admin
Robson Sharuko
Senior Sports Editor
AS N’Golo Kante produced a midfield masterclass, in Porto on Saturday night, in the UEFA Champions League final, it was hard to believe that, nine years ago, he was sharing the same dressing room with Ovidy Karuru.
The 30-year-old French World Cup winner was named man-of-the-match, after a dominant performance, in the biggest club game in European football, to help power Chelsea to their second Champions League crown.
Today, the diminutive midfield dynamo, is now being hailed around the world, as the odds-on favourite to win the Ballon d’Or.
While Kante is on top of the world again, after winning yet another major global football honour, his former teammate at French lower division side, US Boulogne, Karuru, finds himself battling to save his South African club from relegation.
Should Black Leopards lose their penultimate league match against Cape Town City tomorrow evening, the Limpopo side will be relegated from the South African Premiership.
Black Leopards find themselves bottom of the Supa Diski table with just 22 points from their 28 league games, three points adrift of Chippa United, who have 25 points with two matches to complete the season.
With an inferior goal difference of nine goals, minus 22 for the Leopards and minus 13 for Chippa, it means a loss tomorrow will see them virtually being relegated irrespective of what happens elsewhere.
One can’t fault Karuru for not trying his best, to keep his team in Supa Diski, after scoring five goals, in his 16 appearances, from his midfield role. But, neither can one avoid seeing how the paths of the two former teammates, at US Boulogne, have turned out so differently, since they played for the same French team, nine years ago. Only two years separate them, Karuru turned 32 on January 23, this year, while Kante celebrated his 30th birthday, on March 29, this year.
The Zimbabwe international was already at US Boulogne, in 2012, when Kante arrived at the club, who were then in the third-tier, of the French league football.
Ironically, Karuru used to wear the Number 7 jersey, at the French club, which is the one which Kante now wears, at the European champions.
The Warriors vice-captain was lured to US Boulogne in July 2009 after an impressive showing at the 2009 CHAN finals, in Cote d’Ivoire.
His arrival coincided with a high point in the history of the club after they made it into French Ligue 1.
But, they found the going tough among the big boys, ending the 2009/2010 season second-from-the-bottom of the table with 31 points from their 38 matches.
Only Grenoble Foot 38, who completed their campaign with just 23 points, had a worse season than them, with the two clubs going down into Ligue 2. This was a different French football landscape, to the current one, with Paris Saint-Germain, who are now the dominant club in the country, finishing 13th, with just 47 points, during the 2009/2010 season.
The Double-Ks, Kante and Karuru, left US Boulogne at the end of the season, with the Frenchman joining Caen, before making his breakthrough move to Leicester City, in 2015.
Karuru joined another French club, OH Leuven but, while Kante was moving to the Foxes, where he would get the platform to really showcase his talent, attracting the interest of Chelsea, the Zimbabwean moved back to Africa. He has set his base in South Africa, where he has played for Kaizer Chiefs, Amazulu, Stellenbosch and Black Leopards, since arriving there, in 2014.
And, from his base in the Limpopo, he can watch as his former teammate soar into one of the best footballers in the world.
“After 90 minutes where N’Golo Kante was apparently everywhere, everyone now came to him,” wrote Miguel Delaney, Chief Football Writer, at British newspaper, The Independent.
“The final whistle in Porto saw so many team-mates embrace him, and lift him to the sky, but also so many of the world’s media want a piece on him.
“Kante had to be coaxed into a few interviews, as well as a press conference, but this certainly wasn’t any star throwing a strop. It was the opposite.
“Kante wanted to celebrate with his teammates, and couldn’t really understand the fuss, he probably wouldn’t even see himself as a star.
“Kante is one of the best players in the world, and should be the prime candidate for the Ballon d’Or.
“There is, obviously, far too much emphasis on that individual award in the modern game, but it would still feel appropriate — and overdue — official recognition of Kante’s brilliance for him to win it.”
Delaney’s colleague at The Guardian, Barney Ronay, described Kante as “the one-man midfield who conquered Europe,” in another glowing tribute to the Chelsea star.
“There was a moment in the second half at the Estádio do Dragão when Kanté drew gasps and purrs around the plastic seats, a sense of one man taking the endgame into his own hands.
“But, then, this is Kanté, a footballer so clean in his positioning, his timing, his movement, that on nights like these he makes deep midfield control into a kind of physical art form.
“It is six years now since Kanté completed his late bloom, from the third tier of French football to the Premier League. Leicester signed him on the data. His numbers on tackles, turnovers and the rest were outside the normal curve.
“Aged 30, there is a feeling now of a footballer fast-forwarded into a state of completeness. The Champions League makes it four major honours, under four Chelsea managers, one player of the year gong and one World Cup.
“The numbers were good again on Saturday night — Kanté won all his tackles, made two interceptions, three clearances, four headers.
“More than this there was the spectacle too, the powerfully reassuring sight of that commanding and upright figure, the way he times his interventions, the way he keeps the ball to allow his defence to form again behind him, or releases it quickly when the game ahead demands it.
“Kanté isn’t simply a tackler or a runner, he’s a mobile brain, an agent of cohesion. Most tellingly he’s human kryptonite to the false nine system that continues, 15 years on from its Pep-led renaissance, to baffle more rigid defensive structures.”
Online Reporter