Nobody in English football is as equipped to measure the explosive force of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink as the man with the unenviable job of fending off the fire every single day at training. Chelsea’s goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini demonstrates exactly what he is up against by holding up his long, bony fingers. ”I have to say,” he confesses, ”that after a long season my hands are totally destroyed.” He examines them closely. They are surprisingly delicate, more like a pianist’s than those of football’s equivalent of a boxer’s punchbag.
Confronting strikers of Hasselbaink’s calibre though, has reaped its rewards for Cudicini. After 11 seasons striving to reach the peak of his profession, he has blossomed into one of the Premiership’s best shot stoppers.
He has seen off the challenge of Ed de Goey and Mark Bosnich to establish himself as Chelsea’s first choice, even if he is too humble to admit it. ”Until now I never told myself I am number one. Every game I played well I said, ‘OK, this is a little step forwards’.”
Experience has taught Cudicini to take nothing for granted in his career. As a youngster, all the credentials were in place: he inherited refined goalkeeping genes from his father, Fabio ? whose fame in Italy is justified by the distinction of winning every European club trophy as well as a host of honours in Serie A ?and was apprenticed at AC Milan.
But as the years went by, Cudicini junior struggled to make an impact. Two and a half years lost to serious injuries, and loan spells practising in the lower divisions, led only to a contract at one of the Italian game’s quirkiest outposts. Castel di Sangro boasts a population of 5 000, notoriously inclement weather, a dismal entry in a guidebook ? ”Little of interest to see and even less to do” ? and a football club that briefly attained legendary status for working the miracolo of ascending from village team to Serie B. The season Cudicini joined them they were relegated and the miracle began to wane. And it snowed all winter.
He enjoyed the experience all the same, and impressed enough for word to travel from the Abruzzo mountains to swanky west London, where Gianluca Vialli, then manager of Chelsea, sought cover for De Goey. Recalls Cudicini: ”It was a gamble but as soon as Luca talked to me I said, ‘OK Luca, I am coming straight away!’, because it was a big chance to come back to a high level of football.”
The gamble was largely down to the luck element, which rules the fate of all second-choice keepers. Those unlucky enough to understudy someone immune to injury can spend entire seasons in the twilight zone of the bench, as Cudicini did when he first arrived at Stamford Bridge and De Goey played what felt like 6 000 consecutive games.
When the opportunity arose halfway through last season, Cudicini seized it with relish, and hasn’t looked back. A watershed came when Chelsea thrashed Liverpool 4-0 at Stamford Bridge, an emphatic scoreline that owed more to man-of-the-match Cudicini than any of the hit men. That was the first time the Chelsea crowd sang his name.
Claudio Ranieri is impressed with the way Cudicini’s talent has matured, so much so that the manager believes his temperament is as cool and reflexes as sharp as those such as Francesco Toldo and Gianluigi Buffon, Italy’s top two goalkeepers who are jousting with each other for a starting berth at the World Cup.
Not far off his 30th birthday, he may have been a late developer, but he is finally fulfilling the expectations that come with his famous name. ”When he was younger he was always under his father’s shadow. But now he is Carlo Cudicini, not Fabio Cudicini’s son, and I’m happy for him,” says Ranieri.
Ranieri wants to win the FACup final against Arsenal this weekend badly and assumes his players feel the same way. No repeats of the spineless disintegration against Manchester United recently will be acceptable: ”If they play the same way in Cardiff, it’s better not to go. Come on, a final is a final!” Ranieri booms. ”If a manager must motivate his players for the final, I’d feel like shooting myself.”