“WHO WANTS A Makelele shirt when you can have a Ronaldo?” With those words, Steve McManaman damned the vacuity of life among the galácticos. A marketing nightmare with a penchant for sleeping in and six-yard passes, the quiet man from the Democratic Republic of Congo could put points on the board but not bums on seats. So he left.

Sometimes you do not know what you have got until it is gone. This is the case at Real Madrid, where the importance of that unsung figure is now all too evident. In terms of glamour Claude Makelele will always be Thora Hird to David Beckham’s Marilyn Monroe, but beauty is skin deep. His game is inveterately basic, breaking up moves, feeding the more gifted, and he is the glue that binds Chelsea. Yet there are still those, including Madrid’s tanned and bejewelled gentry, who wonder just what the hell Claude Makelele does. And isn’t £16.7 million quite a lot for a tub of glue?

To understand the true value of Makelele you need to rewind. If ever a player did not fit in with the cynical marketing mores that governed daily life at the Bernabéu it was this fragment of a man. His stay in Madrid ended with him on strike, bemoaning his relatively meagre salary of £13,000 a week. Marc Roger, his agent, railed: “If they continue to pay him the same amount then I’m sure he will not stay. He can’t carry on like this. There are players in the squad, like Beckham, who are earning five times as much.”

Madrid were not about to cave into a man who could be almost invisible on the pitch. He had no killer pass, no Exocet shot, no trick, no Alice band, not even an intimidating physique. He could go to hell or Chelsea. Yet, to his team-mates, Makelele was hugely appreciated, to the extent that Zinedine Zidane, a reasonable judge, viewed him as the most important member of the team. “He’s an unfussy, effective, horrible-to-play-against, engine-room player,” McManaman added. “But because he doesn’t score 20 goals or do anything visibly fantastic like beat six men, pass, collect and score, he’ll never get the credit he deserves.”

He rarely merits a headline. In February at the Nou Camp, José Mourinho bludgeoned his way into the national psyche and psyched out Frank Rijkaard before the match against Barcelona by naming both teams with a melodramatic flourish. The guttersnipe manners were manna from heaven for the assembled journalists. Just beforehand, Makelele had sat there, whispering monotone monosyllables to his bored questioners. The stage did not suit him. Few made notes.

Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, loves the theatre of football, but Makelele is a more prosaic sort. If his manager is the leading man, he is the prompter, rarely seen but ensuring things run smoothly. With Mourinho favouring a tri-pronged midfield, the role is crucial. Of all the tosh written about Chelsea this season, the most myopic was the suggestion they are negative. The truth is that the conservatism and pragmatism comes couched in a formation that effectively has three up front and two attacking midfield players behind them. That leaves Makelele to sweep up, fill the gaps left by Frank Lampard and Eidur Gudjohnsen, and erect a one-man safety net.

McManaman says his reading of the play is exceptional, which explains why you rarely see him sprinting. He just has the knack of being in the right place at the right time. That is rarely the opposition penalty area, which is why he has scored one goal in four years, a paltry record by any midfield player’s standards, (although it was his shot that set up Lampard to tap in Chelsea’s crucial equaliser against Arsenal at Highbury in last season’s European Cup quarter-final second leg). But who cares? Not Mourinho, Lampard or John Terry.

His first year at Chelsea left some wondering whether he was just another of those luxury items that serve little real purpose. Now you could make a claim for labelling him the most pivotal member of an all-conquering side. Of course, Lampard is the man who is in for all the end-of-season trinkets, but his nominations owe much to the authority figure alongside him. Call him a water carrier if you like, but it is high-quality stuff from a mountain spring.

Makelele will not get awards, but he has received some belated plaudits. Fabio Capello, the Juventus coach, is said to be in awe. Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, has likened Gilberto Silva to Makelele by way of complimenting the Brazilian. “They do a similar job,” he said. “They make the game simple. He does the cleaning work — that’s important in a house as well.”

However, Wenger knows the likes of Makelele and Gilberto will never be idols like Lampard or Henry. “It’s a shame as sometimes people who have a real team attitude, rather than a flashy one, only get that kind of recognition when they don’t play,” Wenger mused. He had a point. Even the most dimwitted galácticos could see how the injured Makelele was missed when Juventus beat Madrid in the 2003 European Cup semi-final, and nobody could accuse Makelele of being flashy — after all, he took an accountancy exam during his time at Brest.

In the build-up to this year’s semi-final, the focus has been on Lampard and Steven Gerrard, two inspirational icons who are the living embodiments of Roy of the Rovers. Next season they might well be in the same side, but they will still be sidemen to the figure in the middle.

McManaman perhaps best summed up the Makelele conundrum when he said: “They (Madrid) wouldn’t give him the salary he deserves because they wouldn’t get it back in shirt sales.”

It is a fundamentally flawed policy, but a truism of life among the galácticos. Makelele, himself, has no such doubts. “There are too many great players to choose the very best in the world,” he ventured when asked his opinion. Then, in that cooing whisper, he added: “So, it’s me then.”

It may have been a joke, but don’t put your shirt on it.