Chelsea: Loftus-Cheek’s and Kante’s lonely preseason started when football shut up and didn’t dribble
Chelsea FC could have brought the entire squad on the preseason tour had they started in Mexico and crossed the land border into the US. Because science and logic, and consequences.
There are a few things Chelsea couldn’t plan for when putting together their preseason tour. Not knowing if you’ll be allowed to operate as an independent entity, or exist at all, can do that. Then there are those things they could have planned for, but maybe thought they didn’t need to.
Chelsea, of all organizations, should not have underestimated the persistent governmental inanity of the Anglosphere. We can’t expect them to foresee every potential new hotness the United Kingdom or United States government might come up with under the unenumerated plenary oligarch clause of the trans-Atlantic alliance. But they at least should have had a contingency plan for the US maintaining their domestic commitment to irrationality by being, in July 2022, one of the few Western countries that still prohibits some forms of entry to non-citizens who are not vaccinated for COVID-19.
Had Chelsea thought better of the situation by thinking worse of the US, they would have started their preseason in Mexico. Perhaps a home-and-home series with Club America, or a game in one of Mexico’s World Cup 2026 venues. Or, just to make things really easy, they could have played one of the border clubs, FC Juarez or Club Tijuana. After the game, the team bus could just roll right across the border, with N’Golo Kante and Ruben Loftus-Cheek sitting calmly in the front two seats.
No one would ask about anyone’s vaccine status, since the US government apparently thinks the term “airborne virus” means COVID-19 can be transmitted through non-citizens entering by air but not entering by land.
Missing preseason should not have any effect on Loftus-Cheek’s or Kante’s standing at the club. Neither player needs a preseason to show who they are, what they do and what they are capable of, particularly Kante. After 259 games in Blue, a World Cup, Champions League, Europa League and two Premier Leagues, like Johnny Drama, he shouldn’t have to sing for his supper.
If anything, given their injury histories, these two could benefit from not participating in preseason. The extra time to recover and do truly individualized athletic development will make them more resilient late in the season, particularly after the World Cup. That can more than offset being a few weeks behind on their tactical integration heading into the season.
And let’s not forget what happened the last time Ruben Loftus-Cheek played a pointless game on a Major League Soccer pitch.
But whether it turns out to be neutral or beneficial, their absence is another consequence and casualty of football’s and sport’s, more broadly, failure of integrity, fortitude and intelligence over the last two and a half years. I spent the last few weeks of my first (four year) stint in Chelsea coverage futilely hoping and even more futilely pleading for Chelsea, Tottenham, someone, anyone in football to push back against the overlapping illiteracies and perfidies that set the course for COVID-19 madness.
Professional sports teams and leagues are among the few institutions that have the cultural and economic power to harness public opinion and shift political outcomes. Why else would they go to such lengths to weigh in on so many social or political issues, with notable exceptions for Peng Shuai and Brittney Griner, two athletes who apparently inspire sports to stick to sports and shut up and dribble. Well, either them or their captors.
Maybe Chelsea have no interest in rocking any boats given their last few months. Perhaps Todd Boehly is concerned that, if he speaks critically against a US government policy, Chelsea will set another record by being the only football club to be expropriated by two different governments in a single year. Or that he’ll get a visit from a swarm of federal windbreakers.
Or Chelsea, as a representative of football and the major global sports, will be passive and quietly hope someone else will say or do something. The leading contender is tennis.
Tennis – specifically the Women’s Tennis Association – has done a better job protecting the integrity of their organization, their athletes and their sport over the last year.
WTA president Steve Simon did not shy away from confronting China over Peng Shuai, and he immediately condemned the All England Lawn and Tennis Club’s and Lawn Tennis Associations’s decision to ban Russian and Belarussian players from this year’s Wimbledon on the grounds that the players’ parents were in the wrong country at the moment of the players’ births. Simon stripped Wimbledon of its ranking points for the tour, a move that the Association of Tennis Professional soon signed onto for the men, turning the tournament into an exhibition match befitting the pantomime presence of the royals.
For what it’s worth, how did that ban on Russians turn out? Well, the men’s champion is proudly from Serbia, one of Russia’s staunchest allies. And, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the women’s champion was born in Russia and was Russian until 2018, when she became Kazakh in order to receive funding from Kazakhstan’s sports ministry. Either that, or she was going to play collegiate tennis in the US. If you have to choose between two corrupt cartels, at least choose the one close to home, right?
The aforementioned Serb is Novak Djokovic. Like Ruben Loftus-Cheek and N’Golo Kante, he will either need to enter North America via Mexico and come to the United States on land, or miss the US Open. Because he, too, is unclean unvaccinated.
Fortunately for him and common sense, prominent voices from his sport are in his corner. John McEnroe said, “These politicians are getting in the way too much. They did it in Australia. Let’s let the guy come in and play in the US. I mean, come on. This is ridiculous.”
His mention of Australia refers to the fact that Australia reached an ATH of COVID-19 batsh-ttery with how it severally granted and retracted an exemption for Djokovic to enter the country and play in the Australian Open before denying his exemption and giving him a three year ban from the country. Not the tournament – the country.
That’s the company the United States is currently keeping.
Being the optimistic entrepreneur that I am, there’s still a glimmer of hope for Ruben Loftus-Cheek and N’Golo Kante to feature in Chelsea’s preseason tour of the United States. It would just involve some help from a couple of old friends, both of whom now have extra time on their hands (although not extra money). To adapt what I wrote in April 2020:
Maybe Roman Abramovich calls Dana White and they go halfsies on an archipelago: Fight Island to the east, Football Island to the west. Perhaps Marina Granovskaia assembles the other chief executives – first on Zoom, then in person (angels and ministers of grace defend us!) – and they build the legal, financial, political and public relations framework to lead [their teams – their entire teams – to full participation in normalcy].
If Abramovich still has access to a yacht, he can rendezvous with Loftus-Cheek and Kante in international waters and give them a ride west.
All we’ve heard about the last few years (at least on this side of the pond) is how sports are about “more than sports” and should take a leading role in this, that or the other issue. Well, here’s a chance for football to lead.
Football declined that chance. Two years on, players are still being left behind, in every sense of the term.