Conversations about who will wear what number this season are sucking too much oxygen out of Chelsea’s preseason. Some numbers mean more than others, but they really don’t mean much at all.
Callum Hudson-Odoi, Tammy Abraham and Willian are starring in the most drawn-out numerical saga since “Lost.” If the Evening Standard is to be believed, Hudson-Odoi’s contract negotiations are hung up on his demands for the No. 10 shirt, which may or may not have been promised to Willian last week, much to the chagrin of a vocally bored segment of Chelsea fans. Meanwhile, Tammy Abraham is looking forward to wearing the No. 9 jersey, which for some Chelsea fans means he might as well be smashing a mirror over a black cat while opening his umbrella as he walks under a ladder indoors.
Yes, kit numbers have symbolic value in football. They make for easy shorthand in describing player roles and usually mark a team’s starter in a position. The traditions of the sport allow for a player to trace his lineage through his number at the club going back decades, in some special cases making him a successor to some of his boyhood heroes.
But if the number becomes a point of contention with or within the club, or becomes some kind of hex against the wearer, the whole thing is out of hand.
Let’s go back to those traditions of the sport. Numbers appeared on jerseys for strictly utilitarian reasons. The assignment of the numbers reflected the on-pitch formations common at the time.
As the years went on, Nos. 9 and 10 took on their nominative significance. Occasionally you’ll hear people talk about a player in the No. 6 role. Frank Lampard’s return has infused new life into the No. 8 jersey at Chelsea, especially with Mason Mount and Ross Barkley vying for his old spot on the pitch, if not his old number. But while most football fans know what position normally wears the No. 3 or No. 2, rarely will you hear anyone describe Ashley Cole as “the iconic English 3” or anything along those lines.
If any club should put minimal stock in kit numbers, it’s Chelsea. The only number they ever unofficially retired is a rather non-traditional number, worn by a player could have asked for and would have earned any number he wanted. Perhaps they would not have retired a more common number, but what Gianfranco Zola did in the No. 25 shirt should quiet the single-digit squabbles.
Likewise, if you add one to Zola’s number you get another player of undisputed icon status. John Terry does not strike us as someone who ever thought much of the number on his back, although a farewell substitution in the 26′ was certainly better than one would have been within the first 10 minutes of the game against Sunderland.
The banter around the No. 9 jersey and Tammy Abraham’s desire to wear it is the most wasteful (Full disclosure: We have an article on Chelsea players who have flopped wearing the No. 9). Players have enough motivation and pressure – imposed by self and others -to succeed, live up to their potential and measure themselves against the standard of the club without having to think “but mah number!”
The talk of cursed numbers, which will surely spike when Abraham or whoever else goes through a natural slump, will simply thicken the quicksand of those regular periods in a footballer’s career.
Warning a player he chose a cursed shirt and then saying “We told ya so hurr durr” when he struggles is the stupidest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s like telling someone “What ever you do, don’t think about elephants having sex, OK? No matter what, do not think about elephants having sex. Don’t think about what they do with their trunks or how they distribute their weight, and certainly not that trumpeting noise they make. Block out all thoughts of elephants having sex.”
Of course after you put such a visceral image in their heads that visceral image takes station in their heads (you’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?).
If a player or fans are that bothered over the kit numbers, their ship has already sailed. Regardless of who wears the No. 9, at some point this season, we’ll refer to Tammy Abraham, Michy Batshuayi and Olivier Giroud as the 9. Ross Barkley and Mason Mount will both bring something to the No. 8 role, regardless of what’s under their names on their kit.
Besides, if there’s one lesson we learned last season, it’s that old-school Italian terms are much more sophisticated than numbers when referring to player positions. Give it up for my registas, trequartistas and whatever it is the guy in the Allan role does, however they’re denominated on the teamsheet.