Kaka, presently the best footballer in the world

Kaka, presently the best footballer in the world along with Ronaldo, can win the game for the white shirts of Milan if given carte blanche. Athens boasts a Gene Kelly School of Dance and Kaka could enrol with the ball as his partner and pass out top of the class.

United went all cavalier in San Siro and the elegant Brazilian ripped them apart with his passing and dribbling. Steven Gerrard reckons he has never seen a midfielder run so fast with the ball as Kaka, who gave Liverpool such a high-speed, high-class chasing for 45 minutes in Istanbul in 2005. Only when Didi Hamann arrived at the break was Kaka, the man from the fashion centre of Milan, fitted for a strait-jacket.

Liverpool are forewarned. Gerrard's midfield colleague, Xabi Alonso, has already talked this week about the importance of stifling Kaka. "We will work on closing him down and trying to be compact," the Spaniard said. Sounds like a typical Benitez training session.

Publicly, Benitez insists he will not man-mark Kaka. Jamie Carragher, the sharpest mind in the Liverpool party who landed here yesterday, gives a wry view on preparations, observing: "We won't decide until nearer the game whether picking Kaka up is a job for the defence or the midfield. I'm hoping it's the midfield!"

And this is the problem presented by the zephyr blowing in from Milan's midfield. Kaka moves around off the front-runner, dropping deep, drifting wide and always capable of finding top gear in a split-second. He must be midfield's responsibility.

Benitez is considering unleashing the revitalised Harry Kewell on the left, but the best way to tame Kaka is to deploy intelligent, selfless workers like John Arne Riise on the left of a midfield including similar souls in Javier Mascherano, Alonso and Gerrard. Communication and concentration are the ways to combat Kaka. If Liverpool, and Mascherano in particular, manage that, they should prove the omens right.


Clipped from : http://www.telegraph.co.uk