Graham Hunter talks to Chelsea's Mario Melchiot who has learnedfrom recent experience how to keep cool when things are getting hot
It is complacency, not Manchester United, that Mario Melchiot most fears at Stamford Bridge this afternoon. With United's grip on the title diminishing and Chelsea battling grimly for a Champions League place, the cost of defeat will be brutal for either team.
Melchiot clearly believes he and his colleagues can extend their five-game, two-season unbeaten hold over United today. Push the Dutchman and he would probably say he expects to win - potentially handing one half of the prospective double to Chelsea's FA Cup final opponents, Arsenal, in the process.
"Manchester United will find it hard to replace Roy Keane," Melchiot says. "He is the brain, the heart, everything to that team. With the quality in their squad they must be able to find a solution, but Keane is a winner, so smart and so strong.
"The first time I watched him was from high up in the stand and I remember thinking: 'I knew he was good, but I didn't know he was that good'."
The Chelsea and Holland defender has made a habit of scoring spectacularly against Fabien Barthez: this season's punishing header in Chelsea's 3-0 win at Old Trafford followed an even more impressive slalom run and left-foot drive in the last club game played at Wembley, the 2000 Charity Shield.
"That goal was a great moment. Thoughts of my broken foot the season before came back to me, and of our FA Cup final win over Aston Villa, and then I beat Barthez with my left foot - a big risk for a right-footed guy like me."
Now Melchiot faces United at Stamford Bridge for the first time and, despite his past form and the absence of Keane and David Beckham, he counsels caution.
"In football you must have confidence but it cannot overtake you so you become casual. Before the game we must think we are going to win, but on the pitch you have to think: 'I want to win'."
Some of Melchiot's inherent confidence stems from his Ajax youth-academy training and some from the occasionally vicious street football he grew up playing in Amsterdam. From those street matches - battles which sometimes turned into riots - he developed the tricks he uses when his friend Edgar Davids visits him in London. The first thing they usually do is take their shoes and socks off and play one-on-one in the corridor of Melchiot's apartment.
Hard knocks. Both men grew up playing the cobblestone game during which, Melchiot says, "You are totally alone . . . I remember times when you would go past someone and they would kick you. I was too small to do anything about it, but sometimes I thought: 'If he kicks me again, I'm going to have to go and get a stone and throw it on his head'." The school of hard knocks.
It was there Melchiot also learned his often-cavalier style of attacking. Even if he has to cope with Ryan Giggs in full flow today, the Dutchman will attempt to push the winger back into defensive duties. "My natural game is to defend well and then go on the attack." But the Dutchman will not let himself get carried away, recalling as a warning the painful experience of Chelsea's 5-1 demolition by Tottenham in the League Cup semi-final in January. "I made the biggest mistake that day because I went out thinking 'we are going to do this'. Then everything seemed to go wrong: the way we started, the way we played, the way we finished - everything went mad."
During a second-half melée, Melchiot lashed out at Teddy Sheringham and watched in justifiable chagrin while his friend and team-mate Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was erroneously blamed and sent off by the referee, Mark Halsey. "In that moment with Teddy I could see only him: no stadium no crowd and no other players," Melchiot recalls.
"I was too emotional. He was moaning until I thought 'oh man, shut up' - and I gave him a slap. The lights went off, I did it and then the lights went on again. It was the wrong way to react because I am in a team of 11 - so when things got hot in the FA Cup semi-final against Fulham last week, I'd learned to stay cool. You should win first and talk second.
"Another example was a couple of months ago when a guy pushed me in a club. I said sorry but he came at me and I said to him, 'Do you want to fight me now?' I told him I only came out to have a good time, that when I was 16 I would have fought him but nowadays I certainly don't want to fight.
"Then I said, 'You know what I'll do now? I'll make you the winner already.' He started smiling and later came up and said sorry. In that moment, staying cool, reacting like that, I felt really good about myself.
"You see I don't drink, don't smoke, and all the time I know what I'm doing. Everybody has their breaking point; the question is, can you keep yourself cool when things are getting hot?"
Given the propensity for Chelsea-Manchester United clashes to generate red cards, it will be a critical question at Stamford Bridge this lunchtime.
Guardian Service
