Chelsea Thread

Fair enough - I know virtually nothing about Serie A. I'll take your word on it. Chelsea are the most extreme example in England, which is the only league I know a fair bit about.

Do you agree with Chelsea's loan system? Do you believe it's good for the young players involved, overall?
 
Beach, i was too harsh in my previous post: my apologies.
But if you take your posts literally (which we shouldn't always do), it's just as if Chelsea is the root of all evil in football.
What Chelsea and the other sugar daddies did is a reaction to the monopoly the G14 clubs tried to create. But of course your favourite club is one of the G14 clubs, so you don't see the harm. At the beginning of the 90's those clubs created an abyss between themselves and all the other clubs. Clubs like Anderlecht (very succesfull in the 70's and the 80's suddenly became second rate clubs, and no, i'm not a fan of Anderlecht)weren't able to bridge the gap unless they went for a sugar daddy (what PSG and Man City did).
I agree with you on how Abramovich and how he got rich, but the fantastic Deportivo La Coruna team wich humiliated AC Milan in probably the best CL match i ever saw was funded by cocaine money...nobody mentions this. A club like Real Madrid is cheating for 70 years now...yet most people see it as a very respectable club. In the 40's even Man United became a big club thanks to a sugar daddy avant la lettre...
About the young players: they could say no to Chelsea and go to another club. A transfer to a big club is always a gamble.
And IMO what Arsenal did with Beveren is much worse than what Chelsea does.
They really destroyed another club that is comparable with Everton or Villa in England. Nobody mentions this and Arsenal are considered a proper and decent club.

About Courtois: that is either a shrewd investment (they virtually paid nothing at all for him and now he is worth a whole lot of money) or a very stupid thing to do (because it is very obvious that Courtois is much better than Cech, with Courtois in goal Pastore wouldn't have scored).

I agree with you about Lukaku. Lukaku should be allowed to play against Chelsea just like Courtois should be allowed to play against them (eventually) in the CL. If a player is loaned out, that means the club thinks he is not good enough, so they should allow him to play against them. But there is another way to see this. Imagine Courtois playing with Atletico against Chelsea in the final of the CL. Chelsea wins 1-0: a mistake by Courtois. What would you say then ?


There is something other that you haven't talked about and if this is true, then Chelsea should be banned for a couple of years from the CL. The former owner of Vitesse has siad in the Dutch press that here has been pressure from Chelsea to loose some vital matches at the end of the season (i think it was last season, but i'm not sure) so that Vitesse would not play in the CL. I really hope this isn't true, but there is a big chance that this is exactly what happened. That would be outrageous and should be severely punished.
 
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So instead of a so called "G14", which status was reached by many clubs that were mentioned in a more or less organic way, should we have an "S14" (S for sugar daddies)? Is it really a more noble thing to do?
Is it the right response? I'm not sure. Two wrongs don't make a right (and the sugar daddies bit is VERY wrong).

How did Arsenal end up in this "G14" list? Don't forget it was a mid-table club in the beginning of the 90s.

Whatever Arsenal did to Beveren (I'm not quite familiar to it), it was a dog-eat-dog kind of thing - as in, if it wasn't Arsenal, it would have been another club doing them. And most importantly, there must have been someone inside Beveren who was crooked enough to do some dubious deals.

I think football started being a serious fucked up business when some clubs have other "satellite clubs", who basically feed them their best players. This ceases to resemble real football, to become more like franchises, whereas there's the flagship one, and then there's the other one with a lower profile, and so on.

What Chelsea does is beat competitors on sheer volume of transfers, basically signing the most promising talent without knowing what they will become.

This can backfire, as some players like Lukaku reportedly became disgruntled with Chelsea after being loaned out to 3 or 4 clubs. The guy must feel like a gypsy, without a home, moving every season, although in the knowledge that he's better than all 3 first choice strikers at Chelsea.

There are reports saying Lukaku doesn't want anything to do with Chelsea anymore, and there are plenty of suitors to make a permanent deal.

As much as I'd love Arsenal to sign him, we all know too well Mourinho won't sell to Arsenal - and here's another ethic flaw, if you will, of this policy: Chelsea controls the destiny of the players they signed but won't use, as well as the life of rival clubs, who will be deprived of the talent they've already signed.
Chelsea are able to pay Demba Ba's salary just to keep him at home eating and sleeping instead of joining a rival like Arsenal, while they're also able to loan a top striker as Lukaku to a fairly strong team like Everton who's likely to hurt the top teams (while Lukaku is unable to face Chelsea due to contract clauses), and they were also able to sell Mata to United only after both matches against them had passed, ensuring Mata wouldn't face his former club.
You could argue that a lot of this is shrewd investment, a clever policy and so on... well, it's anything you'd like it to be, except football. This is so not what football was supposed to be all about.

Just for the record, I too think it's madness to loan a player for 4 consecutive years (even if at the same club), and I wouldn't be surprised if Courtois himself gives up on the idea of ever joining Chelsea.
 
Rentboy said:
Whatever Arsenal did to Beveren (I'm not quite familiar to it), it was a dog-eat-dog kind of thing - as in, if it wasn't Arsenal, it would have been another club doing them. And most importantly, there must have been someone inside Beveren who was crooked enough to do some dubious deals.
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Stunning paragraph this.
I agree that it was a dog-eat-dog kind of thing. But what Chelsea do is also a kind of dog-eat-dog thing. If you aren't outraged by the dog-eat-dog thing that Arsenal did with Beveren, why are you outraged with what Chelsea does?

I wonder what you would say if it was Chelsea that destroyed Beveren (perhaps not with the intent of destroying but in the end that was the result).



Oh and before anybody reacts: yes there currently is a club called Waasland Beveren in the Jupiler League, and although they play in the same stadium as Beveren, they ar eto Beveren what Mk Dons is to Wimbledon.

What happened can be best compared to what happened in Italy with Fiorentina. The club was relegated two divisions and re-emerged under another guise. Only the Belgian Fiorentina was replaced by a Sassuolo...
 
I think the same will happen to Vitesse once Abramovich loses interest in them. Their finances are still troubling and right now the entire club is a mess. Merab Jordania, who saved the club and recently got replaced by Alexandar Chigrinsky (both Abramovich puppets), got a stadium ban after threatening to cut off a director's fingers. Jordania and former director Ted van Leeuwen both claim Chelsea don't want Vitesse to win the league.
 
Rentboy said:
So instead of a so called "G14", which status was reached by many clubs that were mentioned in a more or less organic way, should we have an "S14" (S for sugar daddies)? Is it really a more noble thing to do?
Is it the right response? I'm not sure. Two wrongs don't make a right (and the sugar daddies bit is VERY wrong).

How did Arsenal end up in this "G14" list? Don't forget it was a mid-table club in the beginning of the 90s.
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If an individual putting money into a club is "very wrong" how would you describe an elitist group pressuring the rulemakers of the game into pushing through changes in order to benefit the group at the expense of everyone else and competitiveness in general?
Arsenal are in a decent position now to push on almost solely because of the change in format for the CL, a response to the oft-threatened breakaway "Super League" (a change that would literally destroy domestic and international football)
Wenger views 4th as a trophy, and even more important than a trophy, why? because it pretty much guarantees Arsenal keeping their status - something that was not guaranteed to clubs in the past. In the past a club could finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th one year and fight relegation the next, why? because there wasn't a big difference in finishing 4th or finishing 14th. Nearly 10 years on from winning a trophy (in the past a barometer for success) and yet Arsenal are still up there relatively cosy - a pretty rare situation in the past. This "Sugar" from the G14-UEFA "Daddy" is the biggest problem with modern day football.
In comparison, moaning about loans etc is like worrying about a crease in your spacesuit as you fly towards a blackhole
 
Godotelli said:
If an individual putting money into a club is "very wrong" how would you describe an elitist group pressuring the rulemakers of the game into pushing through changes in order to benefit the group at the expense of everyone else and competitiveness in general?
Arsenal are in a decent position now to push on almost solely because of the change in format for the CL, a response to the oft-threatened breakaway "Super League" (a change that would literally destroy domestic and international football)
Wenger views 4th as a trophy, and even more important than a trophy, why? because it pretty much guarantees Arsenal keeping their status - something that was not guaranteed to clubs in the past. In the past a club could finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th one year and fight relegation the next, why? because there wasn't a big difference in finishing 4th or finishing 14th. Nearly 10 years on from winning a trophy (in the past a barometer for success) and yet Arsenal are still up there relatively cosy - a pretty rare situation in the past. This "Sugar" from the G14-UEFA "Daddy" is the biggest problem with modern day football.
In comparison, moaning about loans etc is like worrying about a crease in your spacesuit as you fly towards a blackhole
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If you were making a case for the likes of Dinamo Bucarest or Levski Sofia being Champions in Romania and Bulgaria respectively, and still having to go through tough playoff qualifiers before reaching the Champions League, then you would have a point.
But why do you guys put all of the burden on teams like Arsenal, of the infamous so-called G14, putting pressure on a poor little organisation as defenseless as UEFA? As if they didn't have a choice but to give in to their demands. As if they had nothing to gain from this 'bloated' version of the Champions League that encompasses 2nd and even 3rd placed teams from the major leagues without the need for playoff matches.

But since I know you're just trying to compare how bad this situation is in relation to billionaire Oil moguls taking over football clubs to play football manager in real life, then I have to say you're wrong.

You're downplaying Arsenal and Wenger's achievements when you say they're in a 'cosy' situation of playing CL every year and maintaining that status. It isn't as simple as that. Arsenal has been there every year for the past 17 years, and this is an awful lot, but it doesn't come easy as it seems. Liverpool was a 'Top 4 status' club in England, yet they had somehow lost their status. Why didn't they keep qualifying every year if it's so darn easy to? If there is such a disparity between CL and non-CL clubs? What about Tottenham, who had 2 Champions League adventures, but failed to build on that and now seems uncapable of returning to the Champions League?

It's not as easy as it looks for a club that isn't run with limitless funds. It is particularly impressive that Arsenal has been achieving it in the last 6-7 years with significant financial constraints. Only now the club has the stadium debt almost paid up, with new sponsorship contracts kicking in.

But I know only too well that it doesn't matter all the hard work done at Arsenal - despite all the effort to elevate the club to another level, all it takes is Sheikh Mansur or Abramovich to up the ante and spend a tad more from their back pockets to price even a wealthier Arsenal out of the market (not to mention the smaller clubs).

So, to answer your question: yes, an individual (or group from the Middle East) injecting money into clubs is far more damaging to football than the older form of domination.

Before we used to have a systematic thing, which authorities could understand and control if only they wanted to. Now, with sugar daddies we have chaos.
It's chaotic because they don't give a shit about the rules. UEFA tries to put them on a leash, prohibiting 'donations' from the owners to their clubs, and the next thing you know, Etihad Airways (owned by relatives of Man City owners) announce an outrageous, record-breaking sponsorship for naming rights to the stadium in the sum of 400m for 10 years. They make a mockery of the whole damn thing, that's what they do.
Please do tell me when the hell is the fabled Financial Fair Play thing kick in, because we've been seeing none of that nonsense up to now.

I can't, for the life of me, see how the old UEFA-induced G-14 is worse to football than the sugar daddies that are taking over, throwing untold amounts of money at clubs and skewing the market.

If anything, they've allowed a two-fold division (a dog-eat-dog model) to turn into 3 different classes of clubs: the overnight billionaires, the ones who got rich through UEFA in the 90s and 00s, and the underdogs.

It's the dog-eat-dog model turning into T-Rex eating both big and small dogs.
 
this is why I'd always prefer cech over courtois in the next five years. the reliable one. big game player.
 
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Mourinho actually left the dugout to "coach the boys" after the goal? Is that even legal? Ban him. He deserves it too the bastard.
 
gerd said:
Beach will be absolutely over the moon...
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Hey, good for Chelsea. I'm disappointed with PSG's performance - and pretty shocked at Cavani across the two legs. Looked like a pub footballer. For all the talk of Mourinho's 'mastermind' and 'tactics' - if Cavani could hit the proverbial barn door the tie would have been over.

When it's oil-billionaire playtoy vs. oil-billionaire playtoy it's a little difficult to get to invested, for me anyway.

Will be interesting to see if this is PSG's best run - all signs point towards them not meeting the FFP guidelines so in theory they should be in 'trouble' with UEFA moving forward.
 
The big chance Cavani missed was a difficult one IMO. At first i also laughed, but when i saw the replay i realized that it was difficult.
 
Cavani is probably the best centre forward in the world in front of the goal. He rarely misses a good chance. When he gets a good opportunity to score he rarely waste it! He might not be the best player running or dribbling but he is fantastic when he gets a good chance!
 
amineken22 said:
Let me ask you this though: How much of him did you see this year?
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To be honest, i haven't been watching very games of him this year... But by what i saw i think he is still very good. Do you usually see him playing this season? Am i wrong?
 
amineken22 said:
Yes, I do see him very often since I follow Paris. He's got worse this year, playing wide is hurting his poaching skills, in fact there is a lot of people questioning his abilities (the same goes for Falcao) he's still very good, but he's yet to show the level he was at when he played for Napoli.

As long as Ibra is still there, the chances of him playing in his natural role are very slim. He might never recover from that, but who knows what the future holds, I might be wrong.
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I see. Nice to ear the opinion of a PSG follower!
 
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