Cristiano Ronaldo – Messi – Messi – Messi – Messi – Cristiano Ronaldo – Cristiano Ronaldo – Messi – Cristiano Ronaldo – Cristiano Ronaldo. It looks like a futurist text, but so broadly, it creates a further impact. A decade ruled by a single oligarchy: ten editions of the Golden Ball shared between the former Real Madrid player (although he started collecting trophies when he was still at Manchester United) and that of Barcelona.
There is a later, the interruption of the hegemony and it has the name and the imagination of Luka Modric, winner of the 2018 edition of the Golden Ball. But there was a before. An earlier era that seems millennial to our eyes. And the last king of a slightly more “human” football empire was Kaka. In 2007, the Milan star with an eternal boyish face, after having been the driving force in the cavalcade that led to the Champions League against Liverpool, the European Super Cup against Sevilla and the Club World Cup against Boca Juniors, also triumphs in the awards individual, winning the Golden Ball after Fabio Cannavaro. A wish to underline what was legendary that year: the best in the world and the Brazilian number 22 .
But in that glittering trophy there is the germ of the “revolt” perpetrated by the phantasmagorical duo: Kaka ousted Ronaldo, who finished second, and Lionel Messi, who finished third to raise the France Football prize. From that moment only in 2010 we will not see both champions on the podium: in that year, in fact, it wasall-in blaugrana with ambassadors Xavi and Iniesta to open the doors of glory to the Argentine.
San Siro was the spacecraft of Kaka, one who came from another planet, and at Old Trafford, in the first leg of the 2007 Champions League semi-final, which showcased everything he had shown from his I arrived in Italy in the summer of 2003: in particular, an extraordinary ability to overturn the action, cutting the field at supersonic speed and always with the ball and chain (whether right or left), always with his head held high and always with extreme purity of gesture.
It will always be said of him that he was an elegant player, despite the gallops and the jerks of direction. And if at Old Trafford – the temple of football – I raise the manifesto of his art in front of CR7, it was with the Brazil shirt that Kaka fell silent on the Messi field .
It is necessary to rewind the hands of a year, and on September 3, 2006 and while in Italy the damages of calciopoli are counted despite a recently raised World Cup, around the globe it is already time for national friendlies to set the new cycles. And in London there is a friendly match that has nothing of “fraternal”: Brazil against Argentina . The new Selecao of Dunga trims three goals to the Albiceleste: double by Elano, 3-0 by an overflowing Kaka, with Robinho “man of the match”.
Even in the summer, even in September after a World Cup, the Milan boy wears his white tuxedo . Entered in the 59th minute in place of Daniel Carvalho, one minute from 90 ‘, he does what he does best: he takes the ball from the defense taking advantage of an incorrect control by an Argentine player, looks up and aims at the door despite three / quarters of field still to be done. He starts, leaves the same player behind, passes the circle of midfield, proceeds urgently, then touches to change direction at the exit that sends the defender Milito to the ground and touches that he knows of sentence while Abbondanzieri tries to intercept the low exit shot.
It is the gesture of a career, repeated wildly, sowing opponents along the green track, but this is special because he started by stealing the ball from Messi and overtaking him at speed in a generational race. Messi is still 19, it must be said, but he has the stigmata of the champion. In that instant, however, in those four seconds of the game, the order of things re-established the flow of him: in the last phase of mortals, Kaka and another planet.
