Good little article on how chelsea are ruining football

[Thants]

Roman squanders and the game is being ruined

Amy Lawrence
Sunday August 13, 2006
The Observer

The beauty of having a billionaire benefactor is not so much the money available to spend, but the money available to lose. Look beyond this summer's acquisition of Andriy Schevchenko and the relentless pursuit of Ashley Cole and consider instead what happened within the space of two unheralded days in July. Damien Duff and Asier Del Horno were ushered out of Stamford Bridge for a combined fee of more than £15m less than Chelsea originally paid. Time for a change? Didn't work out? Whatever.

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Chelsea's unlimited stash of 'whatever' money symbolises how they live on a different planet from everybody else. What if the departure of Hernan Crespo on a long-term loan suggests they will never see much of his £17m outlay? Whatever. How about paying £12m to Manchester United for a teenager who has never played at Old Trafford for a single second to disentangle John Obi Mikel from his contractual obligations? Whatever.

Since Roman Abramovich began underwriting Chelsea's accounts, more than £100m of whatever money has been discarded, if you include the Mikel deal. A considerable number of players have come and gone with their values tumbling between entrance and exit. In addition to Duff, Del Horno and Crespo, there was Adrian Mutu, Juan Sebastian Veron, Scott Parker, Alexei Smertin, Jiri Jarosik, Tiago. Obviously Chelsea can afford to deal with zero consequences. But it is this ability to trade so casually that illustrates the different worlds inhabited by Chelsea Football Club and the rest.

For 19 Premiership clubs, £100m equates to almost six years of TV money - a lifeline in the modern game on an annual basis. Any other club who haemorrhaged a similar sum would be, at best, looking to sack their entire board, or at worst, liquidated. To fritter away £100 million really is something else. If it wasn't so grotesque it would be admirable in its audacity.

Of course, when it comes to business, Chelsea specialise in the audacious. Locking horns with Arsenal over two players this summer, they will take extra pleasure from winning the battle twice over. They will get to sign Cole and to keep William Gallas should they so wish. The episode with their unsettled France defender is an interesting Chelsea case study. Relations between Gallas and manager Jose Mourinho have been strained for some time. The player has one year left on his contract, wants out, is only too keen to join Arsenal and has made a stand. All over the football world that is a guaranteed recipe for a transfer. But not at Chelsea. They can keep him as an exhibition of muscle flexing. If he leaves next summer for nothing on a Bosman, so be it.

'Hell-bent on ruining football' may be a comment Sir Alex Ferguson wanted to distance himself from when it leaked out during the summer, but it sums up the worry that persists outside of London SW6 about Chelsea's quest for global domination. It is frightening that the exposure and punishment of a tapping-up scandal neither stopped them from going back for Cole, nor approaching three young players from Leeds United, which provoked their old friend Ken Bates to cry foul.

It is not just in England that Chelsea's practices cause alarm. Bayern Munich's president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge disapproves of what he calls 'unacceptable' lack of budgetary controls, considering the two clubs have a comparable turnover. 'We make a €35m profit; this is required for our investment. Chelsea can lose €204m. Mr Abramovich obviously stumped up for it,' lamented Rummenigge. 'This makes for unequal competition, but we play against each other in the Champions League. This is not acceptable.'

In Spain, Barcelona's Lionel Messi confessed to hating Chelsea more than Real Madrid. In France, last week a teenage prospect the Blues had on trial chose not to swap Marseille for the King's Road. Defender Mehdi Benatia turned down their overtures, pointing to the failure of Shaun Wright-Phillips to make an impact as one of his reasons. 'Chelsea don't trust young players,' he said. 'I could earn a lot of money there, but I would stay on the bench and living that situation abroad is not what I want. Chelsea are impressive, but I am young and I need to play and compete.'

Fifa president Sepp Blatter, in one of his regular criticisms of the English champions, opined that 'Chelsea is an example of what should not happen'. For the club's players and manager, whose work ethic is first class, the negativity Chelsea continues to attract must be frustrating. Thierry Henry, who last week countered his disappointment in the prospect of Cole's defection across London by emphasising how much he admired Chelsea's team mentality, sings a rare song of praise from Premiership rivals who struggle to resist the blue juggernaut. 'I don't see money on the pitch,' he said. 'I see a team that fight.'

But Henry cannot honestly think the way they fight for supremacy from the boardroom is endearing. When will it stop? Will winning the Champions League be enough to make Chelsea relax sufficiently to loosen up on the megalomaniacal tendencies? The Champions League is the biggest profile-builder in football. A sparkling run, as Arsenal discovered last season and Liverpool the season before, takes a club, in terms of popularity and marketing, to parts of the world other club competitions cannot reach.

On the domestic front it does English football no benefit to accept that Chelsea's third consecutive title is inevitable. Desperadoes searching for reasoning that Chelsea can be toppled clutch at the hope that managing a squad of superstars will be problematic. It is hard to see how Michael Ballack and Shevchenko cannot provide even more options of the highest quality. But it is also easy to imagine a few noses being put out of joint.

When Italian football was at its wealthiest, the most consistent problem was monstrously paid players bitching and sniping about who was and wasn't on the teamsheet. Maintaining that Chelsea idea of 'the family' is a challenge. Just looking at the midfielders in Mourinho's squad, it is hard to believe Ballack, Frank Lampard, Claude Makelele, Michael Essien, Arjen Robben, Joe Cole, Mikel, Wright-Phillips and the seldom seen Lassana Diarra can all be happily accommodated.

Sooner or later, there may be some more 'whatever' money to add to the pile.

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by LFCfanbymistake But Henry cannot honestly think the way they fight for supremacy from the boardroom is endearing. When will it stop? Will winning the Champions League be enough to make Chelsea relax sufficiently to loosen up on the megalomaniacal tendencies?

A business reflects the mentalities of its senior figures, e.g. Chelsea are megalomaniacal because the men at the top are. Chelsea will only loosen up its megalomaniacal tendencies when it loses its board and that's not likely to happen. A whole lot of 'whatever' money will be squandered.

[aarongroves103]

Good article, but notthing new. Every week you'l be sure to find an article in a newspaper about the riches of Chelsea. unfortunatly thats just how English football is from now on and how it will be for a long time.

[gordon bennett]

Originally Posted by aarongroves103 Good article, but notthing new. Every week you'l be sure to find an article in a newspaper about the riches of Chelsea. unfortunatly thats just how English football is from now on and how it will be for a long time.

When we dominated, and when the Mancs dominated, there was still a belief that the Premiership was there to be won by someone else. We, or someone else, might win this season, but if Chelsea win again and again, eventually that belief goes, and the best players refuse to come here. This isn't Real Madrid where the politics cancelled out the money. Chelsea could destroy the Premiership if something isn't done. But what?

[aarongroves103]

Originally Posted by gordon bennett When we dominated, and when the Mancs dominated, there was still a belief that the Premiership was there to be won by someone else. We, or someone else, might win this season, but if Chelsea win again and again, eventually that belief goes, and the best players refuse to come here. This isn't Real Madrid where the politics cancelled out the money. Chelsea could destroy the Premiership if something isn't done. But what?

Good point.. I may be going off on a tangent here but look at other dominated sports such as Formula 1 - its ratings have plummeted since the late 80's early 90's because Its predictable and boring. I'm not saying the premiership is predictable and boring but with the way its going it soon could be. This isn’t just something that is happening in the premiership. Look at the other major leagues around Europe, Barcelona retained the title, as did Munich, Juventus and Lloyn.

[RoboRiise]

The best point that article makes is the one about "whatever money" beacuse it finally gives a name, however cliched, to the aspect of the Chelsea phenomenon that irks me the most.

It's never been the money they can spend on transfers for me. Newcastle regularly spend outrageous money to bring players in, Leeds took the piss with the amount of money they spent, United have signed two players for £30m each in recent years and our own spending under Houllier was hardly prudent.

Also, there are plenty of good players out there for every position on the pitch, it's not like we're all competing for the same two or three players. No one club can offer enough opportunities to play to make signing any more than three top-class internationals for a given position viable (two, more realistically) so to a degree the market has in-built limits.

No. With Chelsea , it's the fact that spending that much on a player isn't a gamble like it is for most other clubs.

Leeds put everything on black and the house won, Ferguson as a recehorse owner is more canny and went for an each way, which as usual just about covered his stake by providing a decreased proportion of winnings and we hit a run of back luck and ended up in a situation where we could still pay the bills, but needed to start putting out house in order sooner rather than later.

The old adage about gambling is that you should never bet more than you can afford to lose. For Chelsea, that figure is so much higher than for any other club in the Premier Leage that it might as well be infinite. Wright-Phillips is probably the best example; it's not that I can't see Rafa (or the club) spending £20m on a player, but if we did he'd have to be the most nailed-on, dead cert ever, because I don't think Rafa would want to spend £20m of the club's money otherwise.

Chelsea can afford to have a punt on a player for £20m. They can afford to pay £10m (if you believe the press) to another club to deal with tapping up allegations over a member of the non-playing staff and they can afford to pay one of their main title rivals £12m to smooth out "difficulties" in a transfer, even when the main "difficulty" appears to be that he signed a contract which was illegal according to FIFA's rules and thus utterly non-enforceable in the first place.

This is why the Chelsea argument that football is a business and that as a successful business they can do what they like angers me so much. They are emphatically not a business by any conventional understanding of the term. In a viable business, the money comes from success. In Chelsea's case, the success comes from the money. They are not a self-sustaining enterprise, rather they are the plaything of a rich benefactor and just like Watford and Blackburn before them, they will amount to nothing at all in the wider annals of the game. They are a flash in the pan, a football "event" for the X-Factor generation and in ten years time I will laugh at how they faded into the obscurity they so richly deserved.

[Gazmo25]

It is a decent article. The best hope that I think the Premiership has is that they self implode. More and more I think the signings that are being made are not typical 'Mourinho' signings. As good as Shevchenko is, £30 million is a scandalous amount to pay for a 30 year old whose value will depreciate greatly over the next couple of years. Unless Chelsea win the Champions League (which is by no means guaranteed) they will not see any impact from Shevchenko.

For all the money Blackburn spent, they still had a manager in Dalglish who could pluck players for next to nothing (Le Saux for £300k and Tony Gale on a free) and they made a profit on every player they sold.

Chelsea are just playing fantasy football and it will catch up with them.

[RedinSweden]

Good read that. I like the sound of Mehdi Benatia.

[bigredruss]

good article, if only there was more players like him

[ManxRed]

Just posted on the Momo thread that despite all that money it still could not buy them the best player on the park today, who in footballing terms cost next to fuck all.

[Christianlfc]

The media could put an opposit spin on it.

They could make Chelsea out to be the team to beat in the world.

Isnt true but it will attract players to smaller clubs who want to take up the challenge.