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The Stamford Bridge Soap Opera Continues
For many years, the team which football fans loved to hate was Manchester United. Are Chelsea really in the midst of stealing their crown?
A standout feature of the early part of the 2015-16 has been Chelsea’s poor start to the campaign – a run of form which has seen many revelling in the demise of the West London club’s title defence.
It wasn’t always this way. Where once even neighbours Fulham could lay claim to calling the likes of George Best, Rodney Marsh and Bobby Moore among their own – for a short time, at least – Chelsea feted Ron “Chopper” Harris and Kerry Dixon.
And there was something quite comforting in the fact that a well-heeled area of West London was home to a crumbling relic like the Shed End.
Times change, though. The nineties saw gentrification throughout the Premier League and a foreign influence began to take shape. Chelsea, a well-supported club in the nation’s capital, became a magnet for overseas stars and investment. Enter Roman Abramovic.
When Jose Mourinho famously danced along the Old Trafford touchline following his FC Porto side’s 1-1 draw which sealed a UEFA Champions League victory over Manchester United in 2004, his name was pencilled in as a future Chelsea manager. His tactical nous, swaggering arrogance and knowledge of how to win were manna from heaven for Abramovic and he ushered in a new era at Stamford Bridge.
Mourinho found Chelsea a place at Europe’s top table – a position firmly established when Roberto Di Matteo steered them to become London’s first Champions of Europe (a victory in a campaign that did nothing to help the club’s reputation with football purists).
There are numerous reasons for the detractors to feel justified in condemning the Blues: the rich owner, the arrogant manager, his feuding with other managers throughout his career, parking the bus, harassing the referee, the bullying, the Eva Carneiro incident, the spiky press conferences, Diego Costa’s on-pitch windmill impersonations, that awful clap-along music that they play pre-match…
And yet, we love a winner. A conveyor-belt of trophies since Abramovic bought the club means that demand far exceeds supply and Stamford Bridge continues to sell out. With ticketbis, you can experience the atmosphere for yourself and for all the perceived negativity surrounding the club and its manager’s tactics, let’s not forget that the likes of Eden Hazard, Oscar and Pedro are also there to sprinkle some stardust around the place.
Chelsea (and, more recently, Manchester City) have upset the natural order in the Premier League, helping create a vibrant product in which more than just two sides have a shot of emerging victorious.
The start to the 2015-16 season has not been the greatest but you would not bet on the Blues still being outside the top four by the end of the season. This soap opera is set to continue – and it is made in Chelsea.
