CLAUDE MAKELELE
He landed top-flight titles at Nantes, Real Madrid and Chelsea, hoisted the Champions League trophy and played in four major tournaments with France – but Claude Makelele’s greatest accolade is more lasting than all of those achievements.
More than 17 years after he swapped the Bernabeu for Stamford Bridge and perfected the art of unselfish midfield destroying, Makelele still has a position named after him: football’s universal benchmark for grafters at the coalface.
However, it wasn’t the Frenchman, understated as ever, who trumpeted his value to the world. Peers regularly pointed in his direction when asked to reveal their indispensable team-mates. Famously, Zinedine Zidane responded to Real Madrid’s recruitment of David Beckham in 2003 – tied to Makelele’s exit that summer – with the words, “Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you’re losing the entire engine?”
These days, a 47-year-old Makelele is still helping others but in his position as a technical mentor for Chelsea’s academy players. He’s taken up several coaching roles around Europe since hanging up his boots back in 2011. “All my life I’ve been in football, so I want to give back my experience,” Makelele tells FourFourTwo over a coffee in leafy Cobham, near Chelsea’s training base.
It’s all a very long way from Kinshasa, where he once hoped to follow in his footballing father’s footsteps. A job well done, you might say…
Which players did you admire most when you were growing up? Did you take anything from them?
Donal J O’Driscoll, via Facebook It wasn’t like I was in awe of particular players, but when I started playing with my friends in the French streets, I saw Pele. He was probably a reference for everyone at that time. My father was a player, too: he played for the national team of Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of the Congo] and a number of Belgian sides, but I never got to see him play live. He fled the Mobutu [Sese Seko] regime in Zaire and ended up as a refugee in Belgium, where he played in the second division for a few years. He then stopped playing and travelled to France, where he stayed to do some other work. It was that moment when I moved with my family from Kinshasa to the suburbs of Paris – I was about five years old.
Although he had played himself, my father didn’t really want me to become a footballer when I was growing up. He knew exactly what kind of sacrifices you have to make, and didn’t want me to go through that. But I pushed him, as I
