Following in the footsteps of a famous father is no easy task. Liam Botham walked away from cricket because he knew that he would forever be compared with Ian, Paul Dalglish had the misfortune to be the offspring of arguably the best footballer Scotland has produced, and Jack Nicklaus’s boys have found the burden of having the greatest golfer to bestride the planet for a father too much to carry.
For much of his career Carlo Cudicini has also struggled to break free from papa’s shadow. Chelsea’s Italian goalkeeper is one of the main reasons why Claudio Ranieri’s side have been able to maintain their title challenge. He provides the team with a backbone, stands tall behind a defence that has not always been known for its resolution, and can lay claim to being the Premiership’s top keeper this season. But the story very nearly had a different ending.
Now aged 29, he is a modest man who has come into his own after a catalogue of setbacks that might have demoralised a lesser person. His father was Fabio Cudicini, who kept goal for Milan for many years — Carlo began there too, but his time with the club was deeply frustrating as he waited impatiently on the sidelines for his turn to come. It never did, and he found himself drifting from one dead-end location to another, his career blighted by injuries.
Even when he seemed to have turned it around and found himself in Rome with Lazio, fate decreed that he hadn’t yet suffered enough, and back down the Italian league he went. His career resembled a game of snakes and ladders, and it seemed he would never reach the top rung. Football, however, can spring strange surprises, and there was one in store for Cudicini. Gianluca Vialli, then the Chelsea manager, wanted a keeper to understudy the Dutch international Ed de Goey.
Vialli asked for help from his old friend and Sampdoria striking partner Roberto Mancini, and he recommended Cudicini, who didn’t need too much persuasion. London, he says, was no great leap for him since he had long been used to as big a city as Milan. The only things that disconcerted were the cold and having to learn English, but the presence of fellow Italians Gianfranco Zola and Roberto di Matteo helped.
Promotion would be swift. In his first season, De Goey was indestructible, playing every League game, but the following season, injury to the Dutchman gave Cudicini the chance to play 24 League games. Even then, his ill luck persisted. He was hurt again and missed six weeks. Mark Bosnich came in and, says Cudicini, played well for a number of games, but he too was injured in turn.
So Cudicini regained his place, and he has kept it. He made 41 appearances for Chelsea last season, and his form attracted the attention of the big Italian clubs, but he has signalled his intention to stay where he is.
Moments such as his gifting of the ball to David Beckham during yesterday’s 2-1 defeat at Manchester United you can count on one of his normally two reliable hands. Out on Chelsea’s training ground at Harlington, he works every day with his dedicated goalkeeping coach, Giorgio Pellizzari, himself once a keeper of quality with a string of Italian clubs, among them Sampdoria and Brescia. “He knows me better than I know myself,” says Cudicini. “Knows how I should work, knows what I should do.”
For his part, says Pellizzari, “Carlo has matured gradually. Comparisons with his father didn’t help him. But coming to England has helped a lot. In England, it’s easier to be a goalkeeper than in Italy. Easier because here people understand a mistake, but never in Italy, where mistakes are exploited.”
Ranieri is delighted with Cudicini, who, he says, has found his ideal ambience at Chelsea, where he has had the ability “to await his moment. And now he has the chance to play regularly, he has seized it. He has become much more secure, more certain of his own great abilities.
“It’s wonderful for everybody at Chelsea to see him at this high level.”
Cudicini Sr was a hero at Milan; Carlo failed to play a single game for them. He decided to become a goalkeeper despite the fact that his father made no attempt to encourage him. “My father never pushed me to do anything. He always gave me a free choice in everything. He gave me confidence in moments when I needed it, but as a father, not as a footballer.”
Still, Carlo’s friends encouraged him to keep goal, and at 13 he was taken on by AC Milan. It seemed like a fairytale, but Cudicini soon found himself being loaned to a succession of other teams to gain experience.
Unfortunately, that was where the real trouble would begin. As a 20-year-old he joined nearby Como. In his sixth game for his new club, he fell awkwardly — this would become an all too familiar story — injured his wrist, and was out of action for two years.His career seemed to be heading nowhere when he found himself at Serie C club Prato, but he got something positive from the experience.
As far as he was concerned, the important thing was that at least he was now playing, although “you didn’t know if things would go right” with that wrist. In the event, he played 30 League games for Prato in season 1995-96.
When Lazio moved in for him it seemed to mark a turning point. He played one game, at the Olympic Stadium against Cagliari: “I fell heavily coming out for the ball, and my knee went.”
Although he found Dino Zoff, the Lazio manager at the time, approachable and impressive, Cudicini was soon on his way again, this time to Castel di Sangro, the little club deep in the Abruzzi made famous by the American writer Joe McGinniss’s book, The Miracle Of Castel di Sangro. Cudicini says he has a copy, but still hasn’t read it. Perhaps it’s as well, for the season before he arrived, when the club kept its place in Serie B by the skin of its teeth, McGinniss relates how they “threw” their last match at Bari, so that their opponents could gain promotion. It is difficult to imagine Cudicini being party to anything of the sort. Sharing the goalkeeping duties, he made 14 appearances, but he couldn’t stop the team being relegated to Serie C.
He did then become uncontested first choice, but it must have seemed to him that his career had fallen into the shadows. Until Chelsea came calling.
