Chelsea’s new away kit harkens back to the glitz and glam era of the club

Chelsea’s new away kit was inspired by the Mod movement of the 1960s. Recent actions by the Blues are drawing on that glitz and glam era of the club.

Chelsea’s new away kit gives a nod to a time when the name of Chelsea Football Club was synonymous with the glitz and glamour of the swinging 60s. Recent seasons have seen the London team’s swanky SW6 postal code tarnished with a reputation formed from one or two indiscretions by a minority of the club’s support.

Those who are currently custodians of the name Chelsea FC and are charged with looking after the brand may finally have realized that there is more at stake than their personal reputation alone. The infomercial released by the club to coincide with the launch of new away shirt certainly harked back to a golden era in terms of how the club was once viewed.

Omid Djalili fronts the ad and takes everyone back to the 60s as he links players from Chelsea’s past to some of those currently in the starting XI. Alongside the players are stars of film and pop music, sportsmen and women, models and hairdressers.

Back in the day, their names alone were big enough to show them as leading lights in their own specific genre of the arts and entertainment world. To see them at Stamford Bridge enjoying the football along with the boys in the Shed End gave the club a unique feel.

Chelsea still has a big following of people rightly regarded as superstars. These days, though, those stars are simply celebrities banded under one mind-numbing umbrella of mediocrity. Their super-stardom is diluted by the world of reality television and those who believe the internet gives them a chance of making the big-time simply because they have easy access to tools required to put their nonsense on whatever worldwide platform they desire.

With the bad press the club has been subject to recently, the arrival of Frank Lampard as manager alongside a host of former players give an indication that Roman Abramovich, Marina Granovskaia and Bruce Buck are hoping to bring the good times back to the Bridge of sighs after two consecutive Italian managers (each being successful and each having their own foibles). Neither really understood the club they controlled.

Roman Abramovich has looked after the club he purchased back in 2003 as well as any sugar-daddy could have, spending where he believed necessary to keep the team on the pitch moving forward.

To say Chelsea is the Russian’s play-thing is crassly unfair, though. As he looks forward to his seventeenth season at the helm, Chelsea are looking in better shape than they have for a long time in terms of how the club is viewed as a whole (at least from a fan’s perspective).

The management team at Chelsea has a lovely, comforting, and familiar feel to it. That away shirt, with its polo collar, adds cheese to the toast. It represents a lifestyle culture that has enveloped the club since the late 50s when those who were hooked on modern jazz music dropped the “-ern” part and the Mod movement was born. It all adds up to the club wanting to embrace that 60s feel-good-factor and stitch it into the success that heralded the noughties. With the Pride of London sewn into the collar, all the bases are covered.

The good times are heading back to Stamford Bridge. Fans may not be able to turn back time, but they can at least relax safe in the knowledge that the club is in a good place right now. Strike up the Liquidator and let the games begin.