With the eyes of the world on China, let’s remember a simpler time when a Chelsea player brought some eyes and voices of China down on him and the club.
Not every player can be Michy Batshuayi, Paul Pogba or Allan Saint-Maximin. Many players leave nothing to chance and take the antiseptic route of hiring the driest social media agency they can find to handle their feeds. We can call that the “Gary Cahill approach.” In 2017, Kenedy had enough Premier League experience at Chelsea and Watford to be a recognizable name, but was not enough of a social media personality to have a bulletproof brand as an edgy jokester who posted himself from his own phone. And so with one Instagram Story he went from a player who some people sort of followed to being the man with the social media post at the centre of an international kerfuffle.
Chelsea attempted to quell the drama in the same way the Houston Rockets did two years later: grovel for forgiveness, toss the offending tweeter under the bus. Or other large, wheeled – possibly tracked – vehicle. The Blues issued multiple official apologies and Kenedy made a short one of his own. Over the next five months, Kenedy played in five domestic cup games in Blue before joining Newcastle on loan just before the end of the winter transfer window.
At the time of the Kenedy incident, I remarked that the whole thing seemed like a power play.
China was blowing up the transfer market in 2017: eight months earlier Chelsea made £60 million by selling Oscar to Shanghai SIPG, and Diego Costa and Antonio Conte broke up over a similarly ridiculous rumour from the Chinese Super League. Asia as a whole was the top emerging target market for European football. No one in a club, league, governing body or broadcaster – let alone ones with a global profile like the Premier League and Chelsea – could allow anything to jeopardize market access. That Kenedy’s comment came on Chinese soil magnified the imbroglio.
China knew this as well as all the suits in football did. The denunciations of Kenedy were led by the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. Media and politicians (PTR) in China all piled on Kenedy and Chelsea, extracting deeper apologies and face-saving measures from Chelsea.
And over what? Kenedy’s comments were juvenile, arguably insensitive but scarcely offensive on a national scale.
As the kids would say, strange flex. But that’s just what it was: a flex. China saw the opportunity to bring the world’s most popular football league and one of that league’s biggest clubs – owned by one of Russia’s richest men – to heel. Chelsea and the Premier League were afraid of giving offence not out of politesse, but from fear of losing access to the market (again, c.f. Fertitta, Tillman).
Feelings and honour weren’t on the line. Pecking order and finances were.
Was there any actual “grassroots” outrage or upset over Kenedy’s post? Was it true that “so many fans simply cannot tolerate” his “absurd comments [that] are not only impolite but also uneducated…[and that] humiliated China?”
Well, obviously, we have no way of knowing. There were probably a lot of tweets from accounts purporting to be fans condemning Chelsea at the time. But as anyone who was deep in the muck of ChelsTwit for 2018/19 knows, inauthentic coordinated activity on social media is just as easy to fall for as it is easy to spot once you catch on to it as it is for a motivated party to sponsor. For those who were spared ChelsTwit last season, this last week has provided its own example, one that has more in common with the Kenedy incident.
Kenedy ended up spending a season and a half on loan at Newcastle, and then was at Getafe for the 2019/20 season. He has been somewhat of Getafe’s Europa League specialist, playing half as many games but nearly two-thirds as many minutes as he has in La Liga.
With all the chatter over the last two seasons about Chelsea’s need for a pacey left-back, or the more recent needs for a left winger with Pedro and Willian possibly leaving the club and Callum Hudson-Odoi and Christian Pulisic still working their way into the squad, Kenedy could have had his moment several times over.
His story is only partially a lesson in being careful with what you post on social media. The fuller lesson is knowing who and what you’re dealing with, why, and that grovelling over market access is never a good look.
Like Ethan Ampadu standing over an aggrieved Sergio Ramos, when you know the offence and outrage is fake, the moral imperative is to say “Get up! Get on with the game!”