Well, there goes the season. Perhaps summer budget too. Who knows maybe the entire Chelsea 3.0 Blue Sky Project Stage One?
With 28 minutes to go in a Champions League second leg Chelsea always seemed to be losing, even when they were threatening vaguely to win it, the home bench took a deep breath, cleared its throat, and coughed up £260m of randomly assembled attacking talent.
Admittedly Chelsea were 3-0 down in the tie by the time Raheem Sterling, João Félix and Mykhaylo Mudryk came on to the pitch, having spent an hour playing with five defenders and three defensive midfielders, one of them installed as an assiduous and energetic No 10-cum-right-winger.
And yes, by that point this thrillingly overmanned attacking machine had mustered a single goal in its last 510 minutes of football. But hey: Boehly-ball. Go with it. Disrupt. Subvert the dominant paradigm. Storm the dressing room. Anything to keep away the gathering sense of quiet horror around this whole grand, baffling, viciously wasteful football-style project.
This was a strange football match. There is something sad, but also grotesque about seeing this Chelsea team toiling through their patterns, all mangled shapes and blocked talent. Nothing here feels permanent or stitched together, or put in place with any skill or love. We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men. We are the human spoils of Todd Boehly’s incoherent acquisitiveness, the top down confusion as to how this complex and heavily ritualised sport actually works.
For all that Chelsea did also play well here. Stamford Bridge was boisterously full, those low white midweek lights conjuring the muscle memory of more coherent times, of teams that looked like teams, of some guiding intelligence behind this 25-year project team. There were key missed chances before Madrid took the lead. The ball kept falling to N’Golo Kanté close to goal, but then this will happen if you select N’Golo Kanté to play close to goal.
Frank Lampard had picked a team to snipe and harry and chase, with Conor Gallagher and Kanté as his dogs of counter-pressing. And it worked for a bit. Chelsea did snap and chase and force some hurried clearances, producing 45 minutes of angry, chastened, slightly vague attacking pressure. Things happened but didn’t happen. Chelsea almost made chances. Reece James had an excellent game after the chasing in Madrid. Chelsea have many problems. James really isn’t one of them. Just before half-time Marc Cucurella allowed Thibaut Courtois to produce a world-class save, waiting just a little too long in front of goal.
Still, though it felt a little bit desperate measures, an attempt to throw a shape over something shapeless. By the end Chelsea had launched 28 crosses into the Madrid box, which really is a lot of crosses. Is this the right way to do this thing? Maybe. Who knows. What does Todd think?
Madrid just had to be good enough here. They took the lead through Rodrygo, set up by a lovely little pass from Vinícius Júnior. Rodrygo also walked the second goal into the net to make it 4-0 on aggregate. Kepa Arrizabalaga launched a wild, swinging leg as he lingered on the line. It felt a little insolent. But can you blame Madrid for that? This wasn’t so much men against boys as a highly competent team against a hallucinogenic fever dream of how to do soccer, winched into place by a coterie of hyped up management consultants.
Something a little grotesque has been created here, a real-time reminder of the things people want to do to this sport, of the distorting effects of money without sense or love or care. Even the half-time warmup was an excruciating spectacle as Chelsea’s star substitutes bumbled about in their padded coats bantering with Antonio Rüdiger, swaggering vaguely, conveying a sense of total alienation. There may have been more contemptuously disinterested knee lunges than those performed by Hakim Ziyech on the Stamford Bridge pitch. But not many. And none that spring to mind.
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And so Chelsea’s season has pretty much reached an end point. Perhaps the promise of a Europa Conference League place might fire the synapses. More like this entity is heading for some more public contortions. The air is starting to hum a little. And pretty soon nobody around here will have much to lose.
What happens to this club from here? There is no way of clawing back the stupid amounts of money spent. Income will now take a dive. What do you do to recoup those investment funds? Capsize the Premier League and start a money harvesting super league? Or cut your losses and move on to hydrogen batteries or olive oil or lithium mining?
Right now this place is starting to resemble a footballing version of the Raft of the Medusa, a sinking vessel peopled by castaways, hanging on not out of love or duty but self preservation. Who is really looking out for this thing anyway, the delicate, patchwork entity that is Chelsea FC. The club’s third manager in the last eight months is basically a sole trader, expert, if nothing else in self-preservation. The players have their own brands and auras and future worth to protect.
The season may be dead on its feet, a lesson in nothing more than how to turn human talent into cold product. But there is still a sense of unresolved energy about this toxic escapade. The next few weeks might just make for interesting viewing.