I’m sorry, but who’d want to sign for Chelsea?
Roman Abramovich’s billions and the best managers money can buy still can’t lure the galacticos to Stamford Bridge
Rod Liddle
NOW here’s an invitation you don’t receive every day. I wonder if, for the next few minutes, you might like to join me in feeling sorry for Chelsea. No, really, come back, hear me out.
I do not mean you should feel sorry for them over Didier Drogba’s suspension for four Champions League games. The punishment seemed to me bizarrely lenient, and the club is pushing its luck with an appeal. But then, my punishment would have been to hang Drogba by his toes from a high-tension power cable while spraying him with water, just to be sure.
I still do not understand why Chelsea the club have not been clobbered with more vigour, either. It is not the first time a blameless Scandinavian referee has received death threats and required police protection after officiating in a game in which Chelsea were beaten by a much better team. And while Chelsea cannot be accountable for every kidult maniac who supports the club, the epic, petulant rage shown by their players must have encouraged such a reaction.
The general view of British football experts after that fractious semi-final seemed to be that Chelsea wuz robbed. I did not think so then, and, following the final, everyone else sort of retrospectively agreed with that analysis. Barcelona were indisputably the best team in Europe — and it gives me no pleasure to say this, because I can’t abide them either. I wanted FC Cluj to win the trophy.
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No, the sympathy I wish to evince is only indirectly linked to that Stamford Bridge debacle.
Faced with a tough Champions League group campaign in the autumn, Carlo Ancelotti will be anxious to secure the services of a marquee striker, a superstar. But he is not likely to get one, because, for a host of mysterious reasons, the very top players do not wish to play for Chelsea. That small band of galacticos who can genuinely turn a game, while at the same time ensuring a rapid turnover in replica shirts from Inchon to Indiana, always seem to spurn the chance of playing at Stamford Bridge. They seem to view the succession of desperately importuning Chelsea managers in much the same way as Guards Polo Club viewed the application of Katie Price.
It is an odd business. Roman Abramovich seemed determined to ensure Chelsea became not simply the best team in Europe but also the most gilded. On both counts he has so far failed.
The list of players who have decided against a move to west London is long and a little humiliating. No Kaka, no David Villa, no Ronaldinho, no Andrea Pirlo, no Steven Gerrard. Even Robinho preferred the dubious, perennially underachieving madhouse of Middle Eastlands. The refrain has been the same each time, stolen from Elvis Costello: I don’t want to go to Chelsea. Perhaps, after a degree of pleading from the manager, they will get the sub-galactico Carlos Tevez — but the smart money is on him, too, preferring to make a shorter journey across Manchester.
It is true that Chelsea got Andrei Shevchenko and Michael Ballack — but they are almost as old as I am. Perhaps they will eventually get Kaka, when he’s about 49. Right now they are in pursuit of the CSKA Moscow forward Yuri Zhirkov, which, on account of the way his surname is pronounced, is good news for those of us with a puerile sense of humour and a deep dislike of Chelsea. Perhaps they could find a Spanish player called, say, Roberto Tossa to partner him up front. That would keep me in stitches for a good few months.
One assumes that Abramovich is offering the same sort of salaries as Real Madrid, Manchester United, Barcelona, Juventus et al, even if it might fall short of the lunatic amounts being expended to ensure that Manchester City achieve mid-table respectability next season.
Nor can it be said that Chelsea have fallen terribly far short of their owner’s ambition, in terms of winning trophies. David Villa is much more likely to earn a Champions League winner’s medal at Chelsea than Valencia, for example. And Robinho more likely to be appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University than win one at Manchester City.
Further, the club have had a succession of the best managers money can buy and an owner who is second to none in his wish to appropriate success.
What, then, is it that stops the likes of Kaka from joining Chelsea’s so-far forlorn attempts to win the top European prize?
Those gilded moppets from the south of Europe and America complain about the weather in Britain, but it does not stop them signing for Man United and Liverpool. You suspect it is something more elemental; that they simply don’t believe in the club, that it is still seen by those players at the very highest level as an arriviste, or a castle built on sand that will one day soon sink. This is only a guess.
Anyway, apologies, sympathy over. As the Chelsea fans sing every time they beat Spurs, normal service is resumed.
) guarding the centre backs, we could be really strong. Just need some cover for Torres now, and not to lose our central midfielders.