So… listen to this… Whether you like it or not… Football is a spectacle… a show… a performance… whatever you wanna call it… The whole point of football is to entertain you and because of that, the players who are remembered the most are not necessarily the best but the most entertaining… And in the end, some great great players end up being forgotten… Ricardo Carvalho is one of them… He was Mourinho’s all time favorite defender, he played under his command for 8 years, across 3 different clubs… Mourinho literally tried to sign him at every club he managed… He won everything from the Champions League to the Euros, a UEFA Cup and 7 league titles all across the continent… UEFA even named him as the best defender in the world before he had even played in the top 5 leagues… He broke defensive records everywhere he went… But now he’s only remembered as John Terry’s sidekick, why? Because he wasn’t getting into scraps once every two matches? Now everytime someone mentions his name it’s about his quiet brilliance, his silence, his low profile… He’s being forgotten… As I saw once in an internet comment “He doesn’t have a card on FIFA so to most he doesn’t even exist”.
. . And that person is right… but today he’s gonna be remembered as quite possibly the best defender of his generation… So… Right from the start, he was being ignored because of how shy he was… Back when he was a kid, he played for Amarante FC, they were a 3rd tier club with a minuscule academy, he had pretty much no chance of ever being spotted, but by some miracle, the FC Porto scouts ended up watching one of his matches, because they were looking at one of his teammates… And even then, when they talked to the coaches in order to get that other kid… They didn’t even mention Ricardo, somehow they hadn’t even noticed him… The only reason they ended up acknowledging him was because the Amarante representatives pretty much told them “Hey, are you guys sure you don’t wanna take Ricardo?
He’s the best player in the team, we were all convinced you’d end up wanting him over the other kid”. . .
In the end, the only reason they ended up taking him was because everyone at Amarante FC damn near begged them to… They just couldn’t let his talent go to waste…. And… Thank god they did what they did… But well, even though a year later he was already joining the first team at Porto… In reality the same would happen again, Ricardo would go unnoticed… Before that first season even started, he was loaned out to Leça… The year after that Fernando Santos decided to keep him in the team, which did allow him to be part of the iconic team that won the league for the fifth time in a row, but well… Ricardo himself only played one match all year… And by the end of it, all he wanted was to go somewhere else where he could actually play… He thought he was gonna be able to play well enough to deserve a call back to the team, but 2 years passed by and nothing… He was 23, already on his 3rd loan move and even after getting lucky enough to join an Alverca squad that somehow had Jesualdo Ferreira as a coach, Luis Filipe Vieira as the president and Mantorras as the striker… even leading them to their second highest placement ever in the league… Porto still didn’t seem interested in calling him up and again it pretty much took a miracle for it to happen… So pretty much, it seems that right upon the arrival of new coach Octávio Machado, he and the captain of the team, Jorge Costa, didn’t get along too well… And maybe it was because Octávio was already expecting all of this to blow up on his face or because he had convinced himself that Costa was getting too old… But he decided to call Ricardo back to the team, to keep him as a backup… But before you knew it, the relationship between Octávio and Jorge Costa had blown up completely, with the player throwing the captain’s armband on the ground after being subbed off, then being told to apologize to the fans, refusing and being stripped off the armband for good, leading him to completely declare war on the coach by demanding to be loaned out… Before you knew it, he was off to Charlton and left with no other option, Octávio Machado began playing Ricardo in his place… At 24 years old he was finally getting a chance… And it would all be cool if not for the fact that this drama would end up shaking the entire team to its core, meaning that half way through the season, Octávio was already getting sacked and replaced with some midtable manager, named José Mourinho… And well, as you might imagine, Mourinho loved Carvalho from the first moment he arrived at the team, but there was just a little problem… The following season Ricardo’s center back partner Jorge Andrade left to Deportivo… Something like this could have really upset his progression but well, as per usual, Mourinho had a moment of genius… He called up Jorge Costa, yes that Jorge Costa and pretty much apologized for the actions of Octávio and convinced him to come back to Porto where he got him to play alongside Ricardo and well… After that, it was game over for everyone else… They were arguably the greatest center back pairing in the history of Portuguese football… Mourinho had placed a madman alongside a football genius, it was John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho before Abramovich had even arrived at Chelsea… By the end of the year, Porto had won the league, the cup and of course, the UEFA Cup… as you might imagine Porto had the best defense in every single one of those competitions, but in the UEFA Cup, not only was Ricardo amazing across every stage, but once the final was over… Mourinho walked up to him and told him: “This was the best performance of your career… To do what you did in a final like this is the same as a striker scoring 3 or 4 goals…” And so only about a year after finally getting a proper chance at stardom, not only had Ricardo Carvalho become an european champion, but he won the awards for the club’s and the league’s player of the year, earning the interest of Real Madrid, almost joining Los Galacticos and even getting his first call ups to the portuguese national team… Regardless, there was no time to stop and be thankful, because the whole team was on a mission… A mission to prove none of this had been a mere coincidence and for Ricardo Carvalho and Jorge Costa the first step towards that was quite simple, they had to stop anyone who even dared to try to put the ball in their net and boy did they manage to do just that… By the end of the league season, they had only conceded 6 goals at the Drgão Stadium… So yeah, obviously they won the league again, but that was a given from the start, what they really wanted to win, in order to show everyone just how out of this world they truly were, was the champions league… And man, after a rough start, conceding 8 goals in 6 matches in the group stage… They took all to the next level, conceding only 4 goals over the entire knockout stage, keeping a clean sheet in not only both of the semi final matches, but also in the final where obviously they took the trophy… Just for comparison, let me tell you that runners up Monaco conceded 13 goals over that same knockout stage, almost 3 times as many as Porto… So by the time the awards arrived, not even UEFA could deny that Ricardo Carvalho was the best defender in Europe… But that was nothing… You see, right as the season ended, the 2004 Euros took place and only one game in, it became evident that Carvalho simply had to be on the starting eleven, which this time around meant dethroning Fernando Couto, his childhood idol, and leading his team to finish the group stage without conceding another goal… Add to that a man of the match performance vs England in the quarters and what was pretty much a clean sheet vs the Netherlands and suddenly Portugal were in the final… But as you know, things did not go their way… but still, among all that tragedy, he was still named in the team of the tournament and by the end of the year, he would be the only defender in the Ballon D'Or top 10… Had that ball not gone in, maybe a place at the podium wouldn’t have been out of order… Regardless, as the club season restarted, a lot of things had changed… Above all, Mourinho had left and signed for Chelsea… But you know, as much as Carvalho would miss Mourinho, Mourinho would probably miss him even more, so once he arrived at his new club, he looked Abramovic in the eye and told him “pay whatever you have to”… Which considering that everyone from Inter, Barcelona, Real and United had already approached him… meant a lot of money… To be more precise, 30 million euros, which made him the 3rd most expensive defender of all time, only behind Ferdinand and Thuram… But one thing is for sure, Carvalho left no space for interpretation, he didn’t even give the fans the time to question if this amount had been “worth it”. .
. In his words, “I felt no difficulties adapting to English football. Honestly, I think it suited me”.
. . And well… he didn’t just say that, cause you see, Mourinho didn’t just sign him because he was in love with him, I mean not that he wasn’t, but I think it was more due to the fact that he knew that John Terry was pretty much the english Jorge Costa, meaning that with Carvalho by his side, they would be unstoppable… Only a few months into the season they had already won the league cup, their first trophy in 5 years and by the end of it all, Chelsea had managed to break nearly a decade of Man United and Arsenal dominance, not just taking the Premier League trophy after 50 years without it, but taking in style… You know what they say, “attack wins you matches, defense wins you titles”.
. . So when Chelsea broke the all time points record that season, it wasn’t thanks to their attack, in fact, Arsenal greatly outscored them… The geniuses behind that record were Terry, Carvalho and Petr Cech, who together managed to keep 25 clean sheets across the 38 matches, conceding only 15 times all year, only 6 of those at Stamford Bridge… None of Man United, Tottenham, Liverpool, City or Arsenal managed to score against them… But one thing must be said about those 6 goals… Whenever they come up, everyone is very quick to focus on Terry, but he was never able to replicate that, while Carvalho, he had already done it before… But again, Carvalho had no intention of slowing down and neither did Terry, so, the following season, things got a bit absurd when a newspaper had the brilliant idea of offering a 10 thousand pound reward to the first player who could score against them… This was supposed to have been just a joke… But then, the entire first month of the season rolled by and nothing… It was only one the last match of the second month that they finally conceded… It had taken 10 hours of playing time… 10 hours of trying to get a ball to hit a net and simply not being able to because two giants were standing in front of it and by the end of the season, even if their record wasn’t as impressive as the year before, obviously Chelsea had once again won the league… Regardless, after a summer that saw Carvalho make it to the world cup team of the tournament, as Portugal got within inches of making it to their first ever final, he finally got to learn what it felt like not to win the league, though to be fair they did make sure to take the cup double… Regardless, I think his fourth year at the club was the one that truly showed just how great he was, because well… Mourinho left, he left and took much of the team spirit with him… But in a year where it would have been easy to just let the team fall into mediocrity, Carvalho was the one who, despite his shyness, stood above all and led the team past adversity, somehow getting them to the Champions League final… Had Terry not slipped, this would be a tale for the ages, but he did and so that season is now only remembered as the one where Chelsea finished as runners up in seemingly every competition… But if the world forgot, Carvalho’s teammates remembered… and at the end of the season they made sure to nominate him as Chelsea’s player of the year… Going into his 5th season at the club, Carvalho was somehow yet to lose a game at Stamford Bridge… Had he answered Mourinho’s call and joined him at Inter at the end of the season, he would have been able to claim that he was undefeated… But instead, he stayed… A few matches into Scolari’s reign, they finally lost, only one match after that Carvalho got seriously injured and by the time he made it back, Gus Hiddink had taken over and completely left him in the dust… He called it “the worst season of his career”.
. . So, already 31 years old, Carvalho worried that this could be the end, he even tried to force a move to Inter… Supposedly Mourinho was even willing to trade Ibra and Maicon for him and Deco, but eventually Chelsea ended up backing out of the deal… And in the end Carvalho stayed, Ancelotti took over, gave him back his place on the starting eleven, and would you guess it, Chelsea were champions once more… If one year earlier, he was leaving in a hurry, at the end of this season he did finally leave, but the reasoning was something else entirely… He simply felt too comfortable, at 32 years old he wanted a new challenge… And what more ambitious challenge could there possibly be than joining Mourinho at Real Madrid in a quest to dethrone maybe the greatest team of all time… Owh and let it be known, Chelsea never truly managed to replace him.
Regardless, let’s be real, joining a team with Pepe and Ramos at 32… probably not the best idea… honestly it sounded almost impossible to break into the starting eleven… But I hate to break it to you, by the end of the season, Carvalho had played more minutes than either of them… Ramos literally ended up either getting pushed into a right back role or taking part in a back 3… That’s how quickly Carvalho became a fan favorite… But unfortunately, even though Real had the strongest defense in the Champions League that year, they ended up settling for only a Copa Del Rey… And unfortunately, the next season, things got seriously rough… Right at the start of it all, Carvalho got into an argument with the national team coach and ended up leaving the training ground, leading the manager to hit him with the incredibly harsh punishment of banning him from the national team… Add to this that soon after Carvalho was hit with a heavy injury and before he knew it Varane had taken over his place in the team… A year and a half later, Carvalho’s career seemed to have completely stalled, he wasn’t welcome in the national team, Mourinho had told him he wasn’t in his plans anymore and still somehow once more, at 36 years of age, he defied the odds and even when his agent insisted a move to china would be the best idea, he decided there was still time for one last dance… So he joined recently promoted AS Monaco and instantly helped them to a second place finish in the league, qualifying for the champions league… but none of that got even close to matching the excitement he felt when Fernando Santos took over the portuguese national team and decided to revert his ban… Over the next two years, despite being 38 years old, Carvalho still managed 78 matches for Monaco and when 2016 rolled around, it happened, he was called up for the euros… And 12 years after the final against Greece, “the worst moment of his career”. . .
He joined Portugal and made sure all the struggles of the past 5 years had been worth it… Carvalho once said that the biggest lesson of his career had come from Mourinho, he told him “Finals are meant to be won, no matter if you play well or if you play poorly” and that tournament they took that to heart and thanks to that spirit, Carvalho became an european champion at 38, the oldest in the history of the tournament… Once that medal was laid on his chest, everything went silent, as he said it himself… “At that moment, I knew nothing else mattered… I was ready to let go of the sport”. . .
But I gotta say, looking at how he was playing, I feel like somehow there was still some juice left in him… But hey, could you really ask for anything more?
