When Chelsea ran out at Stamford Bridge for their first game of the new Premier League season on Sunday, it looked as if a bit of tat from a pound shop had been stuck smack-bang in the middle of the players’ chests.
A gaudy circle of gold, almost the same size as the club crest next to it, had been affixed to their shirts. ‘World Champions Fifa’, the writing around the circle said. If it looked like a meretricious piece of trash, that’s because it was a meretricious piece of trash.
The prominence given to Chelsea’s ‘triumph’ in the Club World Cup, the summer’s half-baked, half-hearted, half-attended, gerrymandered, ill-conceived series of glorified friendlies – a vanity project for Fifa president Gianni Infantino – was predictable and sad.
That prominence was an insult to the Chelsea sides of 2012 and 2021 that won the Champions League and yet whose achievement is not commemorated anywhere on the club shirt because tradition dictates that that is not the way.
The team of 2012, in particular, was stocked with Chelsea legends. Those men were giants. Petr Cech, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba were all in that starting XI. John Terry, their colossus, was suspended.
The idea that what the current Chelsea team achieved in the States last month bears any resemblance to that season’s Champions League campaign, which ended with victory against Bayern Munich in Bayern’s own stadium, is a bad joke.
The gold ‘World Champions Fifa’ badge, roughly the same size as the Chelsea’s crest, is a meretricious piece of trash
It is an affront to their Champions League winning teams of 2012 and 2021, whose achievement is not commemorated anywhere on the club shirt
Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca spewed insults at those who doubted him after he led the most expensively-assembled team in the division to a fourth-place finish last season
This is a Chelsea, after all, that is coached by a man, Enzo Maresca, who came into his post-match press conference after the last league game of last season at the City Ground, spewing insults at those who had doubted him because he had found spurious justification in the fact that the most expensively-assembled team in the division had finished fourth.
And if you wanted to strip their absurd title away from them and get an idea of how good Chelsea really are, then all you had to do was watch the ‘world champions’ labour to a somewhat fortunate and utterly uninspired goalless draw with Crystal Palace on Sunday afternoon in west London.
It would be wrong to denigrate Chelsea for failing to beat Palace, because Palace are a decent team. But it still puts all the preening about being world champions rather neatly into perspective. The Chelsea of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali is all about show, not substance. The badge of gold is a fine symbol of their philosophy.
Let’s face it, Chelsea weren’t even the best team in London last season, let alone the best team in the world. They can boast of being world champions all they want but it is an empty boast. They won a tournament few cared about against limited, or exhausted, opposition.
The tournament had a few cheerleaders and there is some legitimacy to the idea of a World Cup for clubs but the criteria for qualifying was too confused and too distant from the tournament to make this version of it a credible event.
Something that confers the title of World Champion on a team ought to be the best tournament in the sport. That applies to football’s World Cup of countries. But the Club World Cup is quite clearly not the best competition in the sport. It does not carry the cachet, or the quality, of the Champions League, South America’s Copa Libertadores or Africa’s CAF Champions League.
The Chelsea of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali is all about show and the badge of gold is a fine symbol of their philosophy
The world champions laboured to a fortunate and utterly uninspired goalless draw against Crystal Palace on Sunday, giving us an idea of how good they really are
Chelsea can wear all the badges they want and make them as big as they want, but the respect they crave will be denied until they win a trophy that means something
The Club World Cup never quite shed the feel that it was just an extremely well-renumerated Audi Cup or Summer Series. If Newcastle United ran out in shirts with badges on their chests celebrating last season’s Carabao Cup win, it would carry more weight than Chelsea’s orgy of self-glorification about collecting Infantino’s bauble.
If Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo and the rest had run out against Palace with £50 notes stuck to their shirts, then we could at least have applauded the honesty of that because money was all the Club World Cup was about. Instead, we got that pound shop piece of golden tat.
Chelsea can wear all the badges they want and they can make them as big as they want, but until they win a trophy that means something, the respect they crave will be denied them.
