Esteban Cambiasso brought big CV to Leicester City and has prospered

Cambiasso has not come to the English midlands in the expectation of trophies. He has plenty of those already: 23 in all, which makes him the most decorated Argentine footballer in history, writes Ian Hawkey.

Esteban Cambiasso, left, shown here playing for Inter Milan, joined Leicester City this season and is the most decorated Argentine footballer in history. AFP PHOTO / VINCENZO PINTO

When, some time from now, Esteban Cambiasso calls an end to his richly decorated and varied career, he can anticipate that many of the tributes to him will focus on the goals he has scored.

Scoring them in great quantities has never been the main strength of his game but, in a decade and half as a senior professional, he has struck some significant ones.

Prized in the collective memory and sometimes regarded as the best example of perfect teamwork in a World Cup this century, is Cambiasso’s goal for Argentina against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen in 2006.

His team had strung together 24 passes before he finished the move. It put Argentina 2-0 up and they finished with six.

At Inter Milan, where Cambiasso played for 10 seasons before joining Leicester City in August, there was a memorable match-winner in a December derby against AC Milan.

Then there was a goal that turned a Coppa Italia final in 2006 and one in the Uefa Champions League quarter-final against Chelsea in 2010, which accelerated Inter’s march towards the 2010 European Cup.

He has added to that list with his strike in his first start in the English Premier League: Cambiasso, near the edge of the Manchester United penalty area, firing through a thicket of bodies to draw Leicester level at 3-3.

That match, where Cambiasso’s new team came from 3-1 down to win 5-3, will be recalled for many, many years.

That fixture gave Cambiasso an immediate introduction to English football as the Premier League had been described to him – its unpredictability and the way in which underdogs square up to high-status clubs more willingly than perhaps they do in Spain and Italy.

Leicester supporters saw Cambiasso do against United what their manager Nigel Pearson had hoped for when he recruited him on a free transfer at the age of 34: he provided a moment of clarity in the helter-skelter of an end-to-end contest.

Cambiasso knows the essential brief of his new job is “to help Leicester survive in the Premier League” in the first season since their return.

He has not come to the English midlands in the expectation of trophies. He has plenty of those already, 23 in all, which makes him the most decorated Argentine footballer in history, ahead of Alfredo Di Stefano, way ahead of Diego Maradona and still ahead of Lionel Messi.

There are no secrets to his high professional standards, the fact he emerged as a talent very young and, above all, his adaptability – his capacity to reinvent himself as a footballer.

Cambiasso was 15 when Real Madrid offered him a future in Spain, alerted to his prodigious development by their Argentinian scouts. Back then, he was a dainty, attacking midfielder, a No 10.

Madrid earmarked him for greatness in that position and kept their option on him while seeing how he would develop physically in the Argentine league.

Once he had helped guide River Plate to a league title in 2002 – he scored frequently for River – they brought him to Spain.

In a Madrid squad that included Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Guti and several other attacking midfielders, he was asked to take a different role, deeper and more defensive.

He learnt it quickly and impressed the Madrid coach Vicente Del Bosque with his “unselfishness”.

Yet, as Madrid became more and more seduced by the idea of gathering glamorous stars, he began to feel marginalised.

That was Inter’s opportunity. His decade in Italy bought him five titles, the European Cup and a position as a trusted anchor midfielder under coaches such as Roberto Mancini and Jose Mourinho.

He revealed a toughness in the tackle that surprised those who had known him as a teenager, great stamina and the kind of vision that makes him, by his own admission, a strong candidate to become a coach when he retires.

To that end, he expects to learn a great deal from his adventure in England.

Pearson, in turn, has spoken of “learning things from Esteban, and all his world experience”.

Like Del Bosque, Pearson has so far been struck by the player’s “humility”, and cites his conscientiousness on his first day at Leicester as he made sure he memorised all his new teammates’ names.

He probably did not need to do that in the Madrid dressing-room where he began his European odyssey and his colleagues were named Casillas, Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Raul and Beckham.

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