Kazim has taste for high life

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13 April 2012

Colin Kazim-Richards broke into a smile as wide as the Bosphorus and proclaimed it all an incredible dream. "I'm just a lad from a deprived area of east London yet here I am, changing the game and scoring against Chelsea in a Champions League quarter-final," he explained. "It's a fairytale, my story."

You can say that again. The boy from Leytonstone, whose journeyman career in English football via Bury and Brighton seemed to be tumbling into obscurity when Sheffield United let him go last season, today awoke in Istanbul to find himself practically deified after inspiring one of the most historic wins in Turkish football annals.

Trouble is that one man's dream is another's nightmare. While the super-sub was laughing "Life's very different here; I'm a household name in Turkey - and maybe I'll be a household name in England too now!", the sight of the grim, silent faces boarding the visitors' team bus told a more sobering tale of how Chelsea blew a gilt-edged opportunity to practically guarantee their semi-final berth.

At 2-1 down, they naturally still fancy their chances at Stamford Bridge but they've made life mightily precarious by folding against a Fenerbahce side lifted out of their somnolence by the fizz of the 21-year-old previously known as the 'Coca-Coca kid' when the soft drinks firm helped finance his move to Brighton. We can safely ditch that one now; Champagne Colin will probably do. "Yeah, it seems a long way from the Withdean," he laughed.

Kazim-Richards, brought up in Walthamstow, has forked out about two grand to buy tickets for his London-based family next Tuesday and he's convinced they'll see him finish the job - maybe even setting up his dream semi-final with Arsenal, the team he's supported all his life. "I'm really sure we can do it," he smiled. "It won't be easy but I believe in my team and I believe in myself.

"I'm half-Turkish, my family is Turkish, my mum is Turkish-Cypriot and I'm half-Antiguan too . . . and I'm British as well! I'm mixed up you see!"

Well, they certainly love their mixed-up hero here. Before the man they call Kazim Kazim - evidently so good they named him twice - was brought off the bench, Fenerbahce looked flat and lost. Chelsea had been in command from the moment Deivid diverted Florent Malouda's sharp cross into his own net after just 13 minutes with only their wastefulness in front of goal offering a glimmer of hope to the home side.

The crowd, mercifully, had long been silenced by the time Fenerbahce's coach Zico let Kazim-Richards loose after 54 minutes. "It's taken me time to adjust to the slower pace of Turkish football but I'd had a good game on Saturday against Besiktas and Zico told me 'just carry on the same way and show them we're the ones who are at home. We've been showing them too much respect'."

The youngster didn't. Suddenly providing width, pace and telling crosses, a moment's slumbering by Ricardo Carvalho saw him beat the offside trap, latch on to Mehmet Aurelio's floated ball and smash home his first-ever left footed goal.

It changed everything; the decibel level rose a thousandfold as Chelsea's equilibrium evaporated.

"I couldn't believe how much time I had for the goal," mused Kazim-Richards. Neither could Deivid when no one closed him down and he let fly dazzlingly from 30 yards in the 81st minute.

It had seemed unthinkable to the bemused Grant, who was still spluttering much later "I don't know what to say . . . we deserved to be 3-0 or 4-0 up."

Yet that couldn't hide from the reality that Chelsea's recent uneven form was encapsulated in 90 minutes here; efficiency personified in parts, curiously slack in others. Grant's substitutions, unlike Zico's, changed nothing, serving only to apparently irritate Frank Lampard, who looked peeved when his attacking prowess was swapped for Mikel Jon Obi's more conservative instincts, a move which back-fired when the Nigerian failed to shackle Deivid. Kazim-Richards, who happily made a beeline for John Terry to swap shirts afterwards, revealed how Didier Drogba had later congratulated him on his goal.

"I think he'd have been proud of it himself," mused the youngster.

In fact, the Ivorian would have been proud of the scrappiest tap-in on an evening when he just ended up scolding himself for his inexplicable profligacy.

Some footballing nights, though, are inexplicably wonderful. Kazim-Richards remembered the difficult times; fretting about the risk of going to Istanbul and feeling a bit homesick to start with.

Yet on a night like this it all felt worth it; he's here playing for the Turkish national team, having legends like Zico and Roberto Carlos praising him and being the toast of a club with 30 million supporters.

"I'd like to think I'm an inspiration to players from deprived backgrounds. It shows you don't just have to be a statistic. You can do what you want to do in life," enthused this most likeable of unlikely heroes. "If you believe in yourself, you can go anywhere and do anything."

Like leading Fenerbahce to an historic win at Stamford Bridge? Why not? After Zico's last visit to London, he wrote in a delightful travelogue on his website: "And to finish this trip, nothing better than entering one of its charming hotels to have the traditional tea at five. Two cubes of sugar to me, please." Only now he can almost taste something even sweeter in the capital.

Kazim has taste for high life

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