Kaká, Vladimir Yashchenko and the historic melancholy of being on the wrong side of a Great Leap Forward

Kaká, as you've no doubt grown bored of being reminded in the last few days, was the last player to win the Ballon D'Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year awards before the inception of the all-powerful Messi-Ronaldo Duopoly.

And while it's hard to imagine Kaká being tormented by anything, let alone existential doom, but there was a paradigm shift and someone got paradigm-shafted.

The past isn't just a foreign country in this case; it's practically another world. A decade is a big old chunk of time in anyone's book, but Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have pressed the accelerator on progress, as if determined to operate in dog years. Kaká may have shared a couple of podiums with them, but compare the three and the he cannot help but lose.

Read my piece on the newly-retired Kaká, and his legacy, on the Unibet blog.