Chelsea’s biggest failing as a club is their complete, continual inability to create an ethos. This stops them building anything fundamentally sound.
The most persistent hindrance to Chelsea Football Club’s long-term is their frustrating dedication to short-term thinking while never really having an exact plan of action. As I discussed last week, this is Chelsea’s biggest issue and touches upon some of my favorite quotes.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
Chelsea have for too long taken the scattergun approach, not only to player recruitment but to their coaching and executive structures. It shows in how they built the current squad during the end of Jose Mourinho’s second reign, under Antonio Conte and now with Maurizio Sarri.
The explanation is more obvious when viewed in relation to Manchester City. They started off their time under new ownership with the sort of unrealistic and disorganized method that Chelsea now employ. Over the intervening decade, the two clubs seem to have switched places, City now winning back-to-back titles like the then-lethal Chelsea used to do.
When Manchester City began targeting Pep Guardiola to lead the team to their current heights, they knew they needed to go about it in a specific way. They knew they wanted to emulate Barcelona’s style of play, much as Chelsea always claim they do. Manchester City knew that, in order to do so, they would not only need a very specific manager but a backroom staff who could support him.
They needed a very specific group of people. They didn’t need a coach similar to Guardiola or a technical director who was similar to Txiki Begiristain. They needed those two men, and worked tirelessly and specifically towards that aim. Guardiola was not hounded about the members of his staff he would be allowed to bring in. Nor was he told he needed similar players to the ones he wanted.
When Pep Guardiola wanted Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy he was given Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy. When Antonio Conte wanted Alex Sandro and Romelu Lukaku he was given Marcos Alonso and Alvaro Morata.
At this point, does it still puzzle you why there would be a difference in the stature of the clubs now?
Is it not perhaps even hilarious? The only thing the current Chelsea administration seem to care about is money. Now, despite having a lifelong head start in terms of stature over Manchester City, it is the second club of Manchester that makes more and is worth more than the Blues. This is exactly what Chelsea deserve.
The Blues’ failure to ever support a manager is so maddening. The club can’t ever seem to turn their successes into anything other than momentary blips amidst a sea of madness.
Even if the club were to be like the old Real Madrid, who people seem to have forgotten in the more recent Cristiano Ronaldo-era, they would be doing it differently. That side fired managers in the same way the current Chelsea do. But they also had a core of homegrown players who communicated the ethos of the club to the rest of squad and gave them some sort of continuity.
Chelsea don’t do either of these. They don’t support a manager and they don’t recruit players internally or externally well. They are more and more resembling the Palermo of Maurizio Zamparini, who fired 40 managers in 15 years. Palermo play in Serie C now, by the way despite competitive in Serie A as recently as 2013. They once had Edinson Cavani and Paulo Dybala. Now they have no well-recognized international stars.
That is the direction Chelsea’s lack of an ethos is taking them. Football is about more than money. Why are so many of the best players in the world from underprivileged nations, then? Because talent, desire, love and passion are far better signifiers of success in this game than capital.
The only thing Chelsea’s current board members think about is money. They don’t have any respect for the way football is played or thought about. It’s not treated as the one sport that best communicates so much about the complexities of the modern world and simplifies it to 22 athletes on a patch of grass.
Maybe change is coming. Maybe it isn’t. You never know with Chelsea because it often seems that change is the only constant, and yet constancy is the one thing that the club truly needs. They dive into madness time and time again.
To think you have options when you have none is the most tempting tragedy of all. It’s exactly what makes Chelsea FC’s love and taste for self-destruction so terrible.