Should Chelsea Be Pursuing Kaka?

With Chelsea's rather high-profile chase of Argentina midfielder Javier Pastore now apparently ending in failure, the media are scrambling to find another player to link the Blues to. It's an easy assumption that a number ten is on Andre Villas-Boas' shopping list, on account of it a) being obviously beneficial to Fernando Torres and b) Chelsea just failing to secure that player in Pastore. And so we're left with people pointing at every advanced playmaker that they can think of and saying Chelsea would be interested in them.

This is why the Kaka rumours are back. They were in vogue a few months ago but rather died down in the wake of Carlo Ancelotti being fired (funny, that), but the fact of the matter is that Kaka plays a position that the Blues apparently need help. And just a few years ago, he was very, very good at it. I suspect he still is rather good, but he's older and more expensive than Mesut Ozil, which means Jose Mourinho and Real Madrid no longer have much of a use for him.

All of that's fine, of course, and Kaka would improve Chelsea for next season, I'm sure. He just wouldn't help much beyond that, and at the sort of prices that are being thrown around, he'd have to. At 29, he hardly fits into the mould of our recent acquisitions - Oriol Romeu, Thibaut Cortois, David Luiz and Ramires are all under 25, and even Torres is only 27 - and there's no chance of him signing a second contract with Chelsea, meaning that any transfer fee would be only applicable to the four (this is a guess) year deal that he'd sign.

And it's not like he's cheap, either. £25M for an elderly, oft-injured player is not the sort of thing Chelsea can afford to do in light of the upcoming FFP restrictions - if that money's being spent, it needs to be on players who can contribute now and five years down the line. As talented as Kaka is, he can only hope to manage part one.

Bearing all of that in mind, I think it's likely that Chelsea aren't really that interested in acquiring him. It's a move that makes sense from a state of the squad standpoint, but I'd be shocked if they weren't thinking more long-term than this. It's the Gansos, Erikssons and Pastores of the world we'd be expecting Chelsea to be after, not the Kakas. Unless Kaka falls to the Blues for £15Mish £10Mish, I'd pass.

NB: See further post for details on Kaka's wages/actual cost.