carrying more than $56,000 (£28,000). Kaká has always refused to discuss the incident, but has remained unswervingly loyal.

If Scolari does get his way, Kaká’s sublime football skills and qualities away from the game would only add a further dimension to watching the Premier League this season.