Chelsea forward Morgan Rogers
Chelsea forward Morgan Rogers
I can’t be the only one who shies away from watching some clubs, Chelsea in particular. I totally understand why they are the subject of so much content and why they are blown up like a Friday night date with an inflatable doll…but I can’t. Not anymore. No matter how good they are.
I haven’t always been so antipathetic to the Blues; I loved that early 70s team, full of psychotic flair from Charlie Cooke and Chopper Harris.
What’s not to like now? Well, pretty much everything. I don’t even need to tell you. You know. The whole shebang. They’re a simulacrum of a football club. More a financial equation or the personification of a spreadsheet.
I struggle to watch Manchester City too for the same reasons plus oppressive nation state ownership. Don’t have so much of a problem with Manchester United and Liverpool, though I suspect that’s changing quickly. Don’t look for logic.
But this is the world we now live in. Stop complaining, just ignore it and get on with life, I frequently tell myself.
The trouble is they remind you of The State Of Things. A giant slop of brutalising financial incontinence, discussed as if it’s normal. It’s all vexatious to the spirit. It feels ugly and offensive in all the important ways and this transfer window perfectly illustrated it.
I can put up with a lot but don’t want to be reminded of the pointless acquisition, naked greed, obscene wealth and spendthrift mentality it all represents. I don’t go to football to be reminded of all this while there are millions using food banks. Food banks, man. Think about it, food banks. It’s come to this.
I’m sure plenty of footballers donate some of their wealth to various causes; I know not everyone is an utter b**tard Trump-style, nicotine-stained frog and that the world is unfair per se, it’s not Enzo Fernandez’s fault or football’s fault. At least I think it isn’t, but that doesn’t make it any less awful.
But like many, I only have so much tolerance to having my nose rubbed in the whole immoral miasma and matches featuring these teams absolutely do rub your nose in it. Two squads of tattooed players playing mildly entertaining football, in an absolute financial sh*tstorm. It’s so extreme. Yet there will not be a minute of discussion even close to being critical. Quite the reverse – you get a moral vacuum. This is not a normal world.
Of course I’ll watch other games. Hypocritically, I’ll watch Hull v Villa or Inter v Napoli. Those same abuses and injustices that blight so many lives still exist but I can ignore them because I don’t feel as if the clubs are laughing at me like I’m a fool as I do with Chelsea and City. It’s as if they’re saying ‘how much can you take?’. When I go to Peterhead to see them playing Montrose, where squad players earn £250 to £500 a week, I’m not troubled, nor by Knowle v Worcester City in the cup. That feeds, nourishes and gives back, whereas it feels like City and Chelsea take something from me. Not just money but something more important.
Because you can only fret so much. Globally, there is much to be concerned about – almost everything, in fact. And if you can ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist when watching City or Chelsea, then fair enough. You get through life any way you can. Football has always been escapism but Chelsea and City don’t allow me the escapism; they remind me of what’s wrong, whereas Peterhead v Montrose doesn’t.
To me it seems like they are a condensed illustration of a myriad of problems, but I fully realise that’s just me. It’s not even like I can do much about anything, I can only use one hand and can barely walk. Not exactly fit to be a warrior against the swollen tides of climate change or brutalist late-stage global capitalism.
Am I alone in this condition? Maybe I am. Or maybe it’s an older person’s thing. We remember when it wasn’t anything like this in a way a 25-year-old might struggle. But I know – because they write to me – that for some, too many things about football have turned the stomach once too often. They feel like the pish is being taken out of them. Some less hypocritical than me have walked away from it altogether, others just watch lower-league games. Plenty have done neither.
But I never thought it would be like this when I went to my first game 55 years ago. I didn’t think it’d be like this even 25 years ago.
In fact, in a way, it feels unreal. To me, they’re not two clubs, they’re two algorithms. Not living, breathing entities you can believe in. A sci-fi construct, separate from actual life as we understand it. Electron cold.
Perhaps I’m being unreasonable. A bit of a hand-wringing w*nker. A Student Grant for Viz readers (I once sold a mohair cardigan to Viz’s Simon and Chris Donald’s mam in Newcastle Poly in 1981, y’know). I can’t watch traumatic dramas or documentaries because I’m hiding from horribleness. It’s disturbing. Similarly, I’ve stopped watching the news too. Partly to hide but also because it’s annoyingly presented in such an inadequate manner, treating the sane and insane as equals, liars like truth-tellers and idiots like experts
And into this malaise comes City and Chelsea, the apotheosis of The Way Things Are. I’ll watch any football, at any level. But not them. I don’t think I’m the only one. Is it pathetic?
READ: 16 Conclusions from Arsenal 2 Chelsea 1 if you do like to read about Chelsea