HE'S so good they even named his position on the pitch after him. When it comes to playing 'the Makelele role' then, quite simply, no-one does it better than Claude Makelele, the defensive midfielder who gave his name to one of the hardest and least-celebrated jobs in football, the quiet man who makes Chelsea tick. He has become one of the most influential players of his generation.

If you imagine playing against Makelele is difficult, try getting an interview with him. He has spent three and a half seasons in the Premiership politely declining requests, citing everything from shyness to poor English as if he is determined to compliment his honest, understated work on the pitch with an equally low profile off it. But he was not able to resist a photo-shoot for Icon magazine, run by Jamie and Louise Redknapp, and the chance to indulge a secret passion for designer threads.

Makelele plays in the Carling Cup final against Arsenal today for the first trophy he won for Chelsea - the one, he says, that gave Jose Mourinho's team "the smell of success" two years ago. If Arsenal's kids want an education from one of football's real aristocrats then Makelele is their man, a footballer for whom the humble League Cup sits very much on the lower shelf of his trophy cabinet: he has five league titles in three different countries (England, Spain and France) and the European Cup, with Real Madrid, in 2002. At 34, he isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

Makelele's is a remarkable career, one that should really have included a place in France's victorious World Cup team of 1998 which was scuppered by a fall-out with the then Marseilles manager Rolland Courbis who insisted on playing him out of position. His move to Real Madrid seven years ago, at the age of 27, was when Makelele truly came to prominence and they haven't won a trophy since he left. At Chelsea, he is simply a fundamental part of what makes Jose Mourinho's team so good.

So much it is possible to take Makelele for granted sometimes. Zinedine Zidane once complained that when Real Madrid sold Makelele in the summer of 2003, and bought David Beckham, that they had lost the most valuable component of the team.

It was recognition that has been a long time coming for Makelele who has only in recent years been given the recognition due to him. He jokes that when people see him, just 5ft 7in tall and slight too, they tend to double take.

"They ask me if I'm really Makelele because they thought I'd be bigger, " he says.

"I say, 'No, I'm the son of Makelele'."

When he speaks, Makelele does so in shy, hushed tones, a world apart from the ferocious midfield terrier who patrols in front of Chelsea's back four. If you want to hear him really let rip however, mention the ex-Real Madrid president Florentino Perez who refused to offer him an improved contract and sneered at him when he left.

When he comes to explain that story, Makelele throws in a few choice English colloquialisms of his own. But it his analysis of his own role, 'the Makelele role' no less, where we begin.

"It's the ultimate honour to have it named after me, I suppose it shows that I have achieved everything I have worked for, " he says. "I really learned how to play that role at Real Madrid where, if we were losing 1-0, we would say 'Right, lock up shop'. The four at the back and the one in front of them - me - would concentrate only on defence and let the others go and do what they had to up front.

They would take the risks, I would take care of the opposition's attacks.

"In every team you need to know what your role is and one of the keys to my role is to keep the balance of the team right. So when Didier [Drogba] goes here, I do this. when Frank [Lampard] goes there, I go there. Same with Michael [Ballack]. When one person moves out of position, then someone else comes in and covers for them.

"When you play in my position you have to enjoy it. You can't be thinking 'Oh f. . . ing hell, I don't get any goals'.

You just enjoy it, you enjoy playing football, tackling, giving the ball. Just enjoy it.

When you are small you have to tackle at the right moment.

He might be tall, he might be strong but if you tackle at the right moment you'll win it.

It's all about the timing."

Makelele lives in Cobham, in Surrey near to the Chelsea training ground and London gives him the kind of privacy he has always enjoyed. His partner is the French model Noemie Lenoir who after starring in the advertising campaign that has revolutionised Marks and Spencer's reputation is almost as recognisable as her famous other half. They have a two-year-old son Kelyan, who was with his dad for the photoshoot and showing everyone in the studio that, with a ball at his feet, he might turn out to be as handy as his old man one day.

"I do my job, I come home, I don't need any trouble. I'm a simple guy, I enjoy my family and my friends, " Makelele says. "I'll speak on the television if I have to for the club but generally I don't like doing it. My wife is a model, but I don't want to put my life in a newspaper or a book. I like my job to be separate from the rest of my work."

After his �16.6m move from Real Madrid in the summer of 2003, Makelele admits that he found it hard to settle at first in that chaotic first year of Chelsea under Roman Abramovich in a team managed by Claudio Ranieri. His eyes widen in mock horror as he remembers experiencing the pace of Premiership football for the first time and a lunchtime kick-off at Molineux that threw his bodyclock.

"I felt like I had just woken up, " he said. "After about 20 minutes of the game, Ranieri was saying from the touchline 'Claude, wake up'." Then in 2004, aged 31, he came under the management of Jose Mourinho. "Jose changed a lot of things at Chelsea, " he says. "He put every player in the right frame of mind to win a trophy. He gave a lot of responsibility to players.

Everybody at Chelsea knows now that we are here to win trophies, win every single game. He puts pressure on us, a lot of players need good pressure to win every game.

We have got used to the pressure and we can handle it.

When you win and win and win, you never want to lose again. When we won the first trophy [the 2005 Carling Cup] we knew we could win the Premiership and so on."

Makelele has one year left on his contract at Chelsea after this season and, although he has not ruled out another extension to that deal, says that they will be his last club. "When I stop playing I don't want to move again, " he says. "When I finish playing, I finish at Chelsea". When it comes to the flack that his club have taken this season, he is philosophical.

"Chelsea are one of the biggest teams in Europe now, so it's normal that you have a lot of pressure and a lot of criticism, " he says. "You need to believe in yourself, try on the pitch and when you win people will forget what they said before. Last season was the same, everyone said we couldn't win another Premiership. They said we only ever won games 1-0, but once we won the Premiership noone was talking.

"This year Chelsea are still the best team in the Premiership just we have a lot of injuries, a lot of criticism, we are still playing in every competition. We have lost John Terry, Joe Cole, Petr Cech big players. From now Chelsea will demonstrate just how big a team they are. A lot of the young players have come in - John Obi Mikel, Salomon Kalou - and there has been a lot of pressure on them."

Success came late for Makelele. He still believes that the Celta Vigo team he played in from 1998 to 2000 with the likes of Alexander Mostovoi and Mazinho (who knocked Redknapp's Liverpool side out the Uefa Cup in 1998) was one of the best ever.

He can still rattle off the first XI from memory. His football story began long before that, however, when his father Andre came to Europe from the country then known as Zaire, to play for Anderlecht in Belgium. He had fled the dictatorship of President Mobutu whose passion for sport included staging the legendary 'Rumble in the Jungle' in 1974 between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

"My father came from Zaire to play football but the problem was that he was quite old, 26, when he left, "Makelele says. "It was because of President Mobutu, he wouldn't let any of the national team players in Zaire leave the country. My father's nickname was 'Soucousse' [it means a dance or shimmy].

He played in the No 10 role, behind the strikers but he had to stop because he was living in a different country and my mother wanted him to come to be with us." It is with a regretful tone that Makelele says he never got the chance to see his father play apart from on old videos.

"We were in Paris [in the suburb Savigny-le-Temple] and I was very young. I joke with him sometimes 'Did you just play in exchange for a free pair of boots?' He has always told me: 'Football is difficult but you have a great chance, you have everything, the right food, the right training facilities, the right medical care.'

It's a lot easier than it was in his day."

The irony of the man who pioneered the Makelele role is that he himself did not play as a defensive midfielder until relatively late in his career. At Brest as a teenager Makelele trained alongside David Ginola and Paul Le Guen but never played in the senior team because of problems with his visa and then went on to Nantes for five years where he won a French championship in 1995. At Marseille he had one disastrous year that still hurts him now "I had a big problem with the manager. He said I would play behind the strikers but when I got there he played me right wing-back, he said it would help the team. I said 'No problem, I'll help the team for five or six games'. He put me in that position for most of the season and I didn't make the France squad for the 1998 World Cup. The manager Aime Jacquet said 'Sorry Claude, but I need you in the middle not a right wing-back'.

So I didn't go to the World Cup."

After two years at Celta Vigo it was Vicente Del Bosque who finally decreed that Makelele should play in the role that would later bear his name. The unenviable task facing him at the Bernabeu was replacing the great Fernando Redondo who had controversially left AC Milan that summer after winning the Champions' League the previous season.

"When I came to Madrid it was difficult for me because Redondo left and he was a phenomenon there, everyone liked him, " Makelele says.

"When I first played at the Bernabeu, the noise, when we had the ball, oh my God, I thought 'What have I done here, trying to replace Redondo?'

"For the first three months, everyday there were newspaper stories, on television, someone saying this player isn't good enough. My father helped me, he told me 'You've got to keep fighting' because after two months I wanted to leave. I knew the football at Celta Vigo, I enjoyed it and I had changed my life. When you go to Real Madrid you are joining a real institution.

They give you the speech, they say 'This is a big team, you need to fight for this team, win trophies every year'.

"The Spanish people are different. It's not like this in England, France or Italy. For them it's all about La Liga, it's the best, and Real Madrid is the top club. I thought 'Okay Claude, you need to really fight now in the dressing room, on the pitch. When you play you need to keep your position'." The story of Makelele's departure from Real does not seem to have got any easier for him over the years. He says that Perez promised him an improved pay deal when they discussed extending his contract and then reneged on that agreement, leaving him with no option but to leave. "Del Bosque said to Perez that he needed me that it wasn't just about the pitch it was the dressing room too, that I was a good professional, " Makelele says. "Everyone was saying don't leave, don't leave."

"The president never believed I would go. When I was at Madrid I was very quiet. I only played football. I needed a little bit of respect.

He tried to put me under pressure. My father said to me 'Claude you have to leave, they are giving you no respect. If you stay it will kill you.' When I decided to leave I said that it didn't matter how much money they gave me, I wouldn't stay.

"Chelsea really wanted me they fought for me and I have a lot of respect for Chelsea.

It's been a great move for me.

There were a lot of changes to the team when I joined, ten to 12 players came in and it was difficult for Chelsea to change quickly. Normally when a team changes a lot of things you need four or five years to become a big team. i The quiet man of Chelsea has an investment of his own in Paris, a place called Le Royce which houses a shopping boutique, a nightclub and a restaurant in one and he does not seem to have any firm plans to carry on in management when the playing days are over. The suspicion is that he will slip off as quietly as he came in. The Makelele role will have to be filled by someone else, although beating the maestro, and the originator, will take some doing.