With 190 Premier League appearances to his name, Gary Cahill is sure to go down as one of the best defenders of his generation having won everything there is to win at club level.
The Derbyshire-born player took the first steps to his footballing dream by signing at the age of 15 for Aston Villa where he would represent the club’s youth teams for a further four years.
Despite impressing as a teenager for the Lions, he was loaned out to Burnley in order to gain some first team experience. 32 games later and now a fully-established central defender, Cahill would mark his return to Villa Park with arguably the stand-out moment of his career for the club.
With the score locked at 1-1 during a Premier League clash against arch-rivals Birmingham City in 2006, Cahill produced a spectacular overhead kick finish to put his side ahead and send the home supporters crazy. The sublime technique displayed would have been more suited to that of a striker rather than a defender yet it showed just how much talent that he had at his disposal.
Nevertheless, after sanctioning yet another loan move to the Championship in 2007, Villa decided to let Cahill leave on a permanent deal at the turn of the year, selling him to Bolton Wanderers. In hindsight, Villa supporters must have seen this is a huge mistake as throughout his five year stay with the Trotters, the defender proved to be very consistent and reliable.
A number of outstanding performances during the 2011/12 campaign attracted the interest of Chelsea who agreed a fee believed to be in the region of just £7m for Cahill (via the BBC). The former Villa man’s career then skyrocketed as he was part of a squad which won both the FA Cup and the Champions League with the latter seeing him produce arguably the greatest ever performance of his career to date in the final.
Despite going into the game against Bayern Munich as underdogs at the Allianz Arena, Chelsea prevailed via a penalty-shootout after a dogged defensive display led by Cahill and fellow central defender David Luiz. In a match which was dominated by Die Roten, it was quite simply incredible just how the Blues managed to come out victorious, especially when you consider that they were managed by the vastly inexperienced Roberto Di Matteo.
Following this achievement, Cahill played an integral part in winning the Europa League in 2013 before going on to claim the second double of his career two years later, winning both the League Cup and the Premier League under then-boss Jose Mourinho.
After a change in the way that Chelsea set-up in 2016 by Antonio Conte, the England international was almost faultless in the side’s barnstorming run to the title, producing an incredible level of consistency.
Cahill would later captain the Blues to his first ever FA Cup final in 2018 where an Eden Hazard penalty secured a 1-0 victory for the club. However, since this triumph, the defender has been left out of Maurizio Sarri’s plans for the future and has only featured sporadically during the 2018/19 campaign.
At the age of 33, Cahill undoubtedly has at least two or three more campaigns to play before he calls time on his distinguished career and maybe, just maybe this could happen where it all began, with Villa.
Regardless of what division the Lions find themselves in next season, the acquisition of a former Champions League winner would clearly bolster the club’s squad and bring much-needed experience to their back line.
