A lost talent no longer: Ricardo Quaresma finally making good on years of promise
Ricardo Quaresma does not need to prove anything to anyone. He said so himself after joining Chelsea from Inter in January 2009. He said it again after rejoining Porto at the start of 2014.
"Everybody knows who I am and what my qualities are," he told Gazzetta dello Sport as his new (old) club prepared to face Napoli in the Europa League. And then he jogged our memories with a dazzling goal, weaving through a maze of defenders before beating Pepe Reina to effectively seal Porto’s passage to the quarter-finals.
The world had needed this reminder. We had not seen Quaresma perform with such confidence and verve for years. Given that he played a total of 10 official games for the Dubai-based Al-Ahli in 2013, and none in his final six months with Besiktas before that, it had been a long time since most of us had seen Quaresma play football at all.
His was a career that seemed to be drifting into oblivion. It was 2008 when Quaresma joined Inter from Porto in a €25-million move. "He is special," declared Jose Mourinho back then. "He can play on the right or the left, he can play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. He can play on the bench or in the stands."
That final remark was intended as joke but proved remarkably prescient. Quaresma did indeed spend most of his time at Inter watching from the sidelines – making just 32 appearances across his one-and-a-half seasons at the club, with an unsuccessful loan to Chelsea in-between.
To his supporters, he was a victim of circumstance – cast aside prematurely by Mourinho and doomed to fail at Chelsea after Luiz Felipe Scolari was sacked within days of Quaresma’s arrival. But to buy into this version of events is to let the player off the hook. Mourinho had made Quaresma’s signing a top priority at Inter after previously failing in a bid to bring him to Chelsea. It was hardly in the manager’s interest to see him fail.
Equally, any suggestion that Quaresma lacked the raw talent to succeed in Serie A is implausible. Raw pace and a willingness to run at defenders can be rare qualities in the Italian top-flight, and the Portuguese offered plenty more besides.
All of which instead leads us to the conclusion that his head simply was not in the right place. On the pitch, Quaresma too often played his own game, chasing down blind alleys and refusing to track back. Off it, he failed to convince either Mourinho or Scolari’s successor, Guus Hiddink, that he was motivated to change.
Even when Quaresma’s form finally improved at Besiktas, there was still evidence of the stubborn and irascible nature which had led his first manager, Laszlo Boloni, to nickname him The Mustang. Although Quaresma scored 18 goals during his two full seasons in Turkey, he collected an even higher number of yellow cards.
He left by mutual consent in December 2012, having fallen out with the club’s hierarchy and trained apart from his team-mates all season. Already, pundits from Lisbon to London were discussing him as one of Europe’s great lost talents.
Only, Quaresma was not yet finished.
When he finally did return from Al-Ahli to Porto, he was welcomed as the prodigal son. A crowd of 10,000 fans turned out to watch his first training session. "The most important thing is feeling happy," he said afterwards, "and I feel happy at this ground."
His mood was reflected in his performances. Quaresma scored 10 goals in half a season, including four in the Europa League. He maintained such form into the present campaign, earning his first Portugal cap for more than two years in October. Still just 31, he told reporters that he hoped to carry on for many years – like Ryan Giggs or Andrea Pirlo.
Back home, the fans reveled in Quaresma’s revival. But it took until last Wednesday for the rest of the continent to catch up. Making a splash in the Europa League is one thing, scoring twice against Bayern Munich in a Champions League quarter-final quite another.
Quaresma’s 10-minute brace at the Estádio do Dragão set Porto on course for a 3-1 victory that puts them within touching distance of the last four. Bayern are too good to write off, but find themselves in the thorny position of needing to score at least twice, whilst also guarding against counter-punches from opponents who have found the net 19 times in their seven Champions League games so far.
If Jackson Martínez remains the foremost weapon in Porto’s attacking arsenal, then Quaresma has demonstrated that he can offer deadly supporting fire.
He has no need to prove anything to anyone. But he might just choose to do so, all the same.