Bosingwa, Jose

[Modueke]

Jose Bosingwa

Written by Alan and last updated by Loz in September 2010

On May 16th, the Porto right-back Jose Bosingwa became our first signing of the summer. The timing of the transfer was strange, and does seem to give some credibility to the view that Roman Abramovich had Scolari lined up as Chelsea's next manager for a while.

He was born in the Congo but moved to Portugal at a young age, settling in Seia, in the Guarda district of Portugal. He started his football career at S.C. Freamunde in 2000, making 11 appearances before moving on to play for Boavista for two seasons. It was here that he began to make a name for himself, and his performances persuaded Jose Mourinho to take him to Porto for the 2003/2004 season.

In his first season at the club, Bosingwa only played a bit-part role, making only 11 league appearances. He did however play in 8 of Porto's matches on the way to winning the Champions League, but was not even on the bench for the final.

After the departures of Paulo Ferreira and Carlos Secretario in the summer of 2004, Bosingwa became the club's first choice right-back and played a key role in the club's subsequent 3 league titles, before agreeing to move to Chelsea in May 2008 for a fee of around £16.2m. Bosingwa played in 3 out of Portugal's 4 games at Euro 2008 and was generally impressive, being named in UEFA's team of the tournament.

Bosingwa made his Chelsea debut in a comfortable 4-0 home win over Portsmouth in August 2008 quickly established himself as Chelsea’s first choice right back. His first goal came against Stoke City in September and his second was an absolute belter against West Brom in November.

It wasn’t a season devoid of controversy for Bosingwa. Against Liverpool in February there was a bizarre incident where he appeared to have given up any great desire to play football and simply use the sole of his boot to remove an opposition player. Given that we were playing Liverpool at the time I think we can all agree that it was worth the risk (it was actually Yossi Benayoun he went for who would later sign for Chelsea and therefore become Bosingwa’s team-mate). The ref didn’t see it and we all chuckled.

After we had been denied a Champions League final spot by a ref more bent than the Village People Bosingwa went on Portuguese TV and said "I don't know whether he's a referee or a thief." He was rewarded with a three match ban, later reduced to two on appeal. Meanwhile one of the most atrocious refereeing performances since Himler called offside in a 5 a side game on the fields of Passchendale, went entirely unpunished by the powers that be.

Prior to the 2009/10 season Bayern Munich tried unsuccessfully to persuade Chelsea to sell Bosingwa but that was to be just about all the excitement there was in his season. In October he picked up a knee injury which put him out of the rest of the season and the 2010 World Cup.