Florent Malouda rediscovers sweet smell of success at Chelsea

Posted Monday, May 03, 2010 by The Independent

The winger has battled his way back to a starting berth. But will he get a look-in for France at the World Cup?

Florent Malouda – is he Chelsea's most improved player this season?

In the visitors' dressing room at Anfield this lunchtime, before the team emerge on to the grassy battleground, one of Chelsea's most dangerous weapons will take out a bottle of perfume and aim a few sprays at his pristine blue shirt. As pre-match rituals go, it is not the most macho of acts to prepare himself for a game that is critical to his team's title aspirations. Florent Malouda borrowed the custom from an old team-mate at Guingamp, who reasoned that, if he swapped shirts at the end of the game, he wanted to be sure it smelled fresh.

There are some luxury players it would be easy to mock about such stuff. To those of a more languid disposition you might ask: why bother with the perfume? But such has been the prodigious effort Malouda has put into this campaign he has given sweat as well as sweet technique for his team.

For one reason or another it has not been the most stable of seasons for Carlo Ancelotti to negotiate in his first term in the Premier League. The captain, John Terry, has had his distractions. The engine, Michael Essien, has been injured for months. The leading scorer, Didier Drogba, was away for the Africa Cup of Nations. The No1 goalkeeper, Petr Cech, has had his wobbles, particularly early in the season when Chelsea suffered a rare bout of defensive discomfort. But there is one thing he has been able to depend on. The effervescence of Malouda has never wavered.

The Frenchman, who will turn 30 during the World Cup, has enjoyed the most profitable season of his life. With 15 goals and 13 assists he has become central to the Chelsea drive for silverware and is a strong contender to be the club's player of the year. It has taken him some time to become so valuable and so valued. This is his third season at Stamford Bridge and the improvement has been incremental. He flickered only fitfully in his first season as he tried to adjust to a new league, a tweaked position and the managerial upheaval when José Mourinho was replaced by Avram Grant.

He began to settle only during the following campaign. It was the arrival of Guus Hiddink, after the ill-starred reign of Luiz Felipe Scolari ended abruptly, that really lit the spark. For the first time in his Chelsea career Malouda was working for a coach who was willing to give him the trust and confidence he craved.

"Malouda is one of the players who reacted in a way I like to see," Hiddink said. "In my first weeks at Chelsea I tried to make a judgment about the capacity of what a player can bring. Malouda needed to be convinced he could bring more than he was showing. Then he started to play very regularly and take a lot of responsibility, which was very pleasing to see."

Ancelotti has turned up that fire. While Malouda is not a confrontational character – in fact he is known to be polite and articulate – he is candid and throughout his career he has shown himself willing to have a straight-talking conversation with any of his coaches if he sees fit. The Italian coach had not long been at Cobham when Malouda felt the need for a tête-à-tête. Despite a progressive start to the season he was left out of the key fixtures against Arsenal and Manchester United in November. To be removed from the major games, particularly in a World Cup year, hit him hard. "I told the coach of my frustrations," he said. "In fairness it is not easy for him. In the squad he has the captains of Germany, Ghana, Ivory Coast, England. And me, I am not a captain!"

But he does like to see himself as a principal performer. "I felt I could speak to him freely and tell him my mind," Malouda added. "He told me he would give me an opportunity and I had to take it. I said, 'OK, I will prove to you.' I wanted to be on the pitch in the big games. Our relationship didn't change but I showed him I could be a leader."

Malouda has barely been out of the starting XI since. It is now inconceivable he would be rotated for a game as important as this afternoon's or the FA Cup final. His new worth is underlined by the fact that the player with the most Premier League appearances this season after the untouchable duo of Terry and Frank Lampard is the man they call Flo.

So here is the puzzle: Malouda is playing the best and most consistent football of his career and has an excellent chance of ending this campaign with a Premier League and FA Cup double to add to his collection but that is not enough to earn him a place in a struggling France team. Malouda is caught in the slipstream of the power struggle between Thierry Henry and Franck Ribéry, each of whom wants to play on the left side of attack, even though neither is definitively left-footed. Considering Henry barely plays for Barcelona and Ribéry has had a troubled time on and off the pitch recently, it seems a no-brainer. Play the man in form. Malouda will not let you down.

But Raymond Domenech is another of those coaches who has had a man-to-man chat with Malouda and the France coach took it less proactively than others. As it happened, the pair had a complete relationship breakdown for a while. It started when Domenech picked Malouda in defensive midfield for a World Cup qualifier in Romania. Unsurprisingly it was not a particularly inspired tactic and the player was substituted before half-time and felt humiliated.

"I am not a clown, or a puppet," Malouda said at the time. "He took me for somebody else. I don't wish to talk of him or with him. He has a tendency to create conflicts and me, I never like to bring on conflict." The price he paid for speaking out was being dropped like a stone from the international scene for eight months. Malouda's excellence for Chelsea led to a recall but nowadays he normally has to make do with a place on the bench. Most French critics think it is madness and believe he must start in South Africa. France need all the fit and on-form talent they can lay their hands on. "I hope I can play at the same level for France as at club level but to do that I have to be given playing time," Malouda has said.

His popularity back home has never wavered. He remains much loved by all his former clubs. Hailing as he does from Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana on the north coast of South America, his personality has a Latin flavour. He arrived in mainland France in his teens to join Châteauroux, where he made his senior debut aged 16 in the second division. From there he moved into Ligue 1 with Guingamp, where he struck up a fruitful rapport with a bullish striker by the name of Didier Drogba. The pair are so fondly remembered there that a package arrived in London not long ago from a group of fans who wished to send them some Breton pancakes as a sign of their enduring affection.

Before Drogba and Malouda linked up again at Stamford Bridge, they stepped up a gear in France, the former heading for Marseille and the latter to Lyon. At the Stade Gerland Malouda won a series of titles and was named French player of the year. He still has a house in Lyon and the club remain dear to his heart.

He was used to being a champion at Lyon and is desperate to re-live that triumphant feeling with Chelsea. He claims not to be feeling the heat at all. "Honestly, I don't care about United," he says. "They are behind us. Why should we look in the mirror and say, 'Oh they are there?' We're under pressure but we like the pressure. We have the league in our hands and we have to make it. I think United would like to be in our position and we must never forget that. The good thing is that we don't have to think about the other results. If we win our games we will be celebrating after the last one. Now is the time to finish the job."

If Malouda happens to swap shirts with a Liverpool player at the end of this afternoon's match, he will have done everything in his power to make sure that blue material carries the scent of victory.