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Petr Cech was announced as an Arsenal FC player yesterday and the response from Chelsea FC fans was varied in it’s sentiment. The vast majority were sad to see a club legend move on but were grateful for the great moments and performances Cech had in a Chelsea shirt.
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On the opposite side of that spectrum were Chelsea fans who were either trolling or truly felt so upset by Cech’s move to a rival club that they sent him hateful and negative messages. Some poor souls even went as far as to send death threats to Cech and his family.
The Czech Republic keeper responded and said, “The true fans have sent me messages that are pleasing and positive. True fans will appreciate what I’ve done and the legacy I’ve left. There are some people who have left me negative messages, but they aren’t true Chelsea fans.”
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Cech did achieve great things at Chelsea and it is hard to argue against him being the greatest keeper to ever wear the shirt. However, the decision to move to a hated club like Arsenal does take some of the shine off his legacy.
It is one thing to decide to move on in search of first team football and a whole other thing to move to a cross town rival. No Chelsea fan would have begrudged Petr a move to PSG or AS Roma or any other big club in Europe, but a move to Arsenal, Spurs, or Liverpool is just unacceptable.
Compared to those three clubs even a move to Manchester City or Manchester United would have been more acceptable as there is a rivalry with those clubs but not the hatred with the aforementioned London and Merseyside clubs.
He may believe that true Chelsea fans would not send him negative messages like that but they are well within their rights to do so. Sending death threats is of course unacceptable but feeling betrayed is a perfectly appropriate response to what Cech decided to do. Far be it for me or any of us to tell Cech where to live or where to play his football but he had to have expected this sort of reaction from some Chelsea FC fans.
Even those who sent him positive messages will be hoping for him to fail and fail miserably at Arsenal. They may appreciate his legacy but he would be foolish to believe that they are hoping he has any sort of success now. He could have maintained his legacy and the love of all Chelsea FC fans if he simply chose to play his football abroad but instead he chose to antagonize a great deal of them with this move and should have expected this sort of backlash.
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