Reassessing Chelsea's Champions League Win

Abnormally, the sun is rising in south-west London but the dust has not yet settled on Chelsea’s magnificent Champions League campaign. There are those still who hold Barcelona up as a paradigm of footballing virtue and still fail to applaud Chelsea for beating them over 180 minutes of football. There are still those who fail to recognise the achievement of beating a Bayern Munich team in their own back yard, a team who had progressed past the best team in Spain, Real Madrid.

The point of this article is to dispel the myths of modern football, to outlaw certain words and to maybe provide a new slant on what it means to be “better” at football than another team. I will take Chelsea as my primary example and seek to undermine various phrases that currently blight the modern game.

1. “Chelsea played negative football”

Negative football? What does this mean? Did they deliberately score own goals? That is the only way I can conceive of a team playing negative football. So long as a team is not deliberately kicking the ball into their own net, they are playing positive football. I would ban the use of the words positive and negative – they are meaningless and have arisen out of a culture that has seen football stray from its core purpose into the entertainment business. Normally, and always at the elite end of the game, there are far more neutrals watching a game than fans of either team. These neutrals want to be entertained and they privilege the team that entertains them. Entertainment usually means going out to score as many goals as possible. Most neutrals are not the absolute connoisseur who admires heroic defence as much as silky attack. This is a shame, but it’s also a fact of life.

So the friction is between Chelsea’s desire to win the match (tie) and the neutrals desire to be entertained. I make no apologies for respecting the team that is doing right by its fans in its efforts to win. A team has no responsibility to please the neutral. They are obliged to win, to try to win, and therefore to please the fans. Playing well is a bonus. Every right-minded fan would rather win a Champions League “ugly” (whatever that means...) than lose in a semi-final playing beautiful football. Sport at the highest level is about winning.

Chelsea had no responsibility to go out all guns blazing, throwing caution to the wind and paying scant regard to their team’s ability in relation to that of the eleven supremos opposite you. Whoever said attack is the best form of defence is a liar and has never had Messi, Xavi and Iniesta running full pelt at them.

2. “Barca were the better team”

We love sport because of its inherently empirical nature. There is a winner determined by a score. As far as I’m concerned, the score does not lie. We love sport because sport really pays no attention to subjective measures like ‘better’ except the score. That is why the score exists, as a judge for who is better.

Undoubtedly, Barcelona are a better football team than Chelsea. If they played each other 10 times Barca would probably win 7, Chelsea 1 and they might draw 2. But that’s not how football works. League football is closer to this model, hence why teams would rather win a league than a cup – it’s a better judge. But over 180 minutes, Chelsea were better. They managed to produce the performance that led to the one victory and one of the draws. Do they not deserve credit for producing the two performances that led to them scoring more goals than Barcelona?

Simply, Barcelona played the most wonderful attacking football and Chelsea played the most dogged defensive football. Football is about blocking shots just as much as it is about shooting. Barcelona’s attack is wonderful, though, isn’t it? Or is it? What is the point of attacking? How do you judge an attack? Goals. Barcelona’s attack was successful in every way except in the final analysis of actually putting the ball in the back of the net. You can have as many shots as you like but if you don’t hit the target then what’s the point? I’m not going to join in the fetishising of Barcelona’s liquid football if their shooting is so poor as it was against Chelsea. They missed a penalty, too, possibly one of the few moments in football where the responsibility lies so heavily with the taker.

Chelsea set their stall out to play a certain way. They pulled it off. Barcelona set their stall out to play a certain way. They failed. And despite the fact that Chelsea were playing such defensive minded football (not negative), they still outscored Barca by three goals to two over 180 minutes of football.

Chelsea were the victims of the fetishising of Barcelona. Such contrived fawning is an unpleasant sight in sport and it’s a hangover from when Barcelona truly were great. They would win with such grace and style and panache. But when these qualities are prized above winning, I lose interest. Sure, Chelsea fans would have loved to have progressed playing wonderful football but every team has its limits and you have to play the opposition. They succeeded magnificently. Beating Barcelona over two legs is impressive, outscoring them is heroic. So I salute the shot-blocking winners of Chelsea more than the squandering wastefulness of Barcelona and say that the better team is that which carries out its intentions in such a way that results in a victory. The only thing to say to those who claim Barcelona were the better team is “prove it”. They did not, could not. Hence, Chelsea progressed.

3. “Chelsea didn’t deserve to win”

Who ‘deserves’ to win? Who decides who ‘deserves’ to win? What on earth means that one team has the divine right to score more goals than the opposition, seeing as that is what winning is?

The word ‘deserve’ should be removed from sporting lexicon and we should all accept that in 99.9% of cases, the team who wins is the team who ‘deserved to win’. Why should a team who records 50 shots and scores no goal ‘deserve’ to beat a team who shoots once and scores? Either one team has an excellent goalkeeper who saves all these shots (in which case, credit to them for having a good goalkeeper), the shots need to be of a higher quality to beat the goalkeeper or the team that manages to let that one shot become a goal needs to have a look at why it managed to let a team with what appears to be an awful attack score a goal against them.

Bayern had wasted 14 corners before Chelsea took full advantage of their first. Well done Bayern for playing in such a way that resulted in those corners but either the delivery wasn’t good enough or their heading is not good enough or Chelsea’s defending of those corners was excellent. Whatever the combination of reasons, it is the team that manages to defend 14 corners and score from 1 that I admire rather than the team that fails to score from 14 and lets in 1.

Why is it that so many privilege the wasteful team with the poor defence over the solid team with the potent attack that takes its chances. No team ‘deserves’ to win as a result of creating lots of opportunities that please the neutral viewer. Such a team may well be better at football but that is largely irrelevant if they cannot, on the day, put the ball in the back of the net.

Bayern were apparently the better team and ‘deserved’ to win. But they, like Barcelona, missed a penalty. Messi and Robben were wasteful. Why should a team which takes an awful penalty kick win? I see no reason why they should. Chelsea’s goalkeeper beat Bayern’s penalty taker so why do people say Bayern ‘deserved’ to win?

4. Conclusion

Let us ignore those who make pronouncements about what is positive and what is negative. To use these terms is to mistake the point of sport. I love attacking football and certainly prefer it to defensive minded football but not at the expense of victory. Anyone who disagrees when it comes to their team has questionable ideas about what they want from their team. I repeat, give me the victoriously heroic shot-blockers of Chelsea over the creative yet ultimately wasteful Barcelona every time.

Let us ignore those who think the team who wastes 14 corners is better than the team who scores a wonderful goal from their 1 corner.

And finally, let us ignore those who say that one team deserves a victory over another. Sport is the great equaliser. It may appear that Barcelona and Bayern are better football teams than Chelsea but football disagrees. It challenges your preconceived notions of what it means to be a good football team. In 99.9% of cases, the team that wins deserves to win. To say that Bayern deserve to win is to excuse the wanton wastefulness of Gomes, the lack of bottle exhibited by Arjen Robben and to deny the terrific lesson in defence given by Ashley Cole and the whole-hearted performance given by Didier Drogba. That, I cannot bring myself to do.