Brazilian international keeper Julio Cesar, twice former Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year, has signed a four year contract at QPR this evening after leaving Inter Milan. LFW gawks in open mouthed amazement.
To steal a line from Martin Tyler’s constantly repeated commentary from the final day of last season at Manchester City: “I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again. Drink it in.”
Queens Park Rangers’ new signing Julio Cesar is a 32-year-old Brazilian international goalkeeper with 64 caps to his name. He was named the third best goalkeeper in the world in 2009, the best goalkeeper in Serie A in 2009 and 2010, and was one of only two goalkeepers to make the Balon D’Or shortlist for World Player of the Year in 2009. Iker Casillas was the other keeper on the list.
He initially came through the ranks of Flamengo in his homeland and won the Brazilian league title on four occasions as well as six domestic cup competitions. He became a regular for the national side, and kept goal at the 2004 Copa America in Peru where Brazil lifted the trophy for the seventh time in their history. Cesar played all six games in that tournament having usurped Dida from the starting berth, and saved a penalty in a final shoot out victory against Argentina.
That preceded a move to Italy, ostensibly to Chievo but in reality to Inter Milan who parked him in Verona for six months to circumnavigate the rules about the number of imported players purchased by a single club in each individual transfer window. He started life at Inter at the beginning of the 2005/06 season as understudy to Francesco Toldo but soon took the number one shirt from the Italian international and finished the campaign with a Serie A title medal -albeit by default after a third place finish when Juventus and AC Milan were docked points in a match fixing scandal.
The demise of Juve in particular – relegated to Serie B – opened the door for Inter to dominate the Italian game over the coming years under the management of first Roberto Mancini and then later Jose Mourinho. They won the title outright with a month to spare in 2007 and again a year later, though this time they rather crawled over the line thanks to a late collapse in form and Mancini left the club at the end of the season. Mourinho secured a fourth consecutive league title for Cesar and Inter in 2009 and then in 2010 completed a treble of league, cup and European Cup success.
If you’re counting the medals then that’s nine domestic league titles and one European Cup so far with three Italian Cups, four Italian Super Cups and World Club Cup thrown in for good measure.
Despite this he faced a frustrating battle with Dida, Huerelho Gomes, Helton and Doni for the first choice spot in the Brazilian national side. He finally made that his own in 2007 and he won the Confederations Cup in 2009 but was criticised for an error in the 2010 World Cup quarter final defeat to Holland. He has since lost his place, and journalists have pointed to a 2010 car crash where he wrote off his Lamborghini as a point from which his form has never really recovered.
Inter’s fortunes declined slightly after Mourinho left for Real Madrid to be replaced first, briefly, by Rafael Benitez and then Leonardo. This summer Inter paid €11m for Udinese’s Slovenian penalty saving specialist Samir Handanović bringing to an end Cesar’s incredible seven years with the club. He has now signed a four year contract at Loftus Road – said to be on greatly reduced wages from his Inter terms, with the length of the deal the main attraction.
Oh, and his wife is incredible as well. Wile away the day at work with a Google image search of Brazilian model Susana Werner, with whom Cesar has two children. She’ll be as welcome in the South Africa Road stand as her husband is out on the pitch.
Once a visa and international clearance are secured (come on God, don’t be cruel now) he will wear squad number 33.
“The ambition of this club was presented to me by the chairman and the coach and I couldn’t have been more impressed. The desire to achieve things at this club is clear for everyone to see and I wanted to be part of that. I have come here to compete for the shirt and give my all. The English Premier League is the best division in the world. Everyone wants to play here and I am no different. Now I just want to give my all to the club and show the fans what I am capable of. This is a really exciting move for me and I can’t wait to get going.” - Julio Cesar
“When the opportunity to sign a player of his quality presents itself, you have to act quickly and we’ve managed to get the deal done. It was always my intention to bring two goalkeepers to the club this summer and now we’ve got fantastic competition in that department. Not only will we benefit from his ability, but we’ll also benefit from his experience and winning mentality.” -Mark Hughes
“There’s been a lot written in the press in the last few weeks and this is as good a time as any to set the record straight.We’re not panic-buying; we’re not spending beyond our means; and we’re certainly not throwing money away like some are reporting. We’ve got a very strict and precise business plan in place at this club and any deal we do for a player is well within our budget. We’ve sold or released 14 players this summer and Julio is our ninth arrival. This summer was always going to see a big overhaul in terms of players, but we’ve been very prudent with the deals we’ve done and we’re building for the future. We are clear and forthright in our strategy. We want players who give their everything to the team; want to excel; and want to be part of this venture with us.” - Tony Fernandes
But QPR fans will be glad to know that if a battle for survival is on the cards, Cesar came through two testing periods at Brazilian giants Flamengo in 2001 and 2004 when the club almost crashed into the Brazilian second division. Cesar has stated time and again that his burning ambition is to get back in the Brazil side for the 2014 World Cup in his home country. The move to QPR has been widely — though incorrectly — perceived in Brazil as a backward step and the death knell for his international career. Cesar is hell-bent on proving them wrong. - Jon Cotterill, Brazilian football journalist
He's a great keeper and it's amazing to think he's signed for us but it what do we make of the logic of signing Green. Surely part of the due diligence was to ask our coaches, who are in the main ex-keepers, whether they rated him and once this was confirmed you would expect them to be confident that they could correct whatever issues he currently has. To be paying £40k a week to a reserve goalkeeper and to have a keeper of his standing as a bench warmer seems somewhat bizarre for a club of our size. -Tripper
It’s a brave move going for Cesar, it shows that even when buying 'proven' players, mistakes can be made but that the management are prepared to right their mistakes. - Melaka Ranger
Top goalkeepers play on way past 32 so the age issue is not such a big deal. If he comes it will be massive for QPR almost comparable to Beckham joining us when he was 32. He may be a bit more prone to injury so I don't expect him to play every game, so Green will have plenty of opportunities He is a superstar in Brazil, Italy and the international football world and it was only a couple of years ago that he was voted the best keeper in the world. He may not be quite as good as his best now but that is probably still better than anyone in English football with the possible exception of Hart. - Somerset Hoops
On January 29, 2011, Neil Warnock’s QPR side travelled to Hull City on the latest leg of their march to the Championship title. The home side, relegated from the Premiership themselves the previous summer, were well off the pace with four months of the season still to play and although striker Matty Fryatt missed a gilt edged chance to win the game in injury time they were as happy with a point from the league leaders as Rangers were to escape without defeat.
The game was a niggly affair, with City focusing all their efforts on closing QPR’s in form playmaker Adel Taarabt out of the game. They did this by man marking him with two players and surrounding him with a third whenever possible. The Moroccan was kicked, bumped and bullied for half an hour and barely had a touch of the ball. Ten minutes before half time he’d had enough. A long ball played in his general direction which he had little hope of reaching and doing anything with snapped his notorious temper and he effectively went on strike in the middle of the game – signalling to the bench that he wanted to be replaced and strolling around in the centre of the pitch with the game going on around him. When Rangers were subsequently awarded a free kick on the edge of the box he decided he wanted to take it, and a scuffle between him and his own team mates broke out.
It was an embarrassing shambles, and after the match the message boards filled with supporters who didn’t care about the genius he’d shown previously and didn’t think he should play for QPR again. My reaction, and that of manager Neil Warnock, was to forget about it. Move on. If Adel Taarabt had a perfect attitude and temperament to go with his undoubted ability then would Tottenham really have sold him to QPR for a cut price fee? QPR have to take the rough with the smooth with all their players, because it’s the rough that brings them to the club in the first place and keeps them here. QPR’s greatest ever player Stan Bowles was, infamously, deeply flawed as well as a footballing genius.
Whenever the smooth overrides the rough sufficiently the player is immediately signed by one of the game’s so called bigger names in the game – Les Ferdinand for example. Far from castigating fantastic players like Taarabt for their failings we should be embracing them, because it’s those failings that keep the players in hoops.
Well, that used to be the case. If it still is then Brazilian international goalkeeper Julio Cesar has either taken leave of his senses, has a very serious physical medical problem which has put every other club in Europe off but not been picked up by the well renowned QPR medical examination, or has a skeleton in his closet that makes Harry Redknapp look like Mother Theresa.
QPR have just signed a 60-capped Brazilian international goalkeeper from Inter Milan where he won Serie A five times and the Champions League once. He is, at 32, seemingly the prime age for a goalkeeper. He has, according to the Italian media, been released to Rangers by Inter on a free transfer and has taken a substantial pay cut from the two year deal he had left at the San Siro in favour of a four year contract at Loftus Road. He is still rated as one of the world’s best goalkeepers.
For QPR the move is a no brainer. It seems perverse, and typical of the modern day Queens Park Rangers, to replace one adequate goalkeeper with another equally adequate goalkeeper on vastly more money only to then replace him with another goalkeeper on big money after just four matches of his Rangers career – and I don’t for one second buy Mark Hughes’ line about always wanting to sign two goalkeepers this summer – but regardless of Robert Green’s form since joining the club if the chance to sign a player as good as Julio Cesar arises you take it.
For Cesar the question must be why? Why QPR of all clubs? Surely once you scratch below the Man Utd, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich surface of European football he could have had his pick of any club on the continent. Show me a manager who says he wouldn’t be interested in Cesar on a free transfer and happy to take a pay cut and I’ll show you a liar. And yet here he is at QPR.
It feels like one of the greatest signings in the club’s history. It also feels too good to be true. While we wait to see which of the two it is, the overriding emotion at this stage is one of stunned shock.
Julio Cesar.
We’re not in Kingston upon Hull any more Adel.
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Pictures – Action Images