Chelsea’s long road back to Champions League final, nine years removed
Period of inconsistency
In 2013, one year after winning the Champions League, Chelsea made a bold decision. It had the players it wanted, what it needed was a manager who would shape the group into a team. The search for the right manager led Abramovich back to the man who had played a key role in his team’s ascent to the top in the first place—Mourinho.
Mourinho returned to Stamford Bridge in 2013, burdened with the responsibility of winning as many trophies as possible. The Portuguese head coach knew that failure of the slightest kind would cost him his job. In his ruthless pursuit of success, he sacrificed some of the pieces that Chelsea had collected so carefully from all over the world. His spell did bore success as the team won the league title and reached the semifinals of the Champions League—a feat it won’t achieve again until this year. However, when Mourinho was sacked two-and-a-half years later, the team he left behind was in far worse shape than the one he found, and without any additional European cups.
Antonio Conte followed Mourinho in the Stamford Bridge hot seat. Chelsea hoped that the Italian would create a dynasty in west London, as he had done in Turin. A positive start only affirmed the club’s belief in him, as he led the Blues to a league title in his first season. However, Europe’s top honor still evaded Abramovich and even Conte was unable to satisfy the Chelsea owner’s longing for the continental cup.
A brief experiment with Maurizio Sarri followed and although his one season at the club culminated in a European trophy, it wasn’t the one Chelsea would’ve hoped for. The Blues lifted the Europa League in 2019 under the Italian, marking seven years since they had won the Champions League. However, in that period, they had lost all of their European pedigree and could no longer be counted among the European elite.
In the nine years between Abramovich’s takeover and the 2012 Champions League win, Chelsea reached four semifinals and two finals, winning once. In the nine years since, the Blues have reached the semifinal just once and now the final. They have exited the competition in the group stage on one occasion and missed out on it completely twice. The rest of their European campaigns did not progress past the last eight.
Inconsistency—both on and off the pitch—remains one of the major reasons behind their barren run. Year after year, the club would try to find new solutions, something that would return it to the top quickly. It would add some elements from here, a few from there, hoping to recreate the sweet elixir of success. Instead, what came out was a messy concoction of too many different flavors, too many different ingredients that did not belong together.