Champions League win would confirm Chelsea's humble superstar N'Golo Kante as a modern great

N’Golo Kante was about to join Arsenal when Antonio Conte picked up the phone and told the midfielder that he could win back-to-back Premier League titles by moving from Leicester City to Chelsea.

That was in 2016 and Conte was good to his word, as Kante’s £30million signature proved to be the key to Chelsea’s success under the Italian.

Conte always felt he had three truly world-class players in his Chelsea squad who won the title and then the FA Cup. One was Kante and the other two, Eden Hazard and Thibaut Courtois, will be trying to help stop the Frenchman reaching his first Champions League final.

Hazard and Courtois left Stamford Bridge to try to hit greater heights, and yet Kante will have the chance to become a European champion before them if Chelsea can overcome Real Madrid in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final on Wednesday night.

Now on his fourth Chelsea manager, Kante is chasing his fourth trophy with Chelsea, having won the title, the FA Cup and the Europa League. A Champions League winners’ medal would confirm his place among the modern greats. It would also, arguably, put Kante above Hazard in the list of Chelsea’s greatest ever players.

“He is the guy who needs to win trophies and that’s why we are so, so happy that he’s here,” said head coach Thomas Tuchel. “I’ve been dreaming about this player, fighting for this player at any club I was coaching, so now he’s my player and, as you mentioned, he’s won every trophy except the Champions League. Hopefully, he will do everything that he can to help us get this trophy.”

Come this summer, Kante could have won every major honour in club and international football if he can add the Champions League to his Chelsea haul and the European Championship to the 2018 World Cup success he achieved with France. Hazard was part of a star-studded Chelsea squad who realised the club had signed a special player after just a couple of training sessions of wondering whether or not Kante had arrived with a twin brother.

“I think sometimes when I am on the pitch, I can see him twice,” said Hazard. “One on the left, one on the right. I think I am playing with twins!”

Kante has upgraded the Mini he first parked up at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground. But, even since he became the club’s highest-paid player on £290,000-a-week, there are those who wonder what he spends his money on given his apparent lack of interest in material possessions Hazard and Kante, both French-speakers who value their privacy and time with their families over any sort of ostentatious celebrity lifestyle, shared an affinity on and off the pitch, and it was a blow to the 30-year-old, as well as Chelsea, when the Belgian moved to Madrid.

Of the first-team squad with whom he won his first Premier League title at Chelsea, only captain Cesar Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso and Kurt Zouma remain and there has been concern over the past 12 months that Kante has, at times, cut an isolated figure – never more so than when he initially chose not to return to training after last year’s coronavirus shutdown.

Kante could lose more of his friends this summer with Olivier Giroud expected to leave Chelsea and doubts hanging over Zouma’s future, and it says much about how private it is that nobody could say with any certainty how happy he is at the club. Not one to pose for the cameras, Kante can be caught making his way onto the training pitch, head bowed, alone or cutting a solitary figure on one of the squad’s pre-game strolls.

When Tuchel tried to give him a cuddle after the Premier League victory over Newcastle United, Kante looked like an embarrassed teenager trying to avoid a public display of affection from a parent.

“He needs to accept that I cuddle him because I do this a lot,” said Tuchel, laughing. “I need it for myself, so he has to live with it! He’s a nice guy. He’s almost a shy person, he’s quiet, he likes to have his own quality time and he’s not loud. I see him smile a lot and interact with anybody, but on his own terms. I’m super happy that players like him exist, expressing himself by pure performance, it’s a pleasure to watch. He will always give everything to help anybody on the pitch while being such a nice, humble, quiet guy. It’s a fantastic combination.”

There were real fears that Tuchel faced a battle to convince Kante that his future remained at Chelsea when the German succeeded Frank Lampard in January, and there will be two years remaining on his contract at the end of the season. Some of those concerns may have been allayed by Chelsea’s improvement on the pitch, a return to the four-man midfield that undoubtedly brings out the best of Kante and Tuchel following Lampard’s softly, softly approach with him.

Kante had been annoyed by what he felt had become Chelsea’s over-reliance on him that culminated with former head coach Maurizio Sarri asking him to play injured in the final of the Europa League against Arsenal two years ago. But Tuchel, like Lampard had done before him, underlined his determination not to overload Kante by resting him ahead of tonight’s visit of Real and starting him on the substitutes’ bench for the victory over Fulham.

Kante has proved he has the ability to find another level against the very best opposition. Under Conte, he produced two of his most memorable performances in Champions League trips to Atletico Madrid and Barcelona, and, for Tuchel, he excelled in the home leg against Atletico and last week’s trip to Real. Another of Kante’s old Chelsea team-mates, Cesc Fabregas, reacted to the first-leg draw against Real by posting a message on Twitter that read: “N’Golo has always been a big game player. Never doubt him. He plays for 2.”

Chelsea never have doubted Kante, even if they cannot always tell what he is thinking all these years after Conte first convinced him that Stamford Bridge was the place to win medals. One more, the biggest in club football, would be richly deserved for the game’s most humble superstar.