Jimmy Greaves was fond of saying that Chelsea fans thought that he played his best football for Chelsea, Tottenham fans thought that he played his best football for Tottenham, and West Ham fans were unanimous—he played his best football for Chelsea and Tottenham. There is something similar about Brazilian left back Marcelo, who called time on his career last week.
The news was greeted with huge dollops of love from Real Madrid. After all, this was the successor to the great Roberto Carlos, who, in statistical terms at least, fared even better than El Hombre Bala. In an epic 15-year spell with the club, Marcelo won the confidence of a sequence of coaches—the notoriously difficult-to-please José Mourinho among them—and made 546 appearances, a quite remarkable feat in the modern era.
Along the way, he helped Real to six league titles, five Champions League triumphs and a host of other honours. He even had the temerity to overtake Paco Gento, the legendary, long-serving winger from the 1950s and 60s, as the player to have won most titles with Los Blancos. Perhaps more importantly, supporters will have plenty of wonderful memories of the stocky figure with the mane of hair rampaging down the left, cutting in, combining with a supporting cast of fellow hell raisers and creating havoc in the opposing defence.
And yet the reaction in Brazil to his retirement was more muted, even from fans of Fluminense of Rio de Janeiro, the only club in the country that he played for, and where the story both started and ended.
Marcelo may have surpassed Roberto Carlos at Real Madrid, but the same is emphatically not true with the Brazilian national team. The latter played for the Seleção 125 times and can point to a World Cup winner’s medal. In a twelve-year international career, Marcelo accumulated less than 60 caps, and his two World Cups are best forgotten.
And yet it started so well.
Roberto Carlos stepped down from international duty after the 2006 World Cup, and Marcelo, just 18 at the time, made his debut in the third friendly they played after that competition, against Wales at White Hart Lane.
I was in the crowd when he crowned the occasion with a glorious goal, breaking forward in the style that was to become characteristic and crashing a shot into the bottom far corner. A star was born. The buzz in the press box was palpable. Note down this name. Brazil have come up with another one!
So what happened?
There would seem to be two explanations for an international career that started with a bang and then struggled to muster much more than a whimper.