Chelsea Tactics and Transfers: Era of ego-driven frivolity is finally over

Chelsea FC are in the midst of a rebuild and will need to do their best to handle it properly. Resisting temptation and changing their instincts will be two of the most important tasks.

Football is going to be different in the future. Hopefully, very much so. Clubs will have to be more responsible with their money. We’ve already heard a great deal about how clubs like Atletico Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona have decided they would have to cut or reduce salaries. They’ll be more grateful for their supporters. They’ll see just how much is lost in the absence of actual human beings in the stands. Out of this massive change in the way the game is viewed and thought of, maybe, hopefully, the economics of the sport will change, too.

Hopefully there will be fewer players who see clubs and their supporters simply as organizations and classes for exploiting. Football is the game of the people, and it means very much that they be involved. At the very least they should be a consideration in how clubs are managed and run.

The game of the people is no longer likely to remain a tool of the elitists to exploit and enrich themselves at the expense of the everyman.

I am on the record saying that transfer fees and wages would come down eventually. Not many players are worth the money their agents have talked them into demanding (and teams into paying.

Weak leadership among the chairmen of football clubs around the world is mainly to blame for this inflation. People were unrealistically hopeful during the time of Lionel Messi’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s peak that other players would come close.

Rather than accepting the magic of that time – when not only were two of the best players of all time at their peak but playing in the same league for the two biggest clubs in the world and supported by some of the best collections of squad players even those sides have ever had – people tried to hoist others to those impossible heights.

No one playing now is even close to as good, effective or important. They’re not even in the same realm.

Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele, Neymar, Paul Pogba and Antoine Griezmann all had transfer fees inflated by their circumstance and the irrational hope invested in them. Their quality as players accounted for a small fraction of their fee. None of them are worth the money they are paid or was paid for them. Not even close.

History likely won’t remember much more than the financials of their careers.

A few in that group, who shall remain unnamed, proved to be so selfish, distasteful and recklessly entitled that they believed their transfers completely on their terms and despite not winning anything of particular importance. They treated clubs as banks, not proud tribes of people in different parts of the world whose cultures and lives should be respected.

They exploited the support and meaning of the game. Football is about the feeling in the streets before, the songs in the terraces, the hugs, tears, cries and joy among the fans and the memories brought home and grown up with for the children. It is not about enriching those who don’t understand that.

The financial crisis the coronavirus is creating in football will likely help set this right.

Some clubs will be eaten up by this coronavirus pandemic. I am earmarking now Atletico Madrid as a club that will likely have to sell several players when this is all over to hang on to their survival. It looks like Barcelona and Manchester United will need to as well.

Chelsea’s spending when this is over will likely be affected. With Financial Fair Play, a great deal of this summer’s supposed “warchest” is probably going towards paying the current players.

Chelsea should start to make their peace with the fact that Hakim Ziyech likely will be the only signing this summer. Ziyech, maybe one other and the next stage of youth development are all they’ll probably be able to afford. That would be best anyway.

Chelsea have suffered countless times in recent years by allowing themselves to engage in the type of football economics they’re not built for. Players who don’t understand the culture of the club, London, the supporters and the pride that should evoke have used the club as a stepping stone.

It won’t work any longer. Chelsea will only be able to have players who want to play for Chelsea, and that will make things better.

Football has been dangerously close to disconnecting from the supporters in recent years. Children can no longer afford to go to games. Young people are priced out. Players often don’t care about the badge or they people it stands for as much as the cars they can buy for them. Stadiums no longer twitch with song and dance as much as quiet discomfort. Nobody wants that.

Hopefully this break in the game will be seen as a time to rediscover what was being forgotten.