The Blues are a shambles from top to bottom. Supporting them through this period is not easy for a group of people spoiled by 20 years of Russian ownership. British government sanctions forced Roman Abramovich to effectively give away the football club he cared so passionately about. Abramovich always put Chelsea’s success ahead of financial gain.

Those currently at the helm of London’s finest have yet to gain their stripes. If Roman was propa, Clearlake, Blue Co., Todd Boehly, and Behdad Eghbali remain impropa and are at the heart of the disconnect. 

Those new owners enacted wholesale changes that rent the essence of Chelsea. Aside from the management, medical, coaching and playing staff, the only things connecting the fan base, other than the fans themselves - and, let’s be honest, we are a fractious bunch - are the name of the club and Stamford Bridge. Oh, and perhaps the Tea Lady. The Bridge is up for redevelopment: who knows where that will go under the Americans. Would anyone be surprised if naming rights came into the conversation? And there’s every chance the Tea Lady will be retiring next year, assuming she hasn’t been replaced by a vending machine before then. 

In a letter to the new management group, The Chelsea Supporters Trust (CST) expressed “significant concerns” about the direction the club is heading, citing a "disconnection felt by supporters towards the majority of the team, the manager, the club ownership, and the board." It’s a concern I share. The CST also claim that “the current feeling amongst Chelsea supporters in our opinion is at its lowest since the early 1980s.” For the first time in years, we have something to unite us, as those who live these games and see old age will ever say “We were here when we were shit.”

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The CST are right, and “disconnection” sums it up. The club are unrecognisable from a year ago. Comparing last weekend’s fixture in Sheffield to the game a year previous, only Conor Gallagher, Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella started both games. The game last season was a 1-0 defeat at Wolverhampton Wanderers, Super Frank’s first game back following Graham Potter’s sacking.

There are multiple reasons for this disengagement, most significantly, the new owners. Their recruitment strategy, to drill down on one realm of action.

If Chelsea are winning, there is no disconnect. But that’s not the case right now, and the nature of football demands fall guys.

The failure to connect between club and fan base is a two way street, though. Those in the stands and, worse, social media are hardly building bridges to and from the pitch. How connected to the supporters and club does Raheem Sterling feel as he’s booed during a game? The same goes for Mauricio Pochetino when he is patronisingly told he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Spoiler: he actually does, it’s just not working right now.

Ahead of the Everton game, Pochettino said he needs to talk the players up post-match, and there needs to be more positivity. That’s the crux. No matter how much anyone or everyone shouts and hollers, nothing is going to change regarding the club’s ownership. Likewise, adopting the successful, well trusted methods of the previous owner and ditching Poch in favour of someone picked by the current recruitment regime is unlikely to do the trick.

For myself, as a fan, I see no other path than to take the medicine currently being fed by Chelsea FC. I’ll look to the future and the good times that will hopefully return. For now, though, I am disconnected, bereft almost. However, there are small wins. The comeback win against Manchester United, was, if nothing else, exciting and the result magnificent. We reached the final of the League Cup and have a semifinal in the FA Cup to come. 

Those little victories may not stretch far enough for some fans, given the recent successes. I sympathize with that. To say it’s a generational thing rather than a Chelsea thing harkens back to the halcyon days of Maurizio Sarri. Let’s not go there. Let’s just say my childhood days were simpler than those of my children. The governance of a microchip over a kickabout in the park has created a must-win culture. No one’s playing FIFA with the same carefree elan with which I ambled around chasing a football. It’s a natural progression that a digitised Cole Palmer must mirror his analogue counterpart. What’s the point in playing if you don’t win?

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Chelsea are not simply in transition, they have been shut down, upgraded (or downgraded, take your pick), booted and rebooted again. Never has the word “project” been more appropriate to a football club, nor have any group of supporters, followers and fans been asked to trust the process more.

This current Chelsea squad is a long way off from the worst I have ever supported. Perhaps writing again will enable me to adopt more interest, allowing me to simply Trust. The. Process and regain a connection to the team I started supporting in 1972.

Each successively deeper reach into the analytical well moves the conversation further away from the one stat that ultimately matters: the result.

In my group of football friends, there's one guy who tolerates no distraction from the W-L-D-Pts columns. You can cite any stat, moment or trend that you want to, but as soon as you enter "Yes, [acknowledge result], but..." territory, he cuts you off and returns you to the scoreboard and standings. Interestingly, this friend is a self-described degenerate gambler. He understands probability and the roles of luck and randomness better than most. But his indulgence of likelihoods and stochasticity ends with the final whistle. When potential becomes actual, he is an Actual Ultra.

Every circle of football banterers needs someone to play the role of my friend, stating matter of factly: "But you lost." He holds the line on reality, and, in sport and life, we all need someone like him to ensure we don't lose touch with what matters in trendy loops of sophistry.

Sam Kerr led Chelsea in actual and expected goals in her first three full seasons at Chelsea FC, along with a handful of other offensive advanced analytics. She led the Women's Super League in many of the same during her first two seasons. Kerr scored four goals (outperforming the 3.1 xG) in eight Women's Super League games and five goals (nearly doubling her 2.8 xG) in four Champions League games this season before suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January.

Kerr's most recent batch of headlines stems from her arrest for a "racially aggravated harassment of a police officer."

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If you're not sure what that entails, it is, at least in part, "using insulting, threatening or abusive words that allegedly caused alarm or distress." If you're still not sure, she allegedly called the police officer a "stupid white bastard," although she may dispute the "bastard" (and, to be fair, unless the officer mentioned his parents, how would she know?).

Like a fan who'd rather not confront the scoreboard and takes cover in shot-creating actions per 90 minutes (SCA90), articles about Kerr's arrest bypassed the fundamental issue and went straight to fractally reductive sophistry.

Befitting a No. 9, much of the conversation centered on power. Who was on what side of the power imbalance: Kerr or the police officer?

The police officer acts with the authority of the state, and even an unarmed officer has a legal monopoly on the use of force. The accused in this case is a professional athlete, which carries cultural and social power, often sufficient to garner judicial leniency. The athlete in question is a woman, and the officer is a man. As we know, the officer is white, and Kerr is of partially Indian descent. If a partially non-white person uses "white" epithetically towards a white person (presuming that person is "fully" white, and is anyone else getting as uncomfortable as I am?), is that racism, or is it racial but not racism if you agree that power is a necessary component of racism?

Like a variety of shots taken from different positions with either feet or the head, we're now tallying fractions of power units for each party, so as to come up with an expected power differential (xPD) for the interaction, all of which may or may not weigh on the relevance of the racism vs. racial question in adjudicating the charge against Kerr. And all of which are irrelevant next to the fact of the charge.

Janet Albrechtsen is a conservative Australian journalist, who performed a similar analysis as I did here for much the same purpose. She, too, elevates the irrelevancies while conceding both the premise and the Enlightenment. "Kerr reportedly is planning to argue she didn’t use the word bastard. That misses the point. If Kerr referenced the London bobby’s skin colour, that’s where she went wrong," Albrechtsen wrote.

If we're being generous to Albrechtsen, we can say that she is giving Kerr some legal advice: when charged with a "racially aggravated" offence, dispute the racial epithet, not the mild slur.

But Albrechtsen gives us no reason to extend her that generosity. Nowhere in her essay does Albrechtsen oppose the fact that Sam Kerr is facing criminal charges and potential jail time for speech. That places Albrechtsen firmly alongside Kerr's detractors and xP analyticos. The only difference between them is how they weight a few different components of the xP equation, hacking out the coefficients for being mixed ethnicity, female, and famous, akin to asking whether the xG assigned to a shot should differ between a player shooting with her dominant or non-dominant foot, and then whether it should matter if that foot is goal side.

They stick to sports now?

Give the football world partial credit for recusing themselves from these power plays; and for treating Kerr no differently than they treat ordinary people who fall under their custody, their fans and supporter.

That latter credit is deeply negative, though, and sinks their balance sheet.

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The footballing institutions that have a professional relationship with - and a duty of care towards - Sam Kerr have surrendered her to the premise that speech is a crime, just as clubs across England have done with fans charged with tragedy chanting, gender critical tweeting, and shirt wearing. These institutions are products of their culture and fall under the purview of the state in a way that is every bit as anathema to a student, product and beneficiary of the Enlightenment and what were once Anglo political values (this guy) as a speech crime. In that sense, you can almost excuse them leaving their fans out to dry. But to sacrifice a star player is not a commitment to law, nor to equality, nor to what passes as contemporary civic values in England and Australia. It's a betraying admission that "You work for us, but we work for them, and we owe you nothing." Or, shorter: We know what side our bread is buttered on.

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly had only a few weeks between the Sam Kerr news and the Shohei Ohtani news. For better or worse, Boehly's attention will be firmly on the west coast and not west London for the foreseeable future. Still, he had those few weeks, and neither he nor his deputies said anything during those weeks that would suggest that maybe, just maybe, English football's newest American owner had brought something with him from the US other than the idea of an all-star game.

To be fair, Boehly has never been particularly vocal nor held himself out as some kind of pantomime maverick. And Chelsea would have needed a much stronger leader than him if Kerr had any chance of her employer doing anything principled on her behalf.

As I wrote last September:

If any player, pundit, team owner, or league executive opposes the U.K.’s existing and metastasizing anti-speech laws, he or she is staying quiet about it. Maybe they fear that opposing anti-speech laws violates said anti-speech laws. Or they fear getting the Daryl Morey treatment from their bosses, peers and players. Every individual and entity in English soccer that has spoken about these laws has done so with enthusiastic support. The only aspects they are ever less than enthusiastic about are the remaining limitations on the prosecution of speech.

English football doesn’t have a Daryl Morey, and they definitely don’t have a Chris Pavlovski. Before long, they won’t have any residual unapproved speech. Not in culture, not in media, not in sport.

It's easy to figure out who has the most (all?) power when one party aggregates it and all others surrender it. Intersectional grievance math might give Kerr a large advantage in xP, with all the underlying components pointing decisively in her favor.

Meanwhile, a few of us are watching the scoreboard and standings, pointing out "OK. I see where you're going with this. But we lost."

Might this just be mathematical mental gymnastics trying to subvert the sense of misery that comes with each disappointing result?

Briefly, yes. These glass-half-full mathletes are up against a formidable foe: reality.

Chelsea has amassed a formidable 39 points from their last 38 Premier League matches. xG be damned, Chelsea truly is that bad. Per one of football’s pre-analytical rules of thumb, the sub-40 point total suggests relegation level incompetence. Recent history is a bit kinder: 40 points tends to land you closer to 15th than 18th. But the point remains. Thirty-eight matches is a reasonable sample size, and the most recent sample available shows Chelsea to be a candidate for the trap door.

Sometimes, the doom and gloomers simply reflect reality.

A mismatch between underlying stats and observable performance is hardly unique to Chelsea. At any given time, a team is likely over- or underperforming relative to underlying stats.

Setting Chelsea apart from your run of the mill disparities between expected anything and actual reality are the severity and longevity of the dissonance. Since the start of last season, Chelsea has scored 42 league goals against an xG of 61. In the six league matches so far this season, it’s five actual goals versus 11.5 xG. That’s a brutal degree of profligacy, and it’s only getting worse.

For the pundits and Twitterati dining out on the “Chelsea has spent nearly $1 billion since Todd Boehly acquired the club” trope, it’s a time of gluttony, lazy as that take might be.

Chelsea is, of course, in an uniquely extreme rebuilding phase, as the exorbitant transfer spending would indicate, and it’s worth looking at just how outrageously severe the overhaul is. It’s perfectly normal for clubs to go through a process of phasing out older players and bringing in younger, fresher replacements. Two or three players one window, three or four the next. Accepted customs dictate a slow evolution to maintain and improve upon a squad over time.

What Chelsea has done over the last three transfer windows is something else entirely. Since the 2022 summer transfer window, the Blues have brought in 26 new senior players.

Keep in mind, the Premier League requires clubs to submit 25-man rosters. Boring squad makeup regulations aside, Boehly & Co. essentially purchased an entirely new squad within 13 months.

Indulgent as that is, the club’s hierarchy went to great lengths to clear the decks to make room for all of these new faces. Over the same three windows, 32 players left the club.

Even if you want to limit that list to those who were fully involved in the first team prior to their departure (looking at you, Kenedy and Baba), that’s still 21 players out the door within a calendar year.

It’s a level of turnover typically seen in clubs that take some sort of devastating financial blow, a la Portsmouth in the late 2000s. For Chelsea to undergo such a dramatic transformation both willingly and from a place of relative financial strength is unprecedented in modern sports.

Chelsea’s struggles over the last 12 months raise a quasi-philosophical question as to what constitutes “Chelsea.” Looking at this squad turnover – to say nothing of the four head coaching changes in the same span – little more than the club’s crest and a handful of players have actually sustained the full year of difficulties.

Roman Abramovich’s yacht has been replaced by an equivalently unmoored Ship of Theseus.

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Reece James, Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva and Trevoh Chalobah are the only established first team players to have stuck with the club (or, conversely, with whom the club has stuck) through this extended swoon. Perhaps, then, it should be no surprise that Chelsea’s defense has remained fairly steady, especially relative to the profligate attacking play. As it turns out, there is some value in maintaining at least a shred of familiarity.

Players coming and going is one thing, and should add some important context to the idea that Chelsea is in the throes of an extended downturn. However, extrapolating opinions beyond the range of the moment demands additional context about this squad rebuild.

To avoid burying the lede any further, Todd Boehly has exhibited an obsession with young adults under the age of 25 that even Leonardo DiCaprio would blush at.

Chelsea is now the youngest squad in the Premier League by a comfortable distance. Burnley is second youngest, at 24.4. For comparison, West Ham is the oldest, at 28.1.

Perhaps both points won and xG could be caveated by the extreme unwieldiness of Chelsea over the last 12 months. There’s a reason statisticians are quick to ignore outliers, and this squad qualifies as one across multiple dimensions. Until statistics – both top line and underlying – can account for this complex crossroads of inconsistency, turnover and inexperience, it might be best to lean on simpler principles to explain Chelsea’s current ills.

Chelsea’s overarching run, sans analytics, is one of disappointment founded in unfamiliarity.

Unfamiliarity between players as the squad turns over at an incredible rate. Unfamiliarity between coaches and players. Unfamiliarity with the rigors of the Premier League. Hell, unfamiliarity with being an adult and top level professional athlete.

Any of these factors could reasonably explain the club’s current malaise. Enduring them simultaneously raises the question of why Chelsea isn’t in an even sorrier state than it currently is. Perhaps a 12th place finish last season was actually a commendable achievement.

The recent string of encouraging results may hint towards nascent cohesion, though inconsistency is likely to plague this incredibly young squad in the short term. At the very least, the burgeoning midfield trio of Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo and Conor Gallagher seems to be establishing itself as a particularly tenacious force.

Conversely, the club continues to be plagued by an inescapable rash of injuries, even when there is no European football to drain players’ fitness; and after players had time to recover during a summer mercifully devoid of major international tournaments. Having a squad of ostensibly young, fresh athletes who still seem to pick up muscle and ligament injuries with stunning regularity is concerning. Whether it’s physiology, poor habits, or ailing karma, some players are just terminally susceptible to injuries.

While statistically unlikely, it’s hard to shake the thought that Chelsea has somehow recruited quite a few of those players. The constant question of recovery periods and load management only adds an extra layer of unfamiliarity on top of the laundry list of self-imposed challenges.

The statistics many people love to parrot – both the easily comprehensible and somewhat more obscure ones – lack so much context as to be unfit for purpose in a situation unlike any in professional sports. There’s no tested protocol for how to improve the results of a team in a constant state of flux moving at near light speed. On the other hand, this might all be a relatively simple concept: a bunch of random guys showing up at a pitch are likely to need some time before they’re ready to compete at the highest level of the sport, especially when many are essentially showing up for their first grown-up job.

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Chelsea are working through an exercise in unprecedented absurdity, made worse by a public failure to acknowledge crucial context. Fortunately, Chelsea is plenty familiar with unprecedented absurdity.

Photo credit: Mark Harkin / Flickr, under CC BY 2.0.

Shakhtar Donetsk has not been able to play in Donetsk since Russia invaded the Donbas region in 2014. They've called Kharkiv, Lviv, Kyiv and - for European competitions - Warsaw and Hamburg "home" since then.

Qarabag FK has been displaced even longer and, at least with regards to their birthplace of Aghdam, can never go home again.

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More consistent transliteration would make it easier to associate Qarabag the football club with Karabakh the region and Nagorno-Karabakh the disputed semi-autonomous republic. But the different spellings make it easier to distinguish the two when writing about them, so we'll proceed with Qarabag being the football club and Karabakh being the region. That said, Qarabag left Karabakh during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1993 and have been based in Baku ever since. As for their home, "[t]he entire town of Agdam is in complete ruins with the exception of the mosque in the center." Aghdam was considered a ghost town for nearly 30 years, until Azerbaijan reclaimed it in 2020.

Azerbaijan took charge of Aghdam as part of the resolution to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. The preceding sentence sacrifices a lot to convey a sense of beginnings and ends. As with Ukraine, it's not particularly useful nor accurate to think in terms of discrete events in 1993, or 2011 or 2014, or 2020, 2022 or 2023. Better to think of those as the years when frozen conflicts sublimated into violence.

Like Ukraine last year, Nagorno-Karabakh recently suffered another military incursion by its progressively encroaching authority-claiming neighbor. But unlike with Ukraine last year, neither the sports world nor the overseers of sport are doing anything to indicate they care, nor even using the conflict to give sportswashing cover (v2.0 style) to their score settling.

When is an oligarch not an oligarch?

"A corporate mogul whose business empire has won [contracts] worth billions of dollars... is tied to the president's family through secretive offshore companies."

Obviously, we're talking about Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin. That sentence could have come from any number of publications or official statements from the last 18 months: The Guardian, The Times, a Chris Bryant speech in Parliament, a press release from the UK, Canada or US trumpeting new sanctions of seizures.

Except it's none of those things. Literally none.

That sentence is from RFE/RL in 2013. The president is Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev, and the mogul is Hassan Gozal. Hassan Gozal is the CEO and his brother, Abdolbari, is the President of Intersun Holdings, the parent company of Qarabag FK. Within the power structure of Intersun, Abdolbari is also the president of Qarabag FK.

RFE/RL's description of Gozal's business practices and his relationship with Aliyev is nearly a find all-replace for Abramovich and Putin. Azerbaijan's policies and actions towards Nagorno-Karabakh since the fall of the Soviet Union are similarly interchangeable, mutatis mutandis, with those of Russia towards Ukraine. These players all show up in the Pandora Papers, outlining their holdings in the UK and UK territories such as the British Virgin Islands. The humanitarian crisis, marked in Nagorno-Karabakh by the displacement of nearly the entire ethnic Armenian population to Armenia, is a difference in scale, not degree; and is driven by a historically valid fear of genocide.

But the reactions vis-a-vis the sports world to events in Nagorno-Karabakh compared to Ukraine are, to use the phrase, chalk and cheese.

No ministers in Whitehall, functionaries in Brussels nor wonks in Foggy Bottom are calling on UEFA to suspend or expel Qarabag FK from the Europa League. No one associated with Qarabag FK is under any more sanctions now than they were last week, nor facing denunciations and property seizures. There's been no suggestion that Bayer Leverkusen, Molden or Haecken will or should boycott their upcoming Europa League group stage matches, wear an armband or laces in Armenian national colors, or take a knee at the opening whistle. None of UEFA's sponsors are convening meetings of their crisis comms and rapid response DEI teams to ensure they don't have any marketing or PR exposure to the events in Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving us to wonder if 3 would have bailed out as expeditiously as they did from Chelsea. Henrikh Mkhitaryan is not the automatic beneficiary of warm applause and sympathetic commentary, as Oleksandr Zinchenko and Vitaliy Mykolenko were in the back half of the 2021/22 season. Turkey is playing the role of Belarus in this conflict, yet there's no hint that Turkey's flag will be removed from Nations League graphics nor next to Caglar Soyuncu's or Hakan Calhanoglu's names on lineup graphics.

Why, the situation is being so thoroughly ignored that Mike Penrose hasn't been invited to set up a beautiful, tremendous charity staffed bigly with the absolute most brilliantly top men.

Not a phone call. Not an email. Not a nickel.

And for the most part, as an equally uncompromising advocate for the separation of sport and state as for judicial due process, I'm OK with all of that. If not for the Roman Abramovich precedent.

The hypocrisy isn't the worst part, because we're talking about warfare and potentially crimes against humanity. Other than those, Mrs. Lincoln, yes, the hypocrisy is the worst part.

Despite what my colleague Nate darkly desired, Chelsea were not put into administration in spring 2022. He'll have to find another source of hope than the prospect of fans (and supporters) and benefactors crowdfunding a phoenix club. It may be that, during ExpropriationFest 2022, Lord Richard Attenborough saved Chelsea one more time, posthumously, via the legal structure he helped create that separated ownership of the club from ownership of Stamford Bridge, ensuring the club will always have a home. That would be surprising inasmuch as it would show that the UK government still recognizes some limitations on its powers, even when intoning the word "oligarch." But just imagine what they would have done if Roman Abramovich had engaged in "tragedy chanting."

Chelsea fans are still connected to their club's history through more than a badge and memories. Nate might snort, "Lucky us." After the last two seasons, a lot of fans may share that snark.

Looking at the off-pitch events at Chelsea of the last two seasons, plus the plight of clubs like Shakhtar Donetsk and Qarabag FK, I share the statement but not the sentiment. "Lucky us," I lament, understanding that the one thing we as fans always expect to be there for us can be taken away from us so capriciously.

As much as I wish we could have some consistency in the performative gestures and retributive sportswashing that seem to afflict some sports and some clubs more than others, I don't want the Roman Abramovich precedent to be applied to other clubs. I can't believe I'm about to say this: not even Liverpool.

Instead, I'll return to something I wrote in January that, like so much else, events have increasingly proven right. The more closely you observe what's playing out around two of Chelsea's easternmost European opponents "the more it looks like the expropriation and forced sale of Chelsea FC was about Roman Abramovich and Chelsea first, Russia and Putin second, and Ukraine not at all."

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Photo credit: cfcunofficial / Flickr, under CC BY-SA 2.0.

That cheer ends abruptly in the second sentence of his most recent article. Starting there, Zeigler raises more questions than he answers (including a few of the seven I asked on the day the sale closed); and his uncritical relaying of several pieces of information reminds us that while he may be the only person in corporate or state media writing on the topic, he is still a person in corporate or state media.

Zeigler's second sentence:

"Mike Penrose, who runs the foundation, said the former Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, has agreed to the cash being released, but the government’s insistence that every penny must be spent inside Ukraine is holding up the funding of projects."

Roman Abramovich agreed to the cash being released. Well, that's nice of him! But, wait... Abramovich is part of this process? Did he mitzvah the cash transfer during a courtesy call with Penrose, or is he somehow required to sign off on the expropriation-by-release that Penrose is managing at the UK government's behest?

Could Roman Abramovich scupper the entire scheme by simply not going along with the plans to disburse the money from the sale he was forced to make, under a sanction regime that is still under legal challenge in multiple national and continental jurisdictions?

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That's just the first half of the second sentence. The second half links well with something Ziegler writes a few lines down.

"The foundation, however, wants to fund projects to help refugees outside Ukraine, and also countries threatened by famine because of the wheat shortage caused by Russia’s invasion."

Neither the UK government nor Zeigler should be surprised by this conflict, as Penrose has never limited his plans for Chelsea's money to a single country. Penrose, quoted in Sky, 16 May 2022:

"The foundation created from the sale of Chelsea could have an enormous effect on the lives of millions of people, in Ukraine, and other conflict-affected areas... The only request I received was to use my experience and contacts to create a Foundation that would have the greatest impact on conflict affected people in Ukraine, and in other countries affected by conflict across the globe."

Unless Sky omitted a crucial modifier - "this" conflict, "the Ukraine" conflict, "Putin's" conflict - Penrose said then what Penrose is saying now. His ambition was never to disburse the money from the Chelsea sale to the victims of Russia's war against Ukraine: it was to use that money as seed capital for a larger "humanitarian" philanthropic endeavor, consistent with his past work at UNICEF and his current set up in the sustainability-industrial complex. But reading Ziegler's article, you'd think this is a new wrinkle, or perhaps one party trying to change the terms of the arrangement, contributing to the latest delay.

Remember, too, that Abramovich offered - in March 2022 - to sell the club and distribute the entirety of the proceeds to victims of the war. That offer was tacitly rejected when the UK government froze his assets, including the operation of Chelsea Football Club, and forced the sale. And now here we are.

Next, Ziegler quotes Penrose again:

"I’m at a loss to know why we cannot get on with it and the money is still stuck in the bank. We have offered the government an observer’s seat on the board with the power of veto for anything that would contravene sanctions. There are projects we could fund immediately if we could just have the clearance.”

Which government? Part of the delay and a source of practical obstacles to the disbursement of the funds are the overlapping and, at times, conflicting sanctions regimes of the UK and the European Union towards entities associated with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Even a humanitarian expenditure that helped victims of the war who happened to live on the wrong side of a line on the map would violate the sanctions that, like nearly all such, do not distinguish between the state and the people.

Knowing this, Penrose said in a remarkable July 2023 op-ed (that I, admittedly, found and read for the first time in the course of writing this article) in Ziegler's own newspaper, "I can assure you that neither I, nor our esteemed board, wishes to go to jail."

That quote points to a question that runs through the entirety of Ziegler's most recent article: Who, or what, is this foundation?

Penrose veers towards Trumpian use of adjectives when describing his partners at the foundation that has no name, no web presence, no (detectable) Charity Commission registration: "esteemed board," "most respected humanitarians," “absolute experts,” "world leaders," "one of the world’s leading law firms," "some of the best fund managers on the planet.”

That is to say:

All of which leads us back to where I was, in May 2022:

• What are the retainers, salaries and honoraria of everyone involved in the foundation? What are the fund management fees being charged by the law firms and fund managers Penrose is bringing into the process? What are the annual administrative and operational costs of the foundation?

• What are the final transactions in the chain of money that starts with the foundation and ends with goods or services “on the ground” in Ukraine? Is the money being used to buy food and water? Medical and sanitation supplies? Providing shelter or relocation services? Is the money actually buying these products, or funding service contracts to organizations that process and distribute products bought by other organizations?

• Who / what are the other sources of money coming into the foundation?

• What guardrails will ensure that no money is used to buy weapons or fund combatants?

And what I said and asked in January 2023:

[T]o think that my biggest concern at the time was that the money would mostly end up flowing to well-connected NGOs and defense contractors. Was that being naive or cynical?

When people tell you who they are, believe them

It seems beyond strange that I'd be counselling people to take governments, politicians, the media and NGO careerists at face value. But from Libs of TikTok to Joe Rogan's "Jamie, pull that up," when you can just go to the tape and listen to what people say and observe what they do, there's no reason not to believe them.

The UK government showed, in spring 2022, how quickly they can move when they want to.

Mike Penrose has been the most consistent party in this whole situation. He could certainly be more transparent, but there's nothing he's saying now that should surprise us if we've listened to him for the last 16 months.

If, when the UK government releases the Fordstam funds to his foundation, he acts in accordance with those stated plans - for good or ill - the only people who will be surprised are those who have chosen not to listen to him. And if he acts contra those plans, I don't want to hear anything from anyone who has allowed him to obfuscate so many key details, even as he's been consistent on so many of his macro intentions.

The media has shown, over the last 18 months, how doggedly they can pursue a story when they want to. They can dig through corporate registrations, tax filings, link analysis, leaks and hacks to map out Roman Abramovich's shell companies, tax havens, real estate holdings and offshore bank accounts, including those in the names of his family members.

But they have no interest in investigating why £2.5 billion remain frozen in the same account that Roman Abramovich used to operate Chelsea Football Club, 16 months on.

Other than Martyn Zeigler, none are even interested in straight-on reporting of what some of the principles in that situation have to say, nor even giving the standard midnight log entry from thousands of naval vessels at sea and in port: NSTR. Nothing significant to report.

Except that sometimes, "nothing significant to report" is, itself, significant and worth reporting. Sixteen months of "nothing significant" regarding £2.5 billion from the forced sale of an expropriated asset with a global market owned by a sanctioned individual during an escalating war seems significant to me.

Probably why I'm on Substack.

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Photo credit: Matt Brown / Flickr, under CC BY 2.0.

If there's anything we should mock and scorn him for, it's thinking that he'd get an Oprah-atic sympathetic interview and receptive audience via The Athletic, a paywalled auto-immune disease of The New York Times. Better to have just sat down with the lads on TalkSport and taken a few mildly homophobic questions from a few mildly homophobic cobbers before the conversation shifted fully to why Liverpool didn't win the treble.

The lesson for which we are foregoing our own moral tut-tutting is that eventually every person, footballers included, has to choose between making the right decision for themselves and making the right decision in the eyes of some group that they affiliated with during the years when the self had not fully formed and tribal identification was easy and advantageous.

That's not verbosity. That's just evolutionary neuropsychology.

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Professional athletes meet two key desires of activist causes. First, they come with a built in, high affinity platform. People are already listening to what they have to say and are inclined to follow them. Second, because they are young people living in a bubble, they offer the "from the mouths of babes" innocence so prized by groups looking to short circuit reason and debate.

In short, they see Premier League academies (and Division I colleges, and Olympic Development Centers, and....) as gestation pods for an army of Greta Thunbergs.

To whatever extent Henderson had genuinely thought through gender and sexual identity and the ideology that has sprung up around it (believe it or not, that clause - including this parenthetical - is shorter than the current acronym), or Saudi Arabia's recent and current human rights record, he did so within the controlled safety of Premier League life. He could stay detached from both because neither were going to intersect with his career in a zero sum way. Until they both did.

Give Chelsea players credit, then. Whether it's coincidence, team culture or in-house guidance, Chelsea players rarely adopt a cause to put alongside club and country as their priorities.

If they engage in charitable causes, they do so without Pharasaic preening. Many times, their interests are very personal, such as development in their home countries or neighborhoods, or a disease or condition that affected a family member. As such, they keep their involvement accordingly personal. Additionally, the Chelsea FC Foundation gives them an outlet for their philanthrophic leanings, keeping them away from Tinder-but-for-activism, swiping until they find a casual cause hook up.

Of the two somewhat recent times a Chelsea player weighed in on the issue of the day, one said "no mas!" to a stale gesture. The other made an unsolicited entry into a contentious debate, prompting my former colleague to write a headline that made me realize I had joined the right site and would enjoy working with him: "Cesc Fabregas wades into Brexit debate because reasons."

Because reasons. Precisely.

It's understandable that we'd like to think that our heroes will put principle over paycheck, the little guy over the regime; club, country and cause over sovereign wealth funds. But given that pro athletes are the only people in Henderson's country and my own who get an emptier education than the average citizen, we're expecting all that from people who can barely put a numerator over a denominator.

Despite my bottomless contempt for all aspects of the Saudi sportswashing industrial complex, including those who facilitate it, I can only bring a limited amount of that contempt to the athletes who go there. Most of my contempt towards the athletes is on competitive and sports grounds: scoring goals and winning trophies in the Saudi Premier League is about as prestigious as doing so in Major League Soccer and the Chinese Super League (I still don't understand Oscar). In terms of looking back on one's career and saying "I won the most that I could at the highest levels possible," leagues that start with "Vanarama" command more sporting gravitas than leagues that start with "Saudi," regardless of who jumps to the latter.

But I understand the inevitability of having to reckon with the hills we take and defend in the ignorance of youth - sadly deemed "idealism" - even if that reckoning is fully personal and introspective. The road to rational self interest has a few tolls of regret. But you pay those tolls, maybe have a laugh about it, and move on.

The danger is being too loud, too public and too frequent with those early statements, because until you're able to navigate the road ahead, the regret forced upon you will be just as loud, public and frequent. That's unfortunate, because it is an absolutely vital and rewarding journey. But it's self-inflicted, which means it's not unfair.

Jordan Henderson doesn't deserve the "morality officers" coming after him, to use Brendan Rodgers' term. The fact that the morality officers are training their fire on Henderson rather than the Saudis highlights the fact that they are but morality rent-a-cops.

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The lesson for young sportspeople and those of us who help develop them is that we all have to answer for our decisions, even those that we think are good. Until you can see a few steps down your road, minimize the future discomfort by not seeking maximum stature.

Otherwise, you'll be justifying people doing all those things I listed at the outset.

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I won’t bombard you with the fees paid and the ages of the players that Chelsea recruited, we know they were (a) expensive, in the main, and (b) young and inexperienced. So I do worry that this squad is very much for the future. It’s early in the season of course, and although the style of play has been enjoyable at times, Saturday’s shambles at home to Nottingham Forest was a difficult watch. There are, however, extenuating circumstances. Three, in particular, come to mind.

Injuries continue to plague the football club like no other. This problem has been around for some time and continues to make the job of managing an elite football team very hard.

Mauricio Pochettino currently has nine players in the physio room. At least he’ll be able to discuss tactics and ideas with those while the rest are away on international duty. Five of those nine - Reece James, Benoit Badiashile, Wesley Fofana, Carney Chukwuemeka and Christopher Nkunku - are most likely in the starting XI. Given the second extenuating circumstance, a lack of strikers, there’s a definite argument that Armando Broja should also be included among the laid-up starters.

Why didn’t Chelsea buy a proven out-and-out striker? In fact, why haven’t we done so for nine years?

Don’t be throwing Romelu Lukaku back at me because I’m not counting him. I’m calling Diego - Ooohhh Diego - Costa our last decent striking centre forward. He signed at Stamford Bridge on 1 July 2014, and since then nothing, nada, nicht, zilch. Nicolas Jackson may, in time, prove to be the one. I really hope so, if for no other reason than his rocking the 80s look with those short shorts. To be positive, though, let’s not forget the stinker of a first season Didier Drogba had at the club. That turned out fine.

Post window, it’s come to light that the club were not interested in buying players over the age of 26. I guess that all makes sense when you’re giving them contracts in excess of seven years. Will it also become apparent that we operate a no-striker policy, too? It certainly feels that way, which segues us right into the third, all encompassing extenuating circumstance.

To say Chelsea FC are a club in transition undersells it. To call it a project barely soils the blueprint.

Todd Boehly and his band of merry people bought, nay, saved a club that were on the brink. Perhaps that’s a bit strong. Despite UK government pressure, Chelsea FC would never have folded. This has been a very tricky time for those who follow the team from SW6. The board have been aggressive in ridding the squad of players who appeared to have no interest in playing for London’s two time Champions League winners. That’s to the leadership’s credit.

Less heartening has been the way the much maligned products of the academy - because let’s face it, that's all they are, products - have been moved on at the expense of a new kind of yoof. A yoof that may or may not pay off down the line.

The board have danced along the line of Financial Fair Play with these long contracts and youthful signings. Time will reveal whether that pays off.

For now, though, a year on from Thomas Tuchel’s departure and four managers later, the club remains, to my eye, in disarray. As we look forward, with the likes of small town Brighton reveling in our mire, we’ll be known as the Billion Dollar / Pound Boys.”

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With everything else that is going on, it will be a burden that fans and the young souls drafted in will have to bear. They like us must once again…trust… the… process.

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Caicedo hadn’t completed a medical on Merseyside as Willian had with Tottenham in the summer of 2013, but he still chose Chelsea over Liverpool. Nevertheless, the Reds’ unofficial media machine were yards offsides Photoshopping the Ecuadorian into a Liverpool shirt ahead of last Sunday’s season opener at the Bridge. Their joy at gazumping the Blues for Caicedo a few days after Chelsea’s transfer team had spent laborious weeks trying to thrash out a deal with their Brighton & Hove Albion counterparts gave way to a crash that was too much for the Liverpudlians to bear. A small amount of wee may have come out.

The subsequent furore over a player wanting to go to Chelsea over Liverpool has sparked quite a debate on the social media channel formally known as Twitter. How dare they, right? Indeed, a club with a history as rich as Liverpool’s is much better than anything those free loading Londoners can offer.

Former Liverpool striker John Aldridge said as much in his column in the Liverpool Echo.

As soon as the player made it clear he wanted to go to Chelsea over Liverpool, I didn’t want him at all. We are bigger than Chelsea will ever be. If Caicedo wants to go to Chelsea, good riddance.

There they go living off their history rather than creating some new. Aldridge clearly cannot believe anyone would choose CFC over LFC. It has to be something else.

They are a London club and some players see that as a big pull. Their wives, with the Louis Vuitton shop on Oxford Street and the London way of life, will view that as a huge attraction.

The London way of life. What the f**k is that? I’ve been to Liverpool. If shops are your angle, it does have shops. Okay, they don’t have a Louis Vuitton, but they do have shops and bright lights that I’m sure would attract that type of person. Call it the Liverpool way of life, if you will.

The rest of the article reveals more than just sour grapes over the Caicedo deal from the former Liverpool player.

Aldridge has a clear hatred of Chelsea. He mentions how Chelsea’s Champions League winning striker Fernando Torres's move was awful and hard to stomach. Aldridge took pleasure from being in an Oxford side that beat the Blues three times in four months. The real giveaway, though, is when he talks of Jude Bellingham, who, like Caicedo, snubbed his beloved Reds for Real Madrid. There was no “good riddance” for Bellingham.

With Bellingham, he must have just wanted to go to Madrid. If Liverpool was his primary choice, it would have been done. He must have been seeking the sun in Spain and playing for a massive club in La Liga. Good luck to him.

Good luck on your move to Real, but good riddance on your way to west London. To be fair to Aldridge, though, he does stay on point by claiming Bellingham chose the Spanish sunshine over his football team. I would say he missed a massive trick, though: there are three Louis Vuitton shops in the Spanish capital.

Brighton CEO Paul Barber was hardly singing Chelsea’s praises when he spoke of Caicedo choosing Chelsea, but he touched on a familiar theme.

Liverpool’s a fantastic football club. For any footballer to have the chance to play at Liverpool, you’d imagine that they’d be running up the M6 but it wasn’t to be. Moisés and his advisors decided for whatever reason that London was their preferred destination, and ultimately Chelsea.

Obviously, that puts us in a slightly difficult position because we’ve negotiated a deal, and we’d spent many days working with Liverpool. They couldn’t have done any more, they were superb and professional throughout. But then it comes down to the player. At the point that it was clear he wasn’t going to Liverpool we have to go into a different mode - having negotiated a British record transfer, we have to do it again three days later.

Reading between the lines, Barber clearly dislikes Chelsea FC.

“Liverpool’s a fantastic football club” (Chelsea are shit, then).

“Moises preferred destination was London” (no, it wasn’t, it was more specifically Fulham Road, London SW6, Chelsea Football Club).

“We’d spent many days working with Liverpool, superb, professional throughout” (they’d spent many weeks working with Chelsea, and we can only assume this was less joyous).

Despite Barber’s best efforts, he simply couldn’t get the deal he wanted over the line. Player power won the day, and for once it worked in Chelsea’s favour.

Again, like Aldridge, Barber believes it’s London over Liverpool. City versus city rather than club versus club.

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Honestly, Liverpool, the place, is not that bad. The city gave us The Beatles, for goodness sake. The Cavern Club offers a great night out. It’s like these people have to come up with misogynistic tales of wives' and girlfriends’ desires to shop ‘til they drop in order to make a move to Chelsea more attractive. Elvis Costello “didn’t want to go to Chelsea,” but a lot of people do.

Fast forward one week, and Chelsea unveiled Liverpool target Romeo Lavia as their latest signing. I like Lavia, too, another Liverpool snubber. Sky Sports reports that Southampton and Liverpool had agreed to a deal, but the player - shock & horror! - wanted Chelsea.

I'm really happy to join Chelsea and be a part of this exciting project. It's an amazing football club with a great history and I'm really excited to get started.

It’s an amazing football club with a great history. Yes, it is, and I like to think that’s a sly dig at Aldridge’s crass comments. As far as Caicedo and Lavia are concerned, Liverpool's great history is exactly that: something from the distant past. Something that happened before they were even born. Why would they care about Liverpool’s history? It has no meaning or relevance to them.

Lavia would have been better to adopt the Aldridge line. “I’m really happy to join Chelsea. There is a Louis Vuitton store a short distance away from Stamford Bridge for my future wife or girlfriend. She will love it.”

The hate Chelsea attract is, as we know, very real. So far this season, Liverpool and Brighton have been at the heart of it.

It’s no surprise coming from Liverpool. The two clubs have history after all, although Liverpool’s is further in the past.

Brighton, however, would do better to keep it quiet. Over the long term, they are in a different league. However, that may change if Chelsea keep on pumping cash their way. During the last two transfer windows, Chelsea have lined Brighton’s pockets very well. Paul Barber may well sing the praises of Liverpool, but it’s Chelsea that have bankrolled his club for a few years to come. Graham Potter and his cohort's compensation, and the signings of Marc Cucurella, Caicedo and Robert Sanchez have all added to the pot. A total of £197 million plus another £27 million in add-ons has been drafted from west London to the south coast.

It’s not just about Liverpool and Brighton, 2023-24, though. The resentment goes back much further. In 2003, Jesper Gronkjaer scored the goal that saw Chelsea pip Liverpool for a Champions League spot the following season. A few weeks later, a certain Russian threw his rubles into SW6 and ruined football for everyone but Chelsea. So much water has passed under Stamford Bridge in the subsequent years; and although Roman Abramovich set the ball rolling, plenty of others have dipped their toes in the water.

Notably, Manchester City, who you would have to say have spent a fair whack of dough during their rise to the top. The mud that gets thrown their way appears less sticky, although Pep Guardiola would probably disagree as he laments Chelsea’s recent transfer windows.

What I'm saying is that if we did it we're dead. For Chelsea, it's easier than for us. I have no criticism, they can do what they want. But we would be under scrutiny like you cannot imagine. I wouldn't be sitting here if we spent what Chelsea have spent in two transfer windows - you [the media] would kill me.

Chelsea have taken a shed load of criticism for their spending, thanks very much. They were the nouveau riche. They may have started the fire, but plenty of others were willing to stoke it (weirdly, not Stoke City, though).

All the big teams - Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool - have spent big at different times over the last 20 years. Be it a state-run club or a rich man’s or woman’s plaything, today’s owners have niched off any thoughts of successful, organic growth. The money that teams need to keep up comes from the top, not the sponsors, and definitely not the fans and supporters. Ask Jurgen Klopp, after his club's unsuccessful attempt at buying our hero Caicedo right from the start. Klopp surely would never want to be spending £100 million on a footballer.

Whilst the likes of Brighton are overvaluing players and Saudi Arabia, following in China’s footsteps, is paying exorbitant wages, football finances will continue to be in freefall.

Chelsea are not responsible for that, yet the hate continues. Abramovich, for all his alleged badness, was still happy to subsidise the NHS and its staff with the free use of his hotels during the recent pandemic. Plenty more beneficicaries exist for the exiled philanthropist.

To hate on Chelsea is too easy. At best it’s lazy, at worst it’s pure ignorance. But maybe Aldridge was right all along. Perhaps it’s simply that Chelsea Football Club are located in the richest part of the greatest city in the world, as evidenced by those five Louis Vuitton shops.

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Photo credit: It’s No Game / Flickr, under CC BY-2.0.

If the Americans knew it, young footballers around the world knew it.

And if young footballers knew that Liverpool hadn't won a title in their lifetimes, and hadn't won any trophy since they were toddlers (Caicedo) or infants (Lavia), then they also knew that Chelsea won titles as a matter of course. Any time they looked across the Atlantic or across the Channel as they pursued their ambitions from the youth ranks to the U18s, they would see Chelsea lifting trophies. In their childhood years, they'd see Manchester United doing it on those occasions when the Blues didn't; and in their teen years, it would be Manchester City filling in as the regular non-Chelsea champion. And, during those impression forming years, if Caicedo and Lavia watched European competitions, if there was an English team they could count on in the finals, it was Chelsea.

Being a Liverpool partisan - paid or volitional - means thinking that history stopped in 1989. You know what I mean, and it ain't Francis Fukuyama.

But what I also mean is that Liverpool still operate as though they have the appeal and allure for young players that they did in 1989, when a teenager would associate the Reds with up to 10 First Division titles in their lifetime. From Jurgen Klopp up to the executives and down to the fans, Liverpudlians can't accept that Chelsea is more of a destination club for young players than theirs is. Liverpool FC's culture and identity are so wrapped around the 1980s that they are unable to understand that players born in the 2000s are attracted to the success they watched in the 2000s and 2010s: success that came home to Stamford Bridge, not Anfield.

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"Plastic fans." "No history." "Chel$ki." If those pejoratives and lazy bantz ever had meaning, they've lost it, and they certainly never had it with footballers born in the early 2000s in non-England countries. Those footballers, along with anyone who has come into football since then, either by birth or by choice, have never known a world where Chelsea wasn't winning and Liverpool was. They've never known a world where Chelsea wasn't dominating the moment - on the pitch and in the headlines - and Liverpool wasn't trading on the past.

Tradition and history are beautiful and important parts of sport, particularly football. They're the reason we keep Kevin around.

They can help attract new fans, as some aspect of a team's past may resonate with someone getting to know the sport for the first time, and that quality gives them an early point of affinity and identification.

But they do not help attract new players. Players do not seek affinity. They follow ambition. Sometimes, affinity follows (e.g., Azpilicueta, Cesar).

A twist on the Lindy Effect gives us a reasonable predictor of a team's success over the coming X years: that team’s success over the preceding X years. A player who wants to optimize his career over the next 10-15 years will look to see who has had the most success over the last 15 years, and make those clubs the targets or totems of his ambition. That's not to say that any other club he signs with is just a stepping stone or take-what-you-can-get fallback. Simply that when one of those target clubs calls, he goes there with minimal hesitation. And when he can choose between a target club and any other, he's going to choose the target club.

Anyone who followed the Premier League for the last 10-15 years, or who crawls out from under a rock today and reviews the history of the last 10-15 years, is going to predict more success out of Chelsea than Liverpool for the next 10-15 years. That's the scale of a club's history that is relevant to players.

Obviously, this riff on the Lindy Effect ignores the discontinuities that can occur in a team's history, such as new ownership or the retirement of a dynastic coach or player. The 10-15 years for Chelsea before 2003 (Roman Abramovich buys), for Manchester City before 2008 (Sheikh Mansour buys) or Manchester United before 2013 (Sir Alex Ferguson retires) were not predictive of the subsequent 10-15 years.

Neither Liverpool's purchase in 2012 nor their hiring of Jurgen Klopp in 2016 have had such a discontinuous effect. Klopp has led the Reds to two major trophies: their first Champions League in 14 years, and then their first Premier League in 30 years. Two in six years does not a Lindy-breaking discontinuity make, not even if you add the domestic cups and the UEFA Super Cup. Not on the scale of their traditional rivals, Manchester United. Not on the scale of their rivals of the last few years, Manchester City. And not on the scale of their transfer market rivals, Chelsea FC.

That's not just a matter of money. At this level, the transfer market reflects the desires and ambitions of the players. Those were shaped over the last 10-15 years, the years in which those players were fans, aspirants and entry level professionals. They weren't shaped over the last four years when Liverpool managed to win a few things. Nor were they shaped 30-40 years ago, when those players' parents perhaps watched Liverpool win a lot.

Jurgen Klopp has perfected the look of bitter bafflement when things don't go his way. In this regard, he is the perfect representative of Liverpool FC.

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The modified Lindy Effect tells us we'll get at least double his tenure of struggling Scousers. Struggling on the pitch, struggling on the transfer market and struggling to understand the already in motion wave of players who will choose Stamford Bridge.

Long may he reign in Red.

Photo credit: cfcunofficial / Flickr, under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ziegler builds well, reporting early in his piece that the Premier League's latest investigation of Chelsea FC is the result of self-reporting by Chelsea's new owners. That's good for a couple here-we-go-again eye rolls. He then drips in that the investigation centers around transactions that occurred between 2012 and 2019. Wry grins, head shake, breathy omg. So sometime between the trophies in Munich and Baku. Starting in the days of AC3 + JT vs. AVB, extending all the way to Kepa vs. Sarri at Wembley. From Frank Lampard featuring in highlight clips of late runs into the box to Frank Lampard appearing in the preseason video that gave this site its name.

Ziegler could have held off on the punchline a bit longer, but not everyone has Norm McDonald's patience for building a joke through meandering details before climaxing in Chekhovite absurdity ("Cuz the light was on!"). If he's guilty of anything, Ziegler buried the comedic lede.

Sources with knowledge of the case have said that payments to about six offshore companies have been identified, which are believed to have been linked to the transfer of players. The payments, which run into seven figures, appear not to have been registered as part of the club’s annual financial reporting to the FA, Premier League and UEFA.

Some of the offshore companies have been traced to... - The Times

*record scratch* *rewinds tape VHS style*

"The payments, which run into seven figures..."

Seven figures? So, less than 10 million pounds or euros, bones or clams or whatever you call them. Spread over seven years, starting 11 years ago and ending four years ago.

Gold, Jerry. Gold.

But as Frank Lampard himself would say, haha no, but seriously...

Defining down the “Campaign against Chelsea?”

Roman Abramovich has been spotted only a handful of times in the last 18 months. Chelsea will not be playing in Europe this season; and while they are favored to finish in the top six this season, their odds for doing so are closer to those of Aston Villa and Brighton than to those of Arsenal. The fines for this seven figure misfeasance will, one would think, be in the lower seven or even six figure range, which would be well below the fines Chelsea recently paid to UEFA and a fraction of the £100 million Todd Boehly withheld from the purchase price for just such "unforeseen liabilities." The fines will be on par with Chelsea's purchases of Ethan Ampadu and Gabriel Slonina, the only players Chelsea have bought since 2016 whose transfer fees "(ran) into seven figures."

It's difficult, then, to chalk this up as part of the "campaign against Chelsea" because the infractions are so small and the consequences so, well, inconsequential. Both the crime and the punishment are at Queegian levels of chickenshit.

Maybe, for once, it's not about Chelsea.

Premier League taking cover behind Chelsea fines

Chickenshit virtuosi can, for a time, convince third parties that they are scrupulously and meticulously enforcing high, rigorous standards. This follows from the virtuosi convincing themselves that that is what they are doing.

Context is the killer. Chickenshit often masks or compensates for critical deficiencies in the leader's ability to execute their actual mission or mandate.

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If all you see is the chickenshit, you can logically assume that the same rigor applies to all aspects of the organization, all the way up through the one or two big things. In some cases, the rigor and scruple does extend through everything. That's the Queegian form of chickenshit: he could justify his actions in battle as minutely and convincingly as he did the strawberry incident, reducing the men of the Caine to arguing "You had to be there." But taking a defensible action is not the same as demonstrating competence, let alone command of a situation.

A more illustrative example, then, is Captain Herbert Sobel from the book and miniseries "Band of Brothers." He "generated maximum anxiety over matters of minimum significance" through his cruel and capricious manner of enforcing uniform, barracks and physical training standards. That could be tolerable - he was preparing men for war, after all - except he "had neither common sense nor military experience. He could not read a map."

The Premier League needs chickenshit as a diversion, gloss or counterclaim right now because they know they capitulated on the big one: Newcastle's purchase by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. They also know that they'll be arguing for some time with the Football Association over the Premier League's responsibility to support teams down the pyramid, particularly in the shadow of the teams that went into administration as a result of the 360°, four dimensional, undiluted failure that was the COVID-19 response by these and every other English institution (just because it was as bad or not as bad as other places doesn't change the assessment). Additionally, the Premier League continues to lag on concussion protocols - no more so than the rest of football, but England has had more media scrutiny on the effects of brain trauma on current and retired players than any other football (the soccer form) league but still lack more stringent protocols.

There are others.

Bringing it all back around, they may even think they missed a previous big one and didn't act early or extensively enough against Roman Abramovich, allowing the government to paint them a black eye in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Saudi government is using Newcastle and football globally to sportwash 1.0 their many crimes. To compensate for their enabling role, the Premier League is using chickenshit enforcement to sportwash 2.0 this and their other current and continuing failures.

Which means we can expect more of this from the Premier League, and likely from other governing bodies. The Blues will play their role, but it won't just be them. Chelsea will always be a convenient whipping boy and shelf stable villain, but that's the beauty of chickenshit: there's always an infraction just waiting to be found. And if you can't find it, just figure out whose turn it is.

Look for the governing bodies to occasionally generate some tough-on-crime headlines, pad their enforcement stats and, in doing so, gin up a few online lulz from fans of the rivals of whichever team is in the crosshairs this month.

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With so little else to smile about, maybe Roman Abramovich can appreciate the humor in this situation.

Photo credit: Jon Candy / Flickr, under CC BY-SA 2.0.

OMG, that can’t be right. With the catalysts to any confrontation gone, the - one more last time, with feeling - Cultists and Yer Da’s are (re)united.

We saw signs of a coming together at the start of last season, with Champions League winning Thomas Tuchel getting fired after just seven games in favour of Graham Potter (who?). Post Maurizio Sarri, Jorginho and Frank Lampard, Potter’s Chelsea were so poor that no one could argue. Not with the results, not with their assessments, not with each other. In time, not even the Chelsea hierarchy could tolerate the dross. The new ownership checked the playbook and hit the “Install Chelsea Legend” button and drafted Super Frank back in.

But the club were hopeless beyond any manager’s ability to salvage. Paul McCartney and John Lennon at their very best would not have been able to get a tune out of that over-staffed Chelsea squad. The season was woeful, from a preseason that stretched no one beyond lethargy to Lampard’s first six games back in charge, all losses, to the final games that put Lampard’s chances of sitting in another coaching dug out in severe jeopardy.

It was an outrage, but by then we were all numb to it.

Even for a club that refuses to have a normal, steady, sedate season, this was a strange one. Set aside the managerial changes, and “transition” still doesn’t begin to describe the full on, club-wide metamorphosis that even now is still not over.

Despite his history at Tottenham Hotspur, Mauricio Pochettino has been accepted without question. This is a significant positive, not to be underappreciated. You have to go back a few seasons to remember all factions of the club singing from the same hymnal. Further, Lampard’s “son” Mason Mount has gone. While we can all be united in wishing him the best, except when playing Chelsea, the final player causing friction will no longer split social media.

If Twitter (Editor’s note: X) is anything to go by - and we all know it is - Chelsea’s games in the USA attracted views from folks in the UK staying up way beyond their bedtimes. Supporters broke digital bread with fans, and peace appeared to settle over the Bridge.

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It’s all set to be a harmonious, happy camp in SW6 moving forward and the future looks bright with Pochettino in the hot seat.

With that in mind, reckoning up the ages of this summer’s buys so far, the future really means what it says on the tin. You’d really have to squint to see it. But there always remains that one fissure, that one point of vulnerability, instability or disequilibrium, perhaps that one player who could drift or sway or make one one-touch backward pass too many, that gives hope for recurrence of friction in the fan base.

“Aside from Silva, where the hell are the experienced players?” moaned the old man.

“A Casadei-Santos pivot as cover for Enzo-Caicedo would be really cool,” was all the yoof had.

Is that human nature, or simply a Chelsea thing?

This seed of intra-fan unity is barely sprouting, and perhaps it will never flourish along the King’s Road. But in the wacky world of Chelsea Football Club, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on as the season progresses.

If we can’t get that going, at least we can all hate Brighton and Hove Albion.

Share It's a Chelsea Thing

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Rhondda’s Russian-routing MP targets Malvinas Mauricio

First, the UK government ousted Chelsea’s former owner, Roman Abramovich, from the country because of his alleged connection to a war they weren’t actually a part of. They then forced him to sell the club he had owned for the best part of 20 years. A year on from that, Argentine Mauricio Pochettino appears ready to be installed as Chelsea’s latest manager, yet the powers that be in Westminster remain silent.

For those unfamiliar, in 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic ocean that Argentines call the Malvinas (and that a former American president - not the one you think! - called the Maldives). A dispute between the two countries had been on-going since the 1800’s. The ensuing conflict saw nearly a thousand lives lost. It was serious stuff. 

At the forefront of Abramovich’s demise was Labour Member of Parliament, Sir Chris Bryant. He relentlessly campaigned for the removal of the West London club's former Russian owner.

Now, he is absolutely fuming. He was just settling back into his run-of-the-mill parliamentary life when another Chelsea scandal comes along, quite out of the Blue(s). The Conservative government’s apparent policy of non-intervention, abject apathy or blunt unknowingness with regards to Pochetino's appointment is forcing the Rhondda MP to, once again, examine the goings-on of Chelsea FC. 

“We were quite happy to force Abramovich out of Chelsea because he was linked to Putin. But we are willing to allow the same team to potentially benefit from having an Argentine at the helm?”  Bryant asked. “We got rid of the Russian off the back of a war we’re not directly involved with, but allow an Argentinian to manage them despite a war we were in. If I may be blunt, it’s fucking madness.”

The Falklands sovereignty status continues to be a part of an ongoing dispute between Argentina and the UK. Nonetheless, Mauricio Pochettino is setting up camp in SW6 unless Rhondda’s crusading MP is able to force the government’s hand once again. - Kevin Peacock

Todd Boehly belabors the art of the deal

Mauricio Pochettino is the new Chelsea manager. Wait, that’s not right. Mauricio Pochettino will be the new Chelsea manager. No? Let’s try that again. Mauricio Pochettino is, allegedly, highly likely to become the new Chelsea manager, at least to the extent that various journalists have staked their credibility and credentials on same conclusion: the deal between Pochettino and Chelsea is essentially done. Here we go!

And still, we wait for white smoke to rise from the chimney of the Cobham canteen. Potentially holding up the official announcement, per very legitimate sources who point to their own attestation and their blue tick on Twitter to reify their legitimacy, are a few lingering hurdles to jump over and hoops to jump through.

Apparently, Todd Boehly and Pochettino were in a meeting late into Wednesday night in London, trying to iron out the final details of the contract. Speaking anonymously for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the official club janitor confirmed that he heard “That’s not how it works, Mr. Boehly!” repeatedly coming from the executive suites. He also claimed that he heard various forms of “Ay dios mio” and “¡me cago en laputa!” - in Spanish - in “that awful Argentinian accent that makes me want to stick a pencil in my ear.”

The club did not respond to our request for comment on this outrageously racist remark by such a high ranking employee.

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One of the points of contention in the contract, and allegedly the reason for the “That’s not how it works, Mr. Boehly” is a clause that requires Mauricio Pochettino to guarantee that he will charm Lionel Messi and any future Messis into signing for Chelsea. It’s unclear if this refers to actual familial relations of Lionel Messi, or non-related players who are dubbed “The [insert nationality or non-state ethnicity] Messi” here, e.g., Marko Marin (German Messi), Travis Mutyaba (Ugandan Messi) and Chanathip Songkrasin (Thai Messi).

This mirrors Todd’s approach when hiring Graham Potter.

At that time, the target was Jude Bellingham, who was supposedly bedazzled by Potter’s Englishness and a last name that reminds him of his favorite childhood fictional character. Frank Lampard was the last throw of the dice, as he is the only other Englishman Todd has heard of with an association with Germany: a World Cup goal that was disallowed despite being the goaliest of goals you’ll ever see.

Bellingham’s almost immediate agreement with Real Madrid is wholly unrelated to Todd’s laughably transparent attempts to tempt the generational talent. Evidently, while “money attracts money,” nationality does not attract nationality, at least not between prospective managers and players.

There has also been a logistical reason for the delay. An early draft of the contract was flagged as spam for containing too many exclamation marks after “Congratulations.” After the club re-sent it, they forgot to attach the contract to the email. And a third time, the contract Pochettino received had the name “J. Nagelsmann” penciled in all the places where one is supposed to sign.

As these obstacles dissolve and attrition seems increasingly just not worth it (“I’m so tired,” Todd and Pochettino both posted on Tumblr), the mini saga seems to be coming to an end.

Unless Todd has pulled a fast one and slipped in a clause in the fine print requiring Pochettino to accept the Falklands’ accession NATO - because Russia, natch - the whole thing should be wrapped up and official by the weekend. - Abhishek Pancholi

Lampard didn’t necessarily say anything wrong – it was just incomplete, which gives far too much of an opening for take artists and clickbait merchants to feed the AI bots that are coming for their jobs.

They didn’t even need to do all that much. Lampard gave them the headline: “Lampard SAVAGES Chelsea players: ’Team needs some physical work...are a yard short.’”

Callum Walsh, head of performance at Alanyaspor and formerly of Newcastle, Huddersfield Town, Wigan, Cardiff City and Liverpool, knows first hand that evaluations of a player’s fitness “can be drastically different depending on each coach’s game model and in-game requirements. Hence the importance of trying to hire coaches with similar game models.”

All Lampard needed to do was append “for the way we’re approaching the game.”

Let’s try it.

“I think the team needs some physical work for the way we’re approaching the game. I think that’s important for us because at this level you have to be right on the limit and we are not on the limit right now for the way we’re approaching the game…. When you are a yard short for the way we’re approaching the game, you are just a yard short. Or when you are receiving the ball and not confident in the way we’re approaching the game, you take your first touch backwards.”

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The players aren’t coming up short on fitness tests at Cobham. They’re coming up short in the specific contexts that Lampard’s game model (such as it is) puts them in. Their fitness is not sufficiently specific for the current set of expectations, which makes them look weak, sluggish, slow, easily fatigued or whatever the complaint of the day is.

Fit for purpose: Whose purpose?

Sports performance practitioners (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me) talk a lot about sport-specific movements, exercises, drills and tests. Does this movement in the gym resemble a movement in the game?

For example, football players going up for a header typically jump off of one foot while in motion. If they take off from two feet, it’s normally from a momentary “set” after getting into position, or from an awkward position because of the presence of a defender (like on a corner kick). And they do so to get their head as high as possible, as that’s the highest playable part of the body. So how “sport-specific” is a standard two legged countermovement jump test where the goal is to whack a pennant on the Vertec to measure the height of the jump?

Or, on the technical / tactical side, how sport-specific is it to dribble around cones? Cones are much smaller than people and, unlike most players (insert your bantz here), are stationary. So, do cone drills really prepare a player for the demands of the game?

The idea of sport specificity is valid and essential for sports performance coaches and head coaches to consider. Like so much else, it’s a matter of context: there’s a time for general, and there’s a time for specific.

But like anything else, there’s a lot of opportunity for caricaturization. At one extreme we have Maurizio Sarri, who didn’t want players lifting weights in the gym because players don’t run around with barbells and dumbbells on the pitch. Remains, to this day, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

At another extreme we have the complaint from new coaches – typically midseason, but also some who lament not getting a “full” preseason (see, again: Sarri, M.) – that their players are not fit or otherwise prepared for the way they’re approaching the game. If this is true and not just a smoke screen from a manager taking fire, that means the players were trained so specifically that they regress several months or drop a level in athletic execution (applying physical and technical abilities to tactical, competitive situations). That’s the complete opposite outcome from another trending family in sports performance verbiage: resilience, robustness, anti-fragility (it’s me again, hi, I’m still the problem it’s still me).

Players should not be a midseason replacement manager away from a spike in injury risk or a drop in market value.

Matching models is not a priority with midseason replacements

Whereas Lampard was correct but incomplete, Walsh is correct but a bit idealistic in his assumptions. Walsh said that considerations of fitness and game models highlight “the importance of trying to hire coaches with similar game models.” But clubs cannot always hire such a coach, especially not midseason, and that’s assuming they even want to.

Any manager arriving in March or later is there to do a salvage job, whether that’s salvaging respectability in the case of a club like Chelsea or survival in the case of Leeds or Leicester. That goal demands a specific style of play, one that would not make sense at any other time of the season, implemented on the tightest of timeframes, which requires a specialist in such a style, such a way. And that’s why we get to see Big Sam and Dean Smith back on Premier League touchlines.

Other than restoring some vibes around Stamford Bridge and Cobham, it’s hard to see what specific job Frank Lampard was brought back to do, which makes it easy to imagine that he occupied the wafer thin slice of the Venn diagram where “Available” overlaps with “Willing.” “Similar game model” may have baffled Todd Boehly along several dimensions: not only did he probably not understand such things as game models (he did sack Thomas Tuchel, after all), but he probably also didn’t realize that there are some things that even he can’t simply buy, such as game models and successive managers with similar game models.

Fitness is a marginal difference built on marginal gains

Graham Potter’s and Frank Lampard’s Chelsea game models are similar in that they are indistinct and unsuccessful. But that is only at the most superficial level. Whatever Frank Lampard wants his players to do, and trains his players to do, and tells the performance staff to prepare the players to do, are all different from how it was under Graham Potter.

The players’ baseline level of fitness makes them, let’s say, 98% ready to execute any other manager’s game model. But given the margins and marginal gains along every dimension in the Premier League, that 2% difference weighs far more than the 98% commonality.

The differences in physical fitness between Premier League teams heading to the Champions League and those heading to the Championship are much smaller than the tactical, technical and certainly financial differences between those teams. Even at the extremes of incredible athletes like Erling Haaland and, on the continent, Kylian Mbappe, their physical fitness is much less a differentiator between them and their peers than their technical and tactical abilities.

Almost any player and sports performance practitioner could find themselves implicated in a “they’re not fit enough statement” from a head coach.

Perhaps the athlete performance industry needs to develop ways to build more versatile and anti-fragile players, so that even if they are “not fit enough” for the new coach they are at least not at a higher risk of injury because of the new coach. We need more study and attention from practitioners and the people who work in that industry’s professional development (hi, me again). To my knowledge, the few examinations of injury rates and head coach sackings did not look at how much of the backroom staff changed with the transition. This aspect, therefore, may be a powerful argument for clubs to have a permanent performance staff that is immune to managerial turnover. That would require a technical director or Head of Performance who leads the staff towards developing players who will experience minimal effects from a new manager.

In parallel with these improvements, head coaches could learn the value of that little phrase “for the way we’re approaching the game.” Using it is no guarantee that the media and pundits won’t elide it from their clicky headlines and hot tweets, but why should anyone in the sport make it easy for the take merchants?

If nothing else, putting fitness evaluations in context will keep feathers unruffled around the training ground and amongst the people who actually care and actually matter.

Imagine if, last May, someone other than Todd Boehly was willing to buy the dumpster fire-in-waiting known as Chelsea Football Club. The Blues could currently be undergoing their second quasi-nationalisation in two years…...

Chelsea live the dangers of compulsive gambling

Allegations have surfaced that Mattress Mack, the American gambling personality (and occasional businessman), has given into his crippling addiction and put Chelsea FC in mortal danger of going out of business.

Having acquired the imploding club from Roman Abramovich in the sort of confused, vainglorious, political backscratch that defines “Texas white trash wealth,” Mack has done little to improve the condition of the club. If anything, his ownership has accelerated the club’s decline into irrelevancy and, now, insolvency.

Leaked documents from an FA investigation show that, in a Pete Rose-esque bout of impulsiveness, Mack placed a substantial wager on the performance of his own club, currently languishing as an also-ran in League One, following two unprecedented mid-season point deductions and relegations.

Betting slips indicate Mack put $3 million on Chelsea to finish in the top six, a number that dwarfs his club’s current operating income.

While sports betting is widely advertised across English football, those who have a direct hand in the game are understandably restricted from taking part. Mattress Mack appears to have been painfully unaware of this. He was also painfully unaware of the fact that “League One,” despite its seeming primacy, is not the top league in England, so he bet on Chelsea finishing top six in a league that they weren’t in. No one tell him about Serie A.

Sources within the FA and the club itself feel an ouster of the Texan is inevitable, with the club likely going into administration. And that’s to say nothing of the more standard, impending off-season points deduction, which will place the club squarely between such fellow celebrity vanity projects as Wrexham AFC and Real Bedford.

With a tempestuous and entitled fanbase already shifting their allegiances elsewhere, the idea of the club being saved by local investment is almost farcical. This is, for all intents and purposes, a death knell for the club.

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As it turns out, trusting a gambling addict to responsibly steward a flailing multibillion dollar sports operation in a nation that actively promotes sports betting is a losing bet, so to speak. Who would've guessed? - Nate Hofmann

$CHELS gets rekt

Federal court filings earlier this week suggest Sam Bankman-Fried is willing to continue owning Chelsea Football Club and serve house arrest within the Stamford Bridge hotel and residence complex, with his lawyers arguing that “being affiliated with this club and its fans is sufficient punishment” for the various fraud charges Bankman-Fried faces related to crypto-Ponzis FTX and Alameda Research.

If federal prosecutors and SBF strike a plea deal along these terms, it will represent a poetic inversion of how SBF came to own the club last May.

Bankman-Fried financed the purchase of Chelsea FC by leveraging his OneCoin (of Bulgarian cryptoqueen fame) holdings to “mint” a record amount of his in-house shitcoin, $FTT. American and British regulators then allowed him to convert said shitcoins to cash through a deal with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, under the terms of which Bankman-Fried would install Altman’s WorldCoin eyeball readers at all entrances to all Football League, non-league and Sunday league stadiums (and hospitals and churches), a move that generated far less fan backlash than Ted Lasso CGI-ing a character’s name over that of Chelsea legend Ray Wilkins on a banner that hangs at Stamford Bridge.

The UK government signed off on a such a deal because they thought it was the most punitive thing they could do to Roman Abramovich without having to go through legal and judicial due process, while also upgrading the government’s biometric surveillance data capabilities from “NHS” to “NSA.” Now, with the real international criminal exposed as an ill-mannered, unkempt, orgy-indulging nepo baby, the tables are turned. Whereas Abramovich was punished by having Chelsea taken from him, Bankman-Fried is consenting to the punishment of retaining the very same club.

Speaking on a Twitter Spaces against the advice of counsel and the meth addict sitting next to him on Market Street in San Francisco, Bankman-Fried said, “If I go to an American prison, I’ll be Epstein-ed within a week. I’ll be safer on the streets of London. International government assassins never strike there.”

Note: Sam Altman’s WorldCoin eyeball readers are a thing. So is OneCoin. Check out the links for some really interesting and seriously f’d up background on them.

Todd Boehly plots his exit strategy

Recognizing the failure of his post-game talks to motivate the players or educate the coaching staff, Todd Boehly is looking for the exits rather than personal / professional growth. Seeing the protracted process taking place at Manchester United and not wanting to self-inflict more misery, Boehly is reportedly engaged in talks with the Wagner Group, Russia’s viciously criminal mercenary organization.

“The quicker I can become the target of international sanctions – or, at the very least, get on the UK’s blacklist – the sooner I can rectify the mistakes of last spring.”

Boehly previously tried intoning the word “oligarch” in front of the bathroom mirror during a slumber party with Behdad Eghbali, hoping but failing to summon the ghost of Boris Johnson.

Instead, they just received shitlord memes from Piers Morgan. - George MJ Perry

Todd Boehly taps Hollywood pals in quest for success

It’s no big secret that since taking over Chelsea FC, Todd Boehly has struggled to emulate his Russian predecessor at the helm of London’s finest football club.

Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea when, in terms of success, they were on an upturn after years in the doldrums. Abramovich’s money allowed the Blues to push harder on the accelerator. Success followed success until Vladimir Putin came along and dragged his comrade into an untenable position. We know how that all ended.

Boehly’s Clearlake consortium arrived like knights in shining armour with a bountiful bucket full of bucks intent on returning Chelsea to the top.

Player after player was drafted in at great expense and, as the season unfolded, Boehly appeared intent on causing destruction in SW6. Thomas Tuchel was ousted in favour of Graham Potter who left before the season ended after a string of horrendous results. Frank Lampard was chosen to steady the boat but has, so far, only hastened the lifeboats into the sea.

Fortunately for Blues fans and sympathizers, Todd Boehly has access to some of Hollywood’s “B”-listers. It’s been documented that chat show host James Corden tipped Boehly the wink over Lampard’s availability post-Potter.

More than that, though, word along King’s Road is that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have been down in Cobham working on some of the players' fitness levels.

Both Arnie and Sly have been shocked at what had been going on whilst Potter was in charge. A spokesman for the club was unwilling to confirm the removal of fitness equipment to make room for personnel, nor would they elaborate on there being not only ketchup available at the lunch counter but barbecue sauce, too.

An eyewitness, however, did spot a drizzle of brown sauce on the corner of Christian Pulisic’s mouth as ran out onto the Cobham turf. -Kevin Peacock

Missed connections, Cobham edition

It has come to light that Emma Hayes was offered the chance to take over as manager of Chelsea men’s senior squad in a first-of-its-kind, glass-ceiling-shattering dual role that would have seen her carry on her duties with the Women’s team.

Todd Boehly offered her the interim post that Frank Lampard ultimately accepted.

Following Graham Potter’s departure there was a desperation to get some kind of motivation into a group of players who appeared to have stagnated. Hayes, who has been with Chelsea for 11 years, is seen by the Blues board as Proper Chels and someone who would be able to drag the men’s squad out of its screaming malaise.

Hayes, however, whilst happy with her own management skill set, felt that it would be easier to land a balloon on the moon than get a tune out of this current bunch of players. -Kevin Peacock

Todd Boehly plots his exit strategy, Part II

Defamation lawsuits are all the rage among politicians and billionaires these days, which makes this a good point to reiterate what we said above: this is pure satire, and poor satire, at that.

Anywho, defamation lawsuits are all the rage among politicians and billionaires these days, and Todd Boehly’s FOMO combined with his desire to get himself clear of Chelsea FC have him preparing to file a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.

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“The Wall Street Journal’s front page article of May 1, 2023, ‘[Jeffrey] Epstein’s Private Calendar Reveals Prominent Names,’ failed to mention my client a single time,” Boehly’s personal lawyer said in a press release. “As a proud member of The Three Comma Club, one who went so far as to acquire a foreign soccer (sic) team as a vanity project and then micromanage it into the ground in a manner of months, my client is as stereotypical a billionaire globalist power broker as any of the individuals mentioned by the Journal in their article. By excluding Mr. Boehly from this authoritative list of Who’s Who in global finance, power and prestige, they have reduced him to the status of a mere tradesman, impugning and defaming him amongst his peers.”

A review of public and private documentation related to the Jeffrey Epstein case reveal that not only did Mr. Boehly never visit Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean – dubbed “Sex Slave Island” because of the frequent presence of Prince Andrew – but that Messrs. Boehly and Epstein never even met, nor did they have any mutuals.

Asked to comment on our investigation, Boehly’s lawyer responded:

“We do not contest the Wall Street Journal’s omission, nor do we dispute your findings that there are no personal, professional, financial nor blackmail ties between my client and the deceased (lol) Epstein. Our case centers around the fact that my client felt unduly excluded from the article, merely because the facts support his exclusion. Facts are violence, as you well know.”

A source speaking exclusively on background agreed with that statement, adding “He’s really hoping that if he’s connected to Epstein, his assets – including Chelsea Football Club – will be seized by the US, UK, US Virgin Islands… really any government that can claim jurisdiction.

“He even considered buying a stack of bitcoin, then calling it a shitcoin on stage at the World Economic Forum , all in the hopes that [El Salvador President Nayib] Bukele will throw him in one of those MS-13 prisons and put him out of his misery.”

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Failing all that, the source said, “Todd will just put up a banner at Stamford Bridge saying that he has information leading to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, and nature will take its course from there.” - George MJ Perry

Following the recent draw with West Ham, Potter was vilified for not channeling his inner Jose Mourinho when Chelsea weren’t awarded a penalty for a dubious handball.

It seems nice guys can’t be football managers.

The furore from media and fans alike is that Potter himself or the role he occupies needs some kind of personality transplant. Potter addressed those concerns in his pre-match press conference ahead of the Dortmund game.

Of course I get angry, I’m a human being, it’s just that I choose to conduct myself in the way I believe I should. The same media are talking about me being more angry and then running stories about referees at grassroots level. It’s an emotional thing but I have a responsibility to Chelsea, the game and myself to act in a certain way for me. 

If you think you can start a coaching career in the ninth tier of English football and get to this point now, with Chelsea and the Champions League, without being angry or getting nice, I would suggest you don’t know anything about anything.

As for Mourinho, the media developed a love/hate relationship with the Portuguese One. On the one hand, he birthed column inches with his crass disrespect for those who controlled the beautiful game. On the other, he could turn on those questioning him in a heartbeat. When his back was against the wall, he was at his best. Like Roman Abramovich, Mourinho’s impact was instantaneous, as was the connection with supporters. As a pundit, he said this on Sky Sports in 2019, when Frank Lampard was in charge and following a 2-1 defeat to Liverpool. 

When you start accepting defeats just because your team played well or the players gave their best and gave a performance for people to be proud of in terms of attitude and commitment - I think when you get used to it is when big clubs stop being big clubs.

Those are the kind of comments that Potter has been guilty of during Chelsea’s recent run of poor form, and the pressure on his shoulders is building with every interview he does.

The process that Potter is trying to undertake, however, is a more organic one than we’ve ever seen at Stamford Bridge. Todd Boehly and his Clearlake cohorts are clearly still trusting the process they instigated when they ushered Thomas Tuchel away. 

How many times during the great Abramovich era did we, as fans and supporters, cry out for managerial stability? We cried “Play the yoof!” “Quit with the hiring and firing!” “Let’s build for the future!”

That was never going to happen under the Russian’s stewardship, but there were many times when we called for it.

Defeats against Dortmund and lowly Southampton have followed the West Ham game and, with them, the ugly side of social media has grimaced. Speaking ahead of the game against Tottenham, Potter spoke about threats he and his family received. 

I've had some not particularly nice emails come through, that want me to die. That's obviously not pleasant to receive. You could ask my family how life has been for me and for them. It's been not pleasant at all, you can answer it two ways. I could say I don't care, but you know I'm lying. Everyone cares what people think, because we're hardwired to be socially connected. 

With the results as they are, you accept criticism. That's not to say it's easy at all. Your family life suffers, your mental health suffers, your personality. Life is tough for lots of people. You ask me if it is hard, I say yes it is hard. You suffer. You get upset. When you're in private, you show real emotion with your family. 

But the world is tough. We're going through an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis. People are striking every other week. No one wants to hear about the poor old Premier League manager.

That makes for unpleasant reading and the Chelsea Supporters Trust have rightly strongly condemned the actions of a few imbeciles. However, the wonderful world of Twitter - again - allows some, who should perhaps know better, a platform to passive aggressively gang up on Potter as he tries to gel together a heap of new players, juggle a mountain of injuries and, perhaps hardest of all, fight Lady Luck.

In short, the “where were you when we were shit brigade” don’t appear to like it when we’re actually shit.

Those of us who have an ingrained patience that was nurtured through years of SW6 shit understand that supporting a football club has nothing to do with results. Back the team, back the manager and, dare I say it, Trust. The. Process.

The keyboard warriors who think the World Wide Web has given them a platform that allows the right to scream abuse and increase their profile are wrong. No one cares about their opinion. We have no control over Graham Potter’s destiny. The best we can do is back him until he’s no longer with our team.

Those that sit in the stadium must play their part, too. Just to be clear, I’m not at the Bridge very often, but anecdotally there has been booing of Marc Cucurella and that, too, has to stop. Supporters have every right to collectively jeer the team for a poor performance, but not individuals. It happened on the odd occasion with Jorginho and it really shouldn’t.

Spoiler alert: none of the above will happen.

Ahead of the Tottenham game, it was good to see Potter arrive late for his usual pre-match press conference and, with a beaming smile, announce to the waiting journalists, “Sorry I’m late, I’ve just come out of a crisis meeting.”

Graham Potter will never gambol down the touchline like Jose Mourinho or crowd surf like Antonio Conte, but that does not make him a bad manager. Given time, we must collectively hope it all comes good.

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The Chelsea job really is one tough gig and I, for one, am confident it will all come good, at least until it doesn’t.

Photo credit: Ungry Young Man / Flickr, under CC BY 2.0.

Let’s get it right. Gianluca Vialli was not only a gifted footballer, one who loved Chelsea Football Club, but he was also an outstanding human being. There’s the unwritten rule of sports writing that, once you’ve used a person’s full name, hence forth you only use their surname. To do so now, to one of our most treasured sons, seems not only disrespectful to the relationship he formed with Blues fans starting in the summer of 1996, but would not be in keeping with the man's own ideals. 

Speaking with Alessandro Cattelan for the Netflix show “One Simple Question” last year, Luca clearly knew the score. Leaving behind his wife and two daughters, he was as determined as ever to be the best he possibly could.

I’m convinced that our children follow our example more than our words. I have less time to be that example, now that I know I won’t die of old age, so I try to be a positive example. I try to teach them that happiness depends on the perspective with which you look on life.

Writing this as someone just 20 days older than Luca, it’s hard not to consider your own mortality. Fifty-eight is too young to leave this life. The process of ageing is a strange one. As you grow old you become physically more aware of the constraints that nature burdens your body with, but mentally, psychologically, consciously, you don’t. It’s almost as if your body ages but your mind regresses. In my head I don’t feel 58 and I’m sure Luca didn’t. He had so much more to give.

The eulogies and tributes that have flooded in since his untimely death, following a cruel illness, speak volumes. 

Gianluca was a lovely man who was a tremendous footballer. It’s difficult to not draw comparisons with another Chelsea legend, Ray Wilkins, who also left us well before he should have. The similarities between the two are striking.

Luca, like Ray (and it is Ray, not “Wilkins”), gave Chelsea everything. Ray was coach when Luca became the first Italian to manage a Premier League side, and a memorable day for Blues fans ensued on 20 May 2000. The two men who shared many memorable moments at their club stood side by side during the last FA Cup Final at the old Wembley Stadium and the first of a new Millennium. A single Roberto di Matteo goal let Chelsea lift the trophy.

Ray’s son Ross understood the relationship between the two men: 

Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankley is quoted as saying “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.” He was obviously speaking tongue-in-cheek, and these Chelsea men, Luca and Ray, exemplified how much life exists far beyond the game they loved.

Luca arrived at Chelsea after winning what could have been a career’s worth of Italian and European trophies with Sampdoria and Juventus.

Anyone with a dim view of Chelsea or English football - and those views were often dim in the late 1990s, particularly when holding up our club and our game alongside Juventus and Italy - could argue he was a footballer in his twilight years looking for a place to ease into retirement. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Luca was the No. 9 Chelsea are crying out for right now. He scored 40 goals in 87 appearances.

He was something special to Chelsea: a genuine superstar who, like Ruud Gullit, who brought him to the club, lifted us to heights we could only dream of through the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. That team Luca played in was magnificent. To pick just one game that epitomised him as a player, and for sure there were many to choose from, I submit a European Cup Winners’ Cup game on a snowy night in Tromso, Norway, in October 1997. 

Chelsea ultimately lost, but Luca’s two goals dancing through the snow kept us in the game. The final score was 3-2 on the night, but the Blues won the return leg 7-1, with our man grabbing a hat trick. Chelsea went on to win their first European competition since winning the same cup back in 1971. Gianfranco Zola scored the goal that sealed the deal in a 1-0 win over VfB Stuttgart.

Following Gullit’s departure, Luca took up the helm, first as player-manager before taking the touchline role on a permanent basis. He was the first Italian to manage a Premier League side. The trophies kept on coming and have continued to this day. He was at the forefront of a new Chelsea.  

However, to go on about a magnificent career in football spanning 43 years quoting stats and goals and all the plaudits that those things garnered misses the point. Luca’s philosophy was about family and living his life in a good way. His lifelong friend Roberto Mancini saw Luca shortly before his death.

Gianluca gave us courage that we didn't know and which he used to fight his illness so hard that he managed to be with us as long as he possibly could.

He was the best of us, a perfect, courageous man. It was a privilege to be his friend, his team-mate in football and life.

The last word should be Luca’s. Going back to the Netflix interview, his advice for his daughters would see us all being better people:

You shouldn’t put on airs. You should listen more and speak less. Laugh often, help others. That’s the secret of happiness.

Chelsea fans will always love you, Luca. Rest in Peace.

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Photo credit: Rise via Flickr, under CC BY 2.0.

Mike Penrose and his patrons in the UK government have to shift into high gear, else they risk the shame of making the US government look organized and efficient. Which it is when it comes to seizing and re-distributing private assets. But

• seven months after the UK government tabbed Penrose to oversee the disbursement of the £2.5 billion Todd Boehly paid in the forced sale of Chelsea FC,

• four months after the only post-sale reporting or analysis by a non-It’s a Chelsea Thing outlet on the stalled funds,

• six weeks after the last tweet on the topic by the only Member of Parliament who has followed up on the issue,

• and three weeks after the most recent time the same MP brought it up in session,

… there is still no indication that Penrose has established a charitable body through which he will oversee the funds, let alone that any of Roman’s rubles / Boehly’s bucks have made their way to Ukraine.

This despite Penrose’s pledge to bring in “absolute experts” including “one of the world’s leading law firms [and] some of the best fund managers on the planet” to help manage the process.

Maybe the UK or Penrose should have enlisted Sam Bankman-Fried. The money definitely would have moved then. Some might even have passed through Ukraine.

Expropriate in haste, redistribute at leisure

Martyn Zeigler’s article for The Times quotes Penrose: “[W]e got the first licence issued by OFSI for the establishment of the foundation a couple of weeks ago which was an important step. We are hoping in the next few weeks to get an application into the Charity Commission.”

That was on 31 August. Since then, 11 charities have been registered with the Charity Commission that surface when you search for the word “Ukraine” in the charity name, where the charity operates, “classifications” or “objects and activities.” Penrose is not a trustee of any of them, so he either has not registered the charity or he is not a trustee of the charity that the government directed him to establish and run.

One week after Zeigler’s article, on 06 September, the only MP quoted therein, Labour MP Chris Bryant, had this exchange with Rehman Chishti, Conservative MP and then-Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office:

Bryant: One of the people sanctioned in the UK is Roman Abramovich. His football club, Chelsea, was sold on 30 May, but the billions of pounds are sitting in his bank account because the Foreign Office still has not set up the fund to enable the money to be given to the people of Ukraine. Why is the Foreign Office taking so long, and when is it going to be sorted?

Chishti: Although I cannot comment on specific cases, I point out that measures have been taken against 1,100 individuals, including 123 oligarchs and their family members with a global net worth of £130 billion, more than 120 entities and all the subsidiaries owned by them; and against 19 Russian banks with global assets of about £940 billion—more than 80% of the Russian banking sector. In addition, acting in conjunction with partners, over 60% of Russia’s central bank’s foreign reserves have been frozen. That demonstrates our commitment to do everything we can, applying our criteria set by this Parliament, to bring these people to account.

A month after withstanding Chishti’s logorrhea, Bryant returned to the issue on 13 October:

One of my anxieties is about what happens with oligarchs’ assets that are frozen by the UK.

There is a legitimate question about whether it is right for the state to seize assets that belong to private individuals. On the whole, that is not a good thing—that is what authoritarian regimes do—but we need some clarity on how we proceed in a time of war, which is effectively where we are at the moment. I note that Abramovich’s Chelsea was sold, and the money is still sitting in his bank account because the Foreign Office still has not put in place a means of transferring it to Ukraine.

This is months in, and it is absolutely bonkers.

Let’s pause here to commend Bryant for bringing up the question of rights. Even though I’m sure he and I would quickly diverge in how we view the enforcement and application of rights - and likely how we even define the concept - he once again appears to be alone among his peers.

Two months later, on 08 November, Bryant brought the topic up again, this time with Leo Docherty, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State (Europe):

Bryant: Whatever Americans vote for today, I hope they stick with supporting Ukraine over the next few months. May I ask a question I have asked the Minister before—so I hope he knows the answer by now—about the Abramovich money? Chelsea was sold for £3.5 billion many months ago. Has that money yet got to Ukraine, and if not, why not?

Docherty: I am very pleased to be able to provide an answer. The money is still frozen in a UK bank account. The administrative work is being done and a licence is being applied for, but we hope it is on the start of its journey to Ukraine to help the people where they need help.

Pro tip: When a politician says he is very pleased to provide an answer, you can be more confident than usual that you are not going to get an answer.

Even more important than Docherty evading the crucial second part of Bryant’s question – “if not, why not?” - is Docherty saying that the license application is still in process.

Martyn Ziegler’s article quotes Mike Penrose saying they had the license, the first such license, in fact. Was Penrose overstating his progress? Is Docherty misinformed? Did OFSI or some other entity add another step to the process?

None of that came up when, perhaps because it was fresh in his mind, Docherty mentioned Chelsea a week later in response to a tangentially (at best) related question from MP Hodge Hill:

[Hill] also raised some interesting technical questions about sanctions. We are getting after not just sanctioning but seizing and ensuring that things such as the moneys from the sale of Chelsea football club get to those who need it. I am grateful for his interest.

Finally, on December 20, Bryant takes an important – yet incomplete - step in the direction of accountability.

[W]hy, many months after Abramovich’s Chelsea was sold, [is] the charity still not in place to be able to deliver £2.5 billion of that money into the rebuilding of Ukraine?

Bryant posed this question to Minister of Defence Ben Wallace, who promptly passed the buck (pound?): “I am happy to write to the sports Minister to find out that detail, as I am not across that part of the process.”

In the United States, this would be about the time that the legislature would subpoena Mike Penrose. I don’t know the equivalent procedure in the UK, but no one in government is willing or able to give a direct answer; Penrose was appointed to set up and operate the charity; and Penrose said, in late August, that they had the license and would submit the application within a “few weeks.”

UK vs. Roman Abramovich: Playing for a draw?

Roman Abramovich, Chelsea FC and Ukraine are – to large portions of the public and government – unsympathetic, despised and forgotten, respectively. The UK government would like to keep it that way, especially when the alternative is something they can’t afford after the last year: another embarrassment. Particularly not one that comes on behalf of a Russian oligarch*.

On May 31, the day Todd Boehly closed on the sale of Chelsea FC, Abramovich filed a suit with the European Union General Court over his inclusion on various sanctions list. His case appears to still be pending before the court, as I can not find any reporting or records of it being dismissed or adjudicated. The longer it goes on, in the continuing absence of any direct and recent evidence linking Abramovich to Vladimir Putin’s war, and in light of Abramovich’s early summer shuttle diplomacy, the better the odds get for Abramovich.

Another court, one under the Crown, has already made one ruling in Abramovich’s favor.

The Royal Court of Jersey froze $7 billion in assets and raided several properties linked to Abramovich on April 12. The companies who were searched challenged the search warrants on the same day. On November 9, Jersey police acknowledged that "the search warrants were obtained unlawfully" and agreed "that the search warrants should be quashed.” According to Reuters, who viewed the documents, “[t]he police also agreed to pay damages and costs, confirmed that all copies of documents seized in the searches had been destroyed and that the police would apologise to Abramovich… It was not immediately clear what impact the admission of unlawful searches would have on the $7 billion freeze.”

That’s just the sort of L the UK can’t afford right now. And there are other warning signs across the Anglosphere.

In mid-December, Canada started the process to seize a mere $26 million from one of Abramovich’s companies in Canada. Per The Guardian, Canada’s foreign minister must petition a court for asset forfeiture in order for the government to take control of the funds and then use them for “reconstruction” and “compensation” in Ukraine.

That’s a lot of bothersome due process from a country whose finance minister once giggled uncontrollably when freezing her own citizens’ personal bank accounts.

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And, back to where we started, it took a 4,000 page “omnibus spending” bill for the US to slip in Congressional authorization to fully expropriate oligarch* assets and “transfer the proceeds… to the people of Ukraine.”

The current stasis may be the best possible outcome for the UK government. They got away with a lot in the spring. It doesn’t take much legislative skill or sophistry to declare an emergency and suspend a few rights, especially when the target(s) is an already unpopular member of an already unpopular Other. But as time goes on and the emergency conditions settle into being a “new normal,” governments need to at least go through the motions of due process (no, really, I am still talking about Russia-Ukraine-Abramovich). And to a limited extent in a few countries, political, judicial or societal checks and balances demand actual due process, the enforcement of rights and an abridgment of government power.

The UK government may be just competent enough to realize this, and don’t want to run the risk of a Russian – of all people, a Russian! Worse, that Russian! - having his rights upheld.

Even if it is just his right to a formal process before a predetermined outcome, anything that reminds the people of those rights and what the process is supposed to mean is a risk governments will go to great lengths to avoid.

And let’s not do what everyone else does, and forget the other party in all this: Mike Penrose. Perhaps he is the one with his foot on the brakes, and no one is telling him to get moving. Or he has simply moved on to other things and doesn’t feel like waking up this dog.

Penrose has spent the year pumping up his ESG consulting grift group, so he’s neither lacking for things to do nor income. He might not want the distraction of disbursing the Chelsea funds (presumably the fund management fees would be far less than his ESG consulting fees), so he may be happy to let the whole thing quietly go away.

Following the money is easy when it doesn’t go anywhere

On 31 May, I outlined seven points for anyone interested in following the money from the Chelsea sale. Just as well that no cares, since the money never made it past the first step:

Over any time frame – hours, days, weeks, months, years - what percentage of the sale price of Chelsea Football Club has been disbursed by the foundation? Did the foundation set up a time table for the disbursement of that amount – the foundation’s ostensible principal – and are they on track to meet that timeline?

And to think that my biggest concern at the time was that the money would mostly end up flowing to well-connected NGOs and defense contractors. Was that being naive or cynical?

Recall that, in early March, Abramovich assented to selling the club and pledged all funds to victims of the war. Had the UK government permitted that, Abramovich would have had responsibility for the most scrutinized cash flow in the world. There is zero chance the British government or media would have allowed the funds to sit quietly in Abramovich’s account for anywhere near as long as they have under government control. There would be inquiries and articles every week investigating if any of the money was flowing to Russia, and demanding to know why none was on the ground in Ukraine.

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The longer this money stays in the frozen Fordstam account, the more it looks like the expropriation and forced sale of Chelsea FC was about Roman Abramovich and Chelsea first, Russia and Putin second, and Ukraine not at all.

The English Football Association’s post-World Cup inquiry (I don’t want to call it a “post-mortem” because, well, you know, Qatar) will center around four questions:

• Why did they trust FIFA’s assurances that they’d be able to wear the OneLove armband?

• Why did they plan on doing nothing else activist-y alongside or in place of the OneLove armband?

• Seriously, how much time did they put into this armband campaign, come up with that and that alone, and are we really still talking about this weeks after the World Cup ended?

• Something something building a squad upon the foundation of Harry Maguire.

FIFA followed the example of their Qatari partners – it’s hard to say who’s the student and who’s the master in the realm of perfidy and untethered immorality - by altering the deal at the last moment. Hours before kick-off, FIFA announced that team captains could only wear FIFA-issued captain’s armbands.

Initial reports were that the captain would receive a yellow card for wearing a bootleg armband, but SkySports later said the penalty could have been a one match ban.

Regardless of the sanction, the FA had no response. No backup plan. No “other things we were doing as part of our commitment to… we’ll get back to you on this…of which the armband was only a small but visible part.”

An upcoming season of Amazon Prime’s behind-the-scenes sports docuseries will be “All or Nothing: England’s FA and the OneLove Armband.”

SkySports summarizes the flailing at England’s FA:

Suggestions have been made that maybe Gareth Southgate could wear the One Love armband on the touchline for the next game against USA, even though this again would likely be sanctioned by FIFA.

Another option may be for Kane, or other England players, to wear the armband during training, in front of the cameras.

Sky goes on to report similar scenes at the Football Association of Wales, followed by equally armband-centric, nay, armband-only takes from their in-house pundits.

Shorter:

FIFA and the eight countries of the ex-OneLove bloc deserve back-handed credit for how they handled the OneLove armband tempest.

The associations, by backing down with a reaction time that makes Edouard Mendy look like the Zootopia sloth, protected their captains by absolving them of having to choose between an empty gesture and a yellow card or match ban. It’s bad enough when external, non-sporting entities pressure players into one or more of the Current Thing. Football entities should never countenance - let alone force, themselves - players having to choose between their sport and, well, anything. The associations took this unjust choice off the players.

FIFA, for their part, performed an even greater public service. First, they showed how to defeat an empty gesture: threaten a response. Then, by doing so, they showed that not only was the OneLove armband “campaign” empty, but the motivations and commitment behind it were so shallow as to be only nominally two dimensional.

Perhaps FIFA will next say that any player who takes a knee before kick-off will also receive a yellow, unless they can prove they were tying their shoe. This would put Gareth Southgate in an uncomfortable position, having said that his England squad will take the knee, although he didn’t say why they would be doing so. I’m old enough to remember when it was solidarity with Black Lives Matter, then it became (appropriated by???) LGBTQ causes, then there were rumors of solidarity with Iranian protestors… who can keep up?

FIFA’s action will hopefully clear the board of empty gestures and paint-by-number protests. What will remain, then, is beautifully brutal honesty: strength or weakness, resolve or pantomime. If a federation, squad or player wants to make a stand, they’re going to have to make it count. Anything less will be revealed for what it is.

This may already be happening, independent of any governing body’s action or inaction, and in a way that will be particularly thorny for Gianni “I’m a gay migrant Qatari, in fact, I’m every woman it’s all in me” Infantino.

Shortly before the appropriately uniformed Harry Kane and his squad mates knelt for a moment pre-kickoff, the Iranian national team stood impassively silent during their national anthem. There is not only a non-zero but a not insignificant chance that that action – especially if it is repeated – could cost those players and their families some comforts, some of their remaining minimal freedoms or even their lives.

Put that on your arm and wear it.

England and their OneLove counterparts, along with any other entity or individual who wants to take a principled stand at the World Cup, is going to have to do two things that modern Western activists show little ability or interest in. First, they will have to take a meaningful action. It can still be symbolic, but it has to be substantive. And second, they’ll have to be willing to take the consequences.

The OneLove armband activism was the perfect gesture because it fell so far short on both counts, and FIFA’s counter was impeccably planned and executed. What happens next will reveal how well FIFA understands their constituent adversaries. If England and the OneLovers spend the next two weeks VPN-ing TikTok videos of players wearing the armband around Qatar, then FIFA will have won, deservedly.

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If, however, these associations and players realize that what FIFA did is the equivalent of a 75’ goal that breaks the deadlock, and now they need to make attacking substitutions, change tactics, play a high line, leave only one man back and open up the play, then they give themselves a chance of winning, or at least winning back some respect.

And if all else fails, maybe Harry Kane can throw a bucket of tomato soup on Gianni Infantino.

Photo credit: G Travels / Flickr, under CC BY NC-2.0.

The World Cup break began in the shadow of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter saying “Oops, our bad” and Swiss media outlet SRF confirming that’s it not paranoia if ex-CIA operatives working for a Gulf autocracy on a 9-figure contract really are out to get you. The tournament itself will open 48 hours after Qatar rugged one of the tournament’s major sponsors by banning in-stadium beer sales (at least for the plebs – luxury suites may still be able to imbibe).

The 12 years of consequences spanning Blatter-led FIFA’s “mistake” and Blatter’s admission of said mistake range from the thousands of dead laborers in Qatar and tens of thousands of enslaved others down to the career path of Chelsea players like Reece James and Ben Chilwell who, 12 years ago, were talented schoolboys at their respective football academies, became professionals and then full internationals, and are now missing the World Cup through injuries that can partly be attributed to the fixture congestion necessitated by the mistake of awarding the World Cup to Qatar. No, that is not to compare the two outcome sets. It’s to draw the contrast in order to show the breadth of consequences, and to highlight the net negative that is a World Cup in Qatar, where the only beneficiaries seem to be the Qatari state and the aforementioned now-much-richer ex-CIA operatives.

But at least Blatter says it was a mistake. Only took him 12 years to say it. Wonder when he knew it.

Blatter’s statement started me thinking about what other apologies should be forthcoming from football’s governing entities and executives in the coming decade or so. I won’t wager anything more valuable than a few FTT tokens on any of these happening. But if a former FIFA president can say he or his organization did something wrong long after there’s anything he can do about, there’s no reason why these others can’t make the same pathetically impotent gesture.

1. Football’s role in COVID insanity

As was often the case at the former home of my Chelsea writing, I was right. In this case, that means Jose Mourinho was also right.

In early April 2020, Mourinho was Tottenham’s manager and he took Tanguy Ndombele and Ryan Sessegnon out to Hadley Common for an informal training session. Future generations will struggle to understand why he did such a thing. They’ll ask the obvious questions: Why not just use the club’s training ground? Where was the rest of the team, and the rest of the coaching staff? And, wait, why was this a problem?

How will we explain 2020 and 2021 to future generations? You know, in terms they’ll be able to understand given the learning loss induced by many of the same decisions and decision-makers that ensnared Mourinho and his players? Here’s one way:

[O]thers who are angry at the Tottenham trio are those worried that the general population will realize that Mourinho is not dumb nor reckless, that he would never endanger his players’ health, and therefore that those three were quite safe outside, and therefore it would be quite safe for other people to be outside exercising or socializing in small moderately distanced groups. Maybe even for more than an hour at a time.

The government and the governing bodies who carry the government’s waters are worried that someone will look at Mourinho’s informal three-man session on Hadley Common and realize that when it comes to the social restriction regime, the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Not even a face mask.

Prohibiting two of the fittest people in the world from training outdoors under the guidance of the highly trained and experienced professional who was directly responsible for their health and performance was as absurd as closing playgrounds, filling in skateparks with sand, dispatching police boats to apprehend a loan surfer, deploying drones to monitor exercisers… you know the rest. Even his own club sold him out.

The rest of us will probably never get an apology for any of it, but maybe Mourinho will. Simply as a matter of respect. Respect man, respect.

12 years. That’s 4-5 clubs at Mourinho’s usual rhythm. He should be easy to find when someone owns up to apologize to him – and to all of football – for shutting down the sport when the world needed it most, and when the players most needed their gaffer.

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2. Roman Abramovich doesn’t have to be a good guy to be a wronged guy

If, when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, you started a sentence with “Two prime ministers ago…,” you’d have been harkening back to the Iron Lady herself. No wonder it seems so long ago when you say that “Two prime ministers ago” the referent occupant of 10 Downing Street oversaw the expropriation and forced sale of Roman Abramovich’s property, including Chelsea FC.

In that time, Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried have combined to purge the Russia-Ukraine war from the headlines. Maybe they are Putin stooges, after all.

But if Putin’s war – an actual war – is no longer worth the interest of the people who cheered on any action no matter how il- or extra-legal justified by tapping the “Russians bad” sign, no non-Putin Russian is going to be of interest. Nor the money extracted from him, which, at last look, still has not been disbursed to those affected by said war.

Abramovich’s last stint in the headlines – two prime ministers ago – was for his role as a intermediary between Russia, Ukraine and the West in nascent, somewhat off-books peace negotiations. Perhaps he’s not the master war criminal profiteer that we were led to believe. I suspect that if he was, even our derelict media would occasionally remind us of his criminality – or just his sustained existence – if for no other reason than his name pops up in the mesocycle of Two Minute Hates.

Even if you don’t think Abramovich was, is or could be a good guy, it’s pretty clear now that he was, is and will continue to be an uninvolved guy in Putin’s aggression. And even if you never come around to that perspective, there’s still the fact that his property, including Chelsea FC, was seized and forced onto the market without anything resembling due process. No trial, no hearing, no finding of fact, no recourse, no accountability for the money that changed hands. Just Russia. Because Russia. Roman Russian bad man.

And if that doesn’t bother you, whatever color your jersey or political party, well I don’t know how you ended up reading me in the first place, and can’t imagine you’ll ever make the mistake of doing it again. Hopefully before any more Western politicians make the mistake of sportswashing, someone from His Majesty’s Government will apologize for this among the many other mistakes that came out of 10 Downing in the spring and summer of 2022

3. Fixture congestion: Stand down from the Conference League of Nations

Many top teams limped into the World Cup break with depleted rosters, which meant many national teams showed up in Qatar with depleted rosters of their owns, with many prominent names missing the tournament through injuries and many others in the squad but uncertain of their ability to play. But at least they got through the last year or two of the Conference League of Nations or whatever UEFA’s third tier abomination tournaments are called.

The Conference League imposed the demands of a European campaign on 32 additional clubs, many of whom don’t have the squad depth or training / sports medicine resources to compensate for the higher demands.

The League of Nations had a much broader impact on European internationals, forcing managers to play their best players more frequently and to take seriously more games when everyone involved would rather be training lightly and playing friendlies. With some minimal level of prestige on the line and the opportunity to punch an early ticket to the next real international tournament, national teams could not give the League of Nations the respect it deserved. They had to give it more.

And while the period leading into a major competition is typically devoted to tapering workloads so as to hone players to a physiological peak, FIFA subjected prospective World Cup players to the opposite: three months of intense loading with games every 72-96 hours. This loading came after a shorter summer break that had a high concentration of international games, which in turn came only a few weeks after a regular club season that followed… well, you know the cycle.

As do Reece James, Ben Chilwell, N’Golo Kante, Timo Werner, Marco Reus, Christopher Nkunku….

Gianni Infantino, anything you’d like to say?

4. Multiply concussed players may not have 12 years to wait

As bad as the injuries to those players are, few of them will experience lifelong debilitations as a result. Certainly none of them will have a shorter lifespan as a result of their various musculoskeletal injuries.

Oddly, perhaps amazingly or literally unbelievably, to my knowledge no player is missing the World Cup because of concussion or concussion-related syndromes.

Surely, that’s because the concussion protocols that football’s governing bodies imposed and the teams and leagues fully and impartially enforce are doing their jobs in keeping players safe.

If you believe that, you might just work at Sequoia Capital.

If the National Football League is any indication, football’s governing bodies may not have 12 years to make the necessary apologies to some currently active players. In 12 years, they may already have permanent cognitive damage, or worse.

And if the National Football League is any indication – and in this case it surely is – the Premier League, FA, UEFA and FIFA all knew that concussions were a bigger problem demanding more stringent action well before these governing entities acknowledge the problem and began crafting half-assed measures for player safety.

I nominate Jan Vertonghen as the first player who should receive a face to face apology from the sport’s leaders, as I will never forget watching him take a major hit to the head, receive “treatment” on the field, stagger about a few minutes later and then nearly vomit and pass out on the sidelines after being “cleared” to play. The levels of malpractice on display in that 2019 Champions League semifinal game damned every person and institution involved with player safety and welfare, and I have seen nothing yet to suggest that we won’t see it happen again.

If the National Football League is any indication, something much worse will have to happen. Perhaps real football can diverge from American football and apologize for their negligence, particularly for this last decade when what they knew far exceeded what they did.

For all my non-Qatari readers, raise a glass and enjoy a few suds or spirits while you’re waiting for any of these apologies to roll in. We might be here for a while. Say, 12 years, give or take.

Photo credit: G Travels via Flickr, under CC BY-NC 2.0.