By the time the deal was done, after a summer of vaunted arrivals and improbable returns, Chelsea’s deadline-day signing of David Luiz didn’t feel like that big a deal. He was a deadline‑day headline, an intriguing subplot bringing light relief to the fraught soap opera of this season’s Premier League. Yet, really, even in the context of Chelsea’s habit of revisiting former beaux, the second coming of David Luiz is remarkable.
This, after all, is a player who was sold with hoots of disbelieving laughter for a fee rising to a possible £50m in 2014, becoming the most expensive defender in the world – a record he still holds. How had Chelsea got so much? And what were Paris Saint-Germain doing signing a player whose greatest asset is arguably that he is instantly recognisable in silhouette? And then two years later, Chelsea decided they would spend 60% of that fee to get him back; that rather than looking to the future, rather than seeking a young talent they could craft to one day form an enduring partnership with Kurt Zouma, they would bring in the familiar, gaffe-prone devil they knew.
Could he perhaps play at the back of midfield? Yes. Does his arrival open the possibility of playing with a back three? Yes. But with John Terry injured, Antonio Conte has said David Luiz will make his second Chelsea debut on Friday against a Liverpool side who, when they are rampant, are very rampant, having already put four past last season’s top two. Send in the clowns! Fire up the PlayStation! Scatter the pratfall rakes!
Yet perhaps the mockery isn’t entirely fair. That Chelsea have gone back to David Luiz says much about the dearth of genuinely high-class central defenders. David Luiz is capable of immense performances. There are times when he becomes a leader, dominating games almost by force of personality alone. He was superb in the 2012 Champions League final, an inspirational presence who radiated authority, despite having José Bosingwa to his right, that flank otherwise protected by Salomon Kalou. David Luiz took Chelsea’s second kick in the shootout that night, after Juan Mata had missed. He scored with such an emphatic sense of purpose that the mood in the stadium almost palpably changed: he restored Chelsea’s confidence with that kick and in so doing planted doubt in Bayern heads.
Chelsea have been on the receiving end of that as well. Two seasons ago, after PSG had Zlatan Ibrahimovic sent off at Stamford Bridge, it was David Luiz round whom PSG rallied. He was the giant dragging them to belief. After Gary Cahill seemed to have won the tie, it was he who found the equaliser to take the game into extra time.
But that virtue, that capacity to command the spirits of his team-mates, is not readily tameable. There are times when he seems too passionate, most notably in the World Cup semi-final. He wasn’t the only Brazilian blubbing and beating his chest at the national anthem, but he was the one who held up Neymar’s shirt in bizarre oblation to the absent star when injury ruled him out in Belo Horizonte. He was the greatest cauldron of patriotic fervour and it was he who boiled over most spectacularly, drawn repeatedly out of the backline as Germany sliced through Brazil again and again.
That was an extreme case but it was part of a general trend. David Luiz is not reliable. He is not disciplined. There are times when he tries to do too much. If Franco Baresi was the Apollo of defenders, cold, rational and calculating, David Luiz is the Dionysus, wild, charismatic and emotional. His heart can inspire him and those around him but it can lead him into places he probably shouldn’t go.
There is a place for that even in modern football. Alongside a controlling presence, somebody who can harness his urges, David Luiz can be highly effective. Thiago Silva just about kept him in check at the World Cup; it was when he was suspended that David Luiz became self-destructively overenthusiastic.
Sometimes there is need for that sort of galvanic personality. Whether that is Chelsea here and now is another issue. Somebody such as David Luiz requires the team to be built if not around him, then at least with a clear idea of his strengths and weaknesses. Yet Conte as good as admitted he signed David Luiz because his preferred targets at centre‑back were unavailable and the Brazilian came into reach on the final day of the transfer window.
As Conte said, David Luiz has “great personality, good technique, likes to play”. He can play a much higher line than Terry if Conte wishes to impose a more extreme version of his pressing game. He does appear to be “a good guy, a positive guy for the changing room”. That he has “great commitment and attitude” seems a given, but for Conte to say he has “good technique, good personality like Leonardo Bonucci and he likes to play football. He’s an important player for this. Also, I find a good potential, physically, like Barzagli’s” – seems optimistic. It may be the case that as many great defenders are crafted as are born but 29 seems old to be learning new tricks (even if Andrea Barzagli was 30 when Conte got to Juventus).
David Luiz is what he is: heroic but unreliable, magnificent but flawed, indomitable but reckless, an inspirational liability.
