"“Fortune favors the bold.”"
We’ve all heard this before. A thousand times too many and a thousand times more is a thousand times more likely.
That statement though holds particularly true in the world of professional sport but perhaps even more so in the incredibly complicated and intricate world of ambition, passion, economics, and business that make up the world of international football.
Of course, there are odd misses. Leeds’ Peter Risdale’s famous “we lived the dream” comes to mind for those whose footballing interest includes the history of the game and not just it’s Fifa scores. However, that side signed older players and glamorous players beyond their prime in obvious contradiction to CFC’s current spending.
Chelsea’s spending was bold, attractive, and more than both of those things it was necessary. Although we don’t like to admit it, the Blues had slipped into the backseat in recent years. Manchester City and Liverpool were more successful and more well-run. They could pay as much or more in both transfer fees and salaries and made agents comfortable as well. Why would you sign for the west London outfit when both of them were available and Manchester United was still willing to pay players like Paul Pogba 300k per week to take a secondary interest in football?
Chelsea needed to do something to claim back relevancy because as much as football is about sport it’s also about the imagination as well. The Blues needed to capture the imagination of the footballing world again and with their current spending, they have.
It’s an old Florentino Perez trick. The wily Spanish general at the head of Real Madrid’s commercial and sporting dominance once said that he would rather buy the player for a world record fee later because then he’d also buy the headlines and let’s be honest with ourselves football is as much about the latter as the former.