Allow me, if you will, to indulge in some love for rugged Riccy
As we all know, blogs are inherently concerned with self-indulgence, and if you will permit me three of four paragraphs of this luxury, I would like to extol a Chelsea legend.
Ricardo Carvalho is about to complete a £6.7m transfer to Real Madrid. On paper it’s a pretty tidy deal for both sides – for Chelsea, £6.7m is a decent amount of money for a 32 year-old desperate to link up with his favourite manager. For Madrid, it’s a fairly small fee for a man who could be instrumental in bringing silverware to the Bernabeu over the next couple of seasons.
As a Chelsea man though, and a staunch advocate of the Portuguese centre-back, I’m extremely sad to see Carvalho go. Six years, over 200 appearances, three Premier League title, three FA Cups, two League Cups, oh and two Community Shields if you’re counting. Not a bad little stint in English football.
Carvalho was so much more than just these statistics though. For me, he has been Chelsea’s best defender over this period of success. It’s a cliché of sorts, but Carvalho just seems to love defending, love throwing himself into blocks, love nicking the ball away from a forward, love leaping high above a much taller striker. For despite being only 6 feet tall, Carvalho is a fearsome competitor. Strong and deceptively quick, I’ve lost count of the amount of times Carvalho has won a crucial header, or made a timely interception.
It’s not just the Hollywood blocks either. Carvalho is so good because of all the basic things he does right. If a forward takes the ball out to the wing, you can be sure he won’t be getting back in the middle again, not when Carvalho is tracking him. The Portuguese is such a terrier, such a relentless competitor, not satisfied until he’s won the ball for his team. He clearly has a cynical side too – if you get the ball past him, you can be sure you won’t be following it. And I like that. You need your defenders to have a sound knowledge of cynicism and the dark arts. No one wants a naïve, righteous defender. No one who wants success anyway.
I have felt privileged to watch Carvalho in a Chelsea shirt for the last six years. Some scoffed when the club paid £19m for him in 2004. Carvalho’s medal haul does a good job of quietening those doubters. In an era where other, bigger name defenders have been hyped and praised out of all proportion – Namanja Vidic and yes, John Terry – I’m looking at you, the less glamorous Carvalho has got his head down, trained hard, stayed quiet and focussed on producing imperious displays week after week.
Also, in a game where forwards receive all the praise, all the individual decoration and all the attention, it’s easy to forget how instrumental to success a player like Carvalho has been. Carvalho could play the game a bit himself too, and was always capable of popping up with a crucial strike.
I’m genuinely disappointed that Carvalho will no longer grace the Stamford Bridge turf; that the fans will no longer sing his name. Yet I wish him (not that he needs my personal endorsement of course) all the very best at Real Madrid. And knowing a thing or two about him and his mentor, don’t be surprised to see Carvalho build on his 19 major honours to date.
A very well deserved tribute, for a defender who can definitely look back on his time in England as a big success. I agree, somewhat underrated when one considers the praise that the likes of Ferdinand, Terry, Vidic and Carragher have got down the years. Indeed I think that when he was at his best (before the injuries seemed to catch up with him) was when Chelsea’s defence looked at its most impregnable. As you mention, not afraid to get cynical, he was nevertheless the sort of defender who recognised that his role on the pitch was to stop the opposition forwards from scoring, and would attempt to achieve this through any means necessary. Under the tutelage of his mentor Mourinho, Madrid should get a couple of more than decent seasons out of him.
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