Five Champions League semifinals in the last six years. As new Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti pointed out in his first interview, this is a marvelous achievement. However, it’s clearly not good enough. The fact that those five semi-finals have only resulted in one unfortunate final appearance must be a source of incredible frustration for Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich and the club’s supporters, though perhaps a little less for them.
The reason longtime Chelsea fans might be a bit more philosophical about “only” reaching a final in five tries is that many of them are probably still getting used to fighting for honours. Until 1997, when Chelsea won the FA Cup, the club hadn’t won anything for 26 years, unless you include the old Second Division title. Chelsea’s fortunes in the 1980s, after they were bought by Ken Bates for the princely sum of £1, plummeted to such an extent that they are almost in the third tier of English football.
But how did it turn around during the last decade of the century. Even before Abramovich’s arrival in 2003, the recovery process had begun. Managers of Glenn Hoddle’s international pedigree, Ruud Gulli, Gianluca Vialli and Claudio Ranieri helped establish the club as one of England’s premier teams and the FA Cup was won in 1997 and 2000 and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998. Chelsea of this era were pioneers in many ways, with their continental managers and foreign players in particular becoming the first club to take the field with a team without a single British or Irish player in a game against Southampton in 1999.
So when the Russian oil magnate brought in Champions League winner José Mourinho to take charge of the team in 2004, almost everyone suspected that ‘the special’ would produce a special team.
And so it turned out. The Premier League was won on two consecutive occasions, as well as the FA Cup again and the League Cup (twice). Since March 2004, the team has embarked on a record 86-game run in which they remained unbeaten at their home ground of Stamford Bridge.
With some of England’s best players John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley and Joe Cole and some notable foreign imports Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Michael Ballack and Nicholas Anelka the world sat back and waited for the trophies to continue. And above all for the ‘holy grail’ that Abramovich wanted so much; that Champions.
And yet, for the past two seasons, Chelsea have been flattered by cheating, and have frustrated their supporters so much. There are times when they are so powerful that they overwhelm even the strongest opponents; almost bullying them into submission due to their physical and mental superiority. But it seems that there was a fatal flaw in the composition of the club that prevented them from achieving that definitive breakthrough.
Some have said that it is because some of the foreign players have not been committed enough; but then, when they showed their passion and commitment after a controversial loss to Barcelona in 2009, those same players were criticized for their lack of sportsmanship.
Some have blamed successive managers for not being able to control ‘big’ players, as if that were a problem for someone like Luiz Felipe Scolari.
Some have even blamed Abramovich for losing patience with Mourinho too quickly in 2007 or seemingly losing some of his enthusiasm for the club for a while.
But now, having failed to persuade the admirable Guus Hiddink to stay at the club after his rejuvenation of the team in his short spell in charge, Chelsea have appointed someone who has won the Champions League Trophy twice as a player. and twice as a coach. . A wonderfully atmospheric ground to watch your football in compared to some of the other more ‘soulless’ stadiums, surely Stamford Bridge will be able to witness something only the most optimistic fans would have dreamed possible twenty years ago. ; a team capable of winning the Champions League.
If Carlo Ancelotti can’t bring the trophy, where the hell will they go next?