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Real Madrid Player Profile: Kaka
Source: Jan Solo (Flickr)
Interesting fact: Kaka made a staggering number of passes in his first season with Real Madrid (in which he got sidelined as well for quite a few matches), total number of passes being 1145.
Position: Attacking Midfielder
Weight: 82 kg
Height: 185.6 cms
Age: 28
Nationality: Brazilian
Preferred foot: Right
Full Name: Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite
Strengths:
Source: Jan Solo (flickr)
- Deceptively quick
- Difficult to mark
- Leadership Skills
- Shooting
- Passing
- Composure
- Big Match player
- Vision
- Two Footed
- Accuracy in Passing and Shooting
- Consistency
- Team player
- Dribbling
Weaknesses:
Source: Jan Solo (flickr)
- Strength
- Stamina
- Fitness
- Injury Prone (since a couple of years)
- Heading
- Free kicks
- Dead ball situation
Notes:
Source: Xn44 (flickr)
First things first. Kaka is a complete attacking midfielder. He is feared throughout Europe for his deceptive speed, his shooting power and his skills in one on one situations with the defenders.
Source: Xn44 (flickr)
He likes to control the tempo of the game, much like Zidane. Zidane usually used to slow down the game to his pace while Kaka mostly speeds it up to his liking.
Pretty religious man, tries to stay out of the spot light. Does not cause too much controversies in the media and generally is a humble guy though in the training during world cup 2010, he had a bust up with Fillipe Melo.
Melo reportedly tackled him hard in a practice game and kaka did not like that. Afterwards both said that there are no problems.
We are pretty lucky to have Kaka playing for us. In his younger days he suffered a serious spinal injury during a swimming pool accident. It was considered as life threatening and is still blamed for his lack of physical prowess.
Though now Kaka looks strong and fast. When he first arrived at Milan he was weak and did not have sufficient stamina to keep performing at a high level for the whole of the match. Though now seems to hold up pretty easily, he did have some hernia problems in his first season with Real Madrid.
While playing for Ac Milan Kaka single handedly won AC Milan the Champions League crown twice, almost. In 2005 they lost to Liverpool in the final through a penalty shootout but in 2007 he did not let Ac Milan get to that position and literally knocked quite a few teams out of Champions League on his own including Manchester United.
Since he is such a talent, perhaps I should also enlist some of his individual Honors with various teams throughout his career:
1 Torneio Rio-Sao Paulo: 2001
1 Super Campeonato Paulista: 2002
1 World Cup: 2002
2 European Super Cups: 2003, 2007
1 Scudetto: 2004
1 Supercoppa Italia: 2004
2 Confederations Cups: 2005, 2009
1 Champions League: 2007
1 Club World Cup: 2007
Serie A Player of the Year: 2004
UEFA Champions League Best Midfielder: 2005
UEFA Champions League Top Scorer: 2007
UEFA Champions League Best Forward: 2007
FIFPro World Player of the Year: 2007
Ballon d’Or: 2007
FIFA World Player of the Year: 2007
FIFA Club World Cup Golden Ball: 2007
FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Ball: 2009
In his first year with Real Madrid, the very first where the media was constantly bombarding the news of Kaka not being the same Kaka anymore, he scored 9 goals for Real Madrid. 8 in the league and 1 in the Champions League. He had 7 assists as well.
Talk about being a complete player. Of those 8 goals, he scored 7 with the right foot and 1 with his left foot. He scored 4 home goals and 4 away goals. He scored 2 penalties as well in those 8 goals. So basically he did everything an attacking player is supposed to do, apart from scoring a goal from a header or a free kick.
Kaka is the complete package and I hope the new Real Madrid manager (Jose Mourinho at the time of writing this post) makes good use of him rather than use him as a make shift player to get Lampard and Ashley Cole.
