Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, also known as Kaka, is one of the greatest footballers of this generation. The Brazilian superstar has won nearly every trophy available to him in his international and club career including the World Cup in 2002, La Liga, Seria A Scudetto, and of course the Champions League with AC Milan.
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Kaka spent the better part of his career with Milan but also spent four years at Real Madrid where he had the opportunity to be managed, as he puts it, by “one of the best coaches in the world” in Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho. His career at Madrid was full of set backs in the form of injuries and the loss of his place in the team but he still maintained an excellent statistical record.
In 120 appearances, Kaka scored 29 goals and notched 32 assists for Los Blancos. It pales in comparison to his record at Milan of 96 goals and 56 assists in 271 appearances but it is still a respectable output for one of the great players in football.
While at Madrid and under Jose Mourinho, Kaka added two trophies to his cabinet by winning La Liga and the Copa Del Rey in 2011 and 2010 respectively. It was not quite the type of trophy output Real expected when they made Kaka the world’s most expensive footballer in 2009 but a combination of injuries and the Barcelona juggernaut held them back.
Many critics of Mourinho derided the manager for supposedly “ruining” Kaka by not making him a constant first choice in his Madrid team. Kaka, gracious as ever, places no blame on Mourinho and says that he loved playing for him and rates him as one of the best managers around.
He said to the Daily Mail about Mourinho, “His ambition for victory sets Mourinho apart. He wants to win every game, so he prepares all the smallest details; in training, at the game, everything. I loved to work with him. He tries everything to extract the best from the players, to push them. This is what he can do better than anyone else. I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to work with Mourinho, he is one of the best coaches in the world”.
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As his career winds down in MLS with Orlando City SC, fans of Kaka will look back at his career and wonder what could have been. He has already had a fantastic career and still has some great years ahead of him but injuries robbed him of several years of his prime.
Kaka is one of the great footballers of this generation and he has the trophies and numbers to prove it, but perhaps without his injuries he would have become one of the transcendent players in the history of football. Either way, he played for some great teams, achieved great things, and was able to work with some of the great managers in football with Jose Mourinho chief amongst them.
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