CHELSEA 0-0 CRYSTAL PALACE: Chelsea began their new Premier League campaign with a flat goalless draw in West London but things might have been even worse for the Blues
Crystal Palace celebrating against Chelsea
Crystal Palace's early celebrations against Chelsea were cut short(Image: Offside via Getty Images)
Trawl through the smallprint and you’ll find a law so obscure that only football anoraks and geeks will know it. Full marks to VAR nit-picker James Bell for calling it - but he denied Eberechi Eze a dream parting gift to Crystal Palace at sunlit Stamford Bridge.
England midfielder Eze is expected to complete a £55million move to Tottenham this week, and in a parallel universe he might have gone out in a blaze of glory. Instead, his vicious free-kick was chalked off and Chelsea, who looked short of a gallop and had the cutting edge of rusty garden shears, escaped with a point.
Eagles defender Chris Richards, taking a more reflective view after the game, admitted: "Everyone in the stadium thought it was a goal but you live and die by VAR and today we died from it.”
They may be world champions, but for long periods the Blues looked disjointed, leggy, stale or all three. Never a club to whisper their achievements where a giant billboard on the back end of a hotel is available, Enzo Maresca’s side took one more curtain call for winning the Club World Cup and completing the full set of honours.
Twelve months ago this week, they were setting out on the 15-match trail leading to modest triumph in the Thursday Night Smorgasbord League Cup. Now Maresca was kicking off another season in charge of alleged title contenders and with fans wearing Club World Cup trophy-shaped hats and ‘We’ve Won It All’ T-shirts.
But apart from Trevoh Chalobah and substitute Andrey Santos shovelling decent chances over the top, and Liam Delap scuffing another like a municipal golf club hacker, they lacked sharpness.
Brazilian teenager Estevao introduced himself with a lively half-hour from the bench but Enzo Fernandez looked miles off it, £60m new signing Joao Pedro was so anonymous he could have been reported to Scotland Yard’s missing persons bureau and playmaker Cole Palmer was quieter than a church mouse.
Joao Pedro making way for Liam Delap
Joao Pedro had a quiet game before making way for Liam Delap
Palace, relegated to the Herdy-Gerdy League Cup after a legal catfight, begin their inaugural European crusade on Thursday night against Norwegian minnows Fredrikstad. And Eagles fans warmed up with a crude refrain about UEFA, former director John Textor and Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis, who will run the gauntlet of their appreciation at Selhurst Park on Sunday.
Their mood darkened further after 13 minutes as Eze absolutely leathered a 20-yard free-kick past Robert Sanchez, only for VAR jobsworth Bell to make his presence felt - with a predictable anti-climax. In the wall, Marc Guehi eased Moises Caicedo aside to give Eze a more expansive target, but referee Darren England responded to his mate’s interference and chalked it off - even though Sanchez never saw the bullet speeding beyond him.
In fact, Bell and England invoked a little-known law, introduced in 2019, about attacking players being less than a metre from the wall when the shot was hit. If you had ever seen it applied before, presumably you saw unicorns prancing across the horizon at the same time.
Chris Richards during Chelsea vs Crystal Palace
Chris Richards helped keep Chelsea quiet(Image: Getty Images)
For clarity, the law states: “Where three or more defending team players form a wall, all attacking team players must remain at least one metre from the wall until the ball is in play.”
But the bar has been set dismally low on the first weekend of the season. When football - a game which is primarily about goals - goes out of its way forensically to find reasons to disallow goals, especially supreme hits like Eze’s missile, we’re all going to hell in a handcart.
“It’s not football any more,” protested the Palace fans - and it was hard to disagree. With the Bridge floodlights on full-beam - on a glorious summer’s day - it only served to highlight Chelsea’s sluggishness in sharper focus.
Don’t give us any hogwash about Premier League sustainability or net-zero targets. If you’re looking for answers to combat global warming, let’s start with the squadron of private jets ferrying bang-average players to sign for their new clubs and this floodlit nonsense.
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