Chelsea have qualified for the Champions League and moved into the finals of a major European competition. At the same time, they somehow managed to move backwards.
It’s impossible to tell what the outcome of Chelsea’s potential transfer ban will be. There are just as many news outlets suggesting the punishment will stick and Chelsea are being made an example of by FIFA as there are outlets who say that – like Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona before them – Chelsea will simply wriggle free of these FIFA-orchestrated bureaucratic bonds and be free to carry about their business.
At the moment, though, Chelsea have a transfer ban. The only players available to the club are ones already in the squad or on the books.This includes players who are on loan and in the academy, and that should be enough.
The transfer ban could be a perfect opportunity to reshape the club into something that seems like a sporting institution and not simply a cold, barely functioning machine that ruthlessly assassinates athletic talent with the sort of efficiency its strikers most likely envy.
Last week the club re-signed David Luiz for two years, despite having a long-standing, if absurd, policy about never offering players over 30 more than one-year contracts.
The policy was meant to protect the club from bad contracts for players who were past their peak. Needless to say it was invented by Arsene Wenger in the 90’s and, in the 20 years since, many changes have happened in sports science.
But Chelsea be damned, they plowed on with implementing it anyway.
They cast aside players over the age of 30 like it was nobody’s business. Petr Cech, the best goalkeeper since Gianluigi Buffon. No dice. Frank Lampard, the best Premier League player ever? Nada to the man in the ugly suit. John Terry, the definition of a winner? Nope.
Ashley Cole then! Perhaps the best left back of all time who did, after all, manage to keep both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo quiet as church mice every time they met his Blues? No, sir. Didier Drogba then is perhaps your taste? Sure, the man could end a civil war in the Ivory Coast and do the sort of thing the UN couldn’t, but maintain his fitness past 30? Nope.
It’s not even the re-signing of David Luiz that’s bad. There’s some sense, given his role in the locker room and that Antonio Rudiger requires knee surgery again and will likely miss the beginning of next season.
No, it’s the blatant disrespect for all those other players that is so ridiculous. David Luiz, apparently, is more deserving of the one year “we’re not sure and you’re worthless if you’re hurt” contract than all those players above.
Lampard, Terry, Cech, Cole and Drogba were all the sort of men I’d have given lawn chairs to if they were hurt, just to sit beside the training field and it would have made the players better. Luiz? Yes, he’s a delightful geezer who laughs a lot. Cool. Seriously. So. Wonderful. But he doesn’t make the team better through sheer force of will, does he? He’s disinterested in defending and reads the game like he’s illiterate. He has the concentration of a coke-riddled adolescent trying to decide whether they should play more Pokemon, choke the chicken or find whatever monster it is who gave them the cocaine in the first place.
It’s absurd. This is the person Chelsea break their policy for? Regardless of how mundane, outdated and ridiculous the policy is, it is something that many players of greater talent and stature have had to bow to. And now Luiz does not?
I can already see the next Chelsea ego-driven dressing room meltdown happening. Madness.
Luiz had the potential to be the best center-back in Europe at one point. Not England, not the Premier League. But in Europe he could have been, and he never met that potential because of his own attitude and mental lapses. That is the person Chelsea disrespected some of their own historic greats for?
Chelsea should have been more worried about integrating Kurt Zouma into the team. Zouma was and is captain material. Having him back will be a true pleasure and benefit to the club. He’s been one of the best defenders in the league and his absence since his initial breakthrough at Chelsea has been too long. He’s a wonderful player, personality and professional and Chelsea are better for having him back.
This is the sort of player Chelsea should be betting on. Hard as nails and gives his all for the team, Zouma does. Simply adding him would make the defense better. Instead Chelsea chose to complicate that for truly no reason. Zouma and Andreas Christensen or Ethan Ampadu should have been the pairing until Rudiger was fully fit, and then there could be a competition.
Beyond this brief statement I won’t further acknowledge those who think Luiz might be a back-up. Remember when Antonio Conte tried that on the back of four consecutive league wins in top flight management? Luiz started a revolt. As long as he’s at Stamford Bridge he will play or ruin everything. Either one.
The only way the signing makes sense is if it is in some way connected to keeping Eden Hazard. Luiz is a powerful player in the dressing room and he was a fine signing for one year. If Luiz was signed as a gateway to getting Eden Hazard to stay then it was worth it. Other than that, two years is too much when one would have been fine.
Chelsea oddly, likely accidentally, had the perfect players to step into the roles of the expiring contracts they had this summer. If their judgement in this instance is to be believed then the rest of the summer will be as equally painful.
With the ban and the additional matches provided by the Champions League there was a wonderful chance to ingratiate and blood youth and test the team properly. They could have then brought the necessary 4-5 homegrown players into the squad while honestly knowing where they needed to invest.
Sadly, though, as usual Chelsea will not look as deep as that, and will continue with cosmetic fixes to a fundamental issue.