It was just before the hegemony of the two idols Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who succeeded each other for a decade on the Ballon d’Or prize list: the Brazilian Kaka was crowned France Football Ballon d’Or 2007 well ahead of “CR7” and “La Pulga”, who were still very young. Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, nicknamed
pooh by his little brother, was at the pinnacle of European football as AC Milan’s number 10.
The Rossoneri won the Champions League by beating Liverpool (2-1) with a double from Filippo Inzaghi in the final, after a semi-final against Manchester United (5-3 on aggregate) marked by an anthology goal from Kaka, on which Patrice Evra went up on Gabriel Heinze… The Auriverde, a central attacking midfielder who was very inspired when approaching the opposing area, finished with 10 goals in C1 during this exercise. However, he only won Serie A once during his six years in the Big Boot, in 2004 under the orders of Carlo Ancelotti obviously. His time at Real from 2009 to 2013 was much less conclusive on a personal level.
However Kaka, who celebrates his 44th birthday this Wednesday, could never have become professional footballer. The child of a rather wealthy family, he grew up in central Brazil and then in Sao Paulo. He escaped almost unscathed from an accident in his grandparents’ swimming pool. A bad jump fractured the sixth vertebra in his neck at the age of 18, when he was the new prodigy of Sao Paulo FC and Brazil’s youth teams.
Kaka: “ I risked being paralyzed forever in a wheelchair”
The accident will give him this unshakeable faith in God which characterizes him. “This episode certainly strengthened me spiritually, God helped me heal when I was at risk of being paralyzed forever in a wheelchair, but my faith goes back to my childhood, I grew up in an evangelical family and was baptized at the age of 12”Kaka later explains, accustomed to celebrating his goals by pointing his fingers to the sky or unfurling a flag in honor of Jesus after matches.
2002 world champion in Japan, playing only one match, he then experienced the disappointments of the Seleçao in 2006 and 2010 (elimination in the quarter-finals against ZinĂ©dine Zidane’s French team and the Netherlands). He has won the Confederations Cup twice (2005 and 2009) but never the Copa AmĂ©rica.
