What a week it’s been for Chelsea Football Club. The Blues have spent the past few days headlining the back pages and sadly it’s for all the wrong reasons. You would be forgiven for forgetting that just last Saturday we beat a Man City side many tipped to go through the season undefeated. Yet nobody remembers our defenders gallant blocks or the way we wrestled back control of the game or Ngolo’s [Kante] roof buster. Can you picture David Luiz’s header that sent us through to the 2-0 victory? I can’t. All I can see are the faces of four men with looks of such pure hatred on their faces that have dominated the papers.
I remember watching Sterling going to fetch the ball as it rolled out for a City corner when the incident occurred. The camera zoomed in as these men almost fell onto the pitch in this vile attempt to abuse a rival footballer. How is that necessary? How can you let such destructive emotions dictate your actions over a game? What message does this send to future generations of fans? How on earth can you justify that behavior to a child? “Well you see son, he plays for a side that we don’t like.” There can be no other rational explanation. Does that mean we can yell obscenities at the waiter if the food he brought isn’t up to scratch? Can I abuse my neighbor because he left his mail on the doorstep and that bothers me? No, of course not but in a football stadium it’s perfectly okay. This is all before we add the racism allegations and anti-Semitic chants that still blight Stamford Bridge to this day. We have a Jewish owner Chelsea fans!! What if one day Roman decides he has had enough of this filth and simply decides to sell up? The club asked fans to use some brainpower but it seems that football has become a reason to simply turn one’s brain off. The FA and Premier League have spent years on campaigns to rid the game of these boorish oafs who ruin it for everybody but I can see very little in the way of success. The fact that the Matthew Harding Stand insist on adding: “We hate Tottenham” before chanting the club’s name shows just how backwards football fans priorities are.
As an experiment I googled “Crowd trouble rugby” to see if other sports are experiencing the same issues. It took scrolling through four pages of news to find the first incident. A local rugby club had angered fans by banning flags during the game. That’s it. Not fans riot over ban or throw chair or light flares. They were just angry for a day. Meanwhile over in Lazio, German fans decided to storm the pitch and throw smoke bombs at the police. Why, because the opposing side had scored. FYI this happens quite often in a football match and is not worth being arrested over as five Frankfurt fans were. The game was a dead rubber, the outcome had no bearing and these hooligans took that as an excuse to have a punch up.
It will take much smarter minds than mine to come up with a plan to eradicate the disgusting behavior that is rife in the game and I hope they come up with it soon.
In actual football news, Chelsea come up against a resurgent Brighton on Sunday afternoon. The game marks that start of a run of fixtures against mid-table sides that should see us close the gap to the top. Brighton will prove tricky opponents however and nothing short of a top performance will do if we want to come away from the Amex with 3 points. 2-1 victory to Chelsea with Eden Hazard getting back on the scoresheet for the first time in a while.
