Chelsea have over a century of being the club other fans love to hate. Roman Abramovich needs to step up and connect the club with their finest traditions of winning without regard for anyone’s opinion.
Chelsea Football Club came into the world on a cushion of money and met with almost immediate resentment and disdain. Ninety-eight years later Roman Abramovich put the club at the vanguard of the modern era of English football finance with an even greater cushion of money, and met with even wider resentment and disdain. Neither Abramovich nor his new coach, Jose Mourinho, much cared about their reception beyond the walls of Stamford Bridge. Nor did the players who formed the core of the team’s greatest era: John Terry, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Branislav Ivanovic, Diego Costa and the like. Beloved within the Bridge, despised without. Chelsea had their trophies, and the rest of the Premier League had their plastic bastard heels. In a way, everyone was happy.
Chelsea are at a turning point as they enter the 16th year of the Roman Empire. The nouveau riche teams Abramovich inspired are out-spending the Blues. The established order atop the Premier League is turning over. Old rivals who were once good for banter are closer to the title than Chelsea. And Chelsea are attempting to give themselves an image makeover.
Chelsea, for perhaps the first time in their 114 years, are trying to be popular. They hired a coach renowned for his entertaining style of play, despite his lack of trophies. He is liked more than he is respected – and certainly more than he is feared – by his peers. Maurizio Sarri promised his players would have fun, the fans would have fun, everyone would have fun.
The goal is for the players to be happy simply about being at Stamford Bridge. What they accomplish here will be a secondary source of happiness. By meeting the players’ every demand and whim, by keeping smiles on their faces in training and in the canteen, by tacitly giving them a voice in hirings and firings, the club will reap the benefits of good tidings in contract extensions and low drama.
The fans, for their part, will be entertained and enthralled by the product on the pitch. Matchday thrills comes first, and end-of-season outcomes will come, well, at the end of the season.
Chelsea have never held this position in the football world. For much of the century between those waves of money, resentment and disdain, Chelsea were a non-factor in the lives of non-fans. Long-stretches of mediocrity and the occasional relegation were punctuated by a cup semi-final or a European adventure.
The Blues have only ever known these extremes: the front of everybody’s mind – friend and foe, alike – or obscurity.
Part of the fun of being a Chelsea fan over the last 15 years has been knowing we live rent-free in other fans’ heads. Blues’ fans, like their heroes on the pitch, loved hearing the derisive, accusing songs from the oppositions’ fans. It fueled the next title drive, cup tournament, European campaign. “Plastic” was a badge of honour when it was spat by a Tottenham or Arsenal or Liverpool fan, because they thought about plastic while we thought about silver.
Nowadays, the only people to throw “plastic” around are keyboard vigilantes in the latest internecine war on ChelsTwit. Chelsea fans have more harsh words to say about Blues players than the rest of the league does. Once upon a not-so-long-ago, fans from 19 clubs obsessively slated John Terry, Ashley Cole, Diego Costa & Co. out of jealousy and animus. Today, fans from only one club bother much about Willian or Marcos Alonso.
Roman Abramovich was a comically perfect person to buy Chelsea FC. Everything about him screamed “Bond villain,” right down to the “DGAF I’m winning” attitude he infused top to bottom in the club. The club had a certain raw professionalism about them as they went about collecting trophies. Winning came first, feelings came second – but oh, how those trophies felt good. To the extent anyone cared what anyone thought, those trophies said all that ever needed saying.
But as Abramovich’s personal / business / political problems have mounted over the last two years he has had a less direct role in both the business and culture of the club. The club is without direction in their transfer dealings, they have surrendered control of the locker room to the players and they have embarked on this campaign of feel-goodery.
The Blues need Roman Abramovich back. They need him to put a stop to this ridiculous mewling where everyone in the club wants to be loved by everybody else, where Chelsea FC smile and hug their way out of the title chase and out of the Premier League’s consciousness. Every fan of English football should obsess over Chelsea FC as much as you – reader of a Chelsea fan blog – do. They once did, and it was a measure of Abramovich’s success in leading this club.
The Blues have never been the popular fun happy team. They have only ever known two states: resented success or quiet marginalia. Being hated is far preferable to being forgotten.