By ’Tunji Ajibade
There are two attachments that I have to the United Kingdom. The first is Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The other is Chelsea FC of London. The club has issues of late and that has got me worried just as it has many supporters of the team across the world. The root of the problem is the war Russia brought into Ukraine. All Russians of means have since become targets of sanctions from western nations. I wasn’t worried at first that billionaires close to Kremlin were being targeted for sanctions. I became worried when it became obvious that any sanction against Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovitch, would affect Chelsea’s fortune.
The owner wanted to sell the club when he saw sanctions coming. That was stopped ostensibly by the Premier League as a form of punishment for the owner. The outcome is that the club’s accounts are frozen, it cannot sell tickets to fans, and it can neither buy nor sell players. It is a way to quickly kill a football club. This is too much to bear and it makes me think it’s one sanction gone too far. Now, even though bids are being accepted to take over Chelsea I still want Prime Minister Johnson to be the guarantor that there will be no twists in the tale and nothing negative will happen to Chelsea. I shall state my reasons.
No doubt things do happen in time of war. Practically everything comes to a standstill as saving lives and protecting a nation become the priority. Certainly, protecting the people of Ukraine is the number one priority of all peace-loving nations at this time. All means must be sought to do this, including economic sanctions that western nations said were how far they wanted to go in this matter. Personally, though, if I ever had training as a soldier I would have volunteered as a mercenary to defend the people of Ukraine against an external aggressor.
Meanwhile, war is going on but that doesn’t mean life shouldn’t continue. That life should continue is the reason we fight wars to stop an aggressor in the first place. Fighting is going on, but life after war must be factored into the equation as well. If football matches are stopped because of war, war will end one day and people will still watch football. When this war is over, there is a set of people who are Chelsea’s fans and they mustn’t be denied a life after war. Their club must be preserved, rather than be allowed to go down with billionaire supporters of the Kremlin.
The fact is that Chelsea didn’t start with Abramovich and it must not end with him. This is a club that has been in existence before any of us alive today was born. Chelsea was founded in 1905 and it survived the 1st and 2nd WW. I want it to survive this one too. After all, Chelsea is not a Russian club, it is a UK club. So I ask: Why should this outside influence be allowed to kill Chelsea? Why must the club bear all of Abramovich’s deadweight and collapse under the weight? It mustn’t. For the emotion of too many people in the UK and outside is attached to the club.
Chelsea FC came to my attention in the years before Abramovich bought it. The Nigerian footballer, Celestine Babayaro, was there at the time and the fact that Chelsea wear blue made the club automatically my club. Blue happens to be my favourrite colour. Then Abramovich did something that made me identify with the club without any reservation. He brought in Jose Mourinho as coach. Mourinho has since become the classic and evergreen definition of Chelsea for me. To me, he’s Chelsea, Chelsea is him. In those early days, Mourinho brought to the club a style of play that I rate as the best both in the Premier League and among other football leagues across Europe.
There is this somewhat languid yet mature football that I think Chelsea played in those days and still does. Mourinho gathered footballers who were not entertainers, they didn’t play entertaining football, they were never on the pitch to entertain anyone; they were soldiers, warriors, the kind of people I like to see under most circumstances. Top on the list was Didier Drogba, Chelsea’s foremost attacker of all time. The Ivorian remains till today my idea of a warrior-footballer, just as Rafael Nadal is my idea of a warrior-tennis player. For Drogba, I have enormous respect. I take a bow in my heart each time I remember him even long after he left Chelsea as a player. He was a player who gave his all. He was a soldier, and more than a soldier; he was a warrior. I like warriors. I have the mentality of one; warriors are people who have one aim, they are focused, they give their all, they give their life even. Men who give their all are worthy of honour, they are worthy of all the respect they can get. I applaud Didier Drogba.
Till date, I look at Chelsea and I recall Drogba. I recall also Mourinho who brought him to London. These two men remain for me the symbol of Chelsea such that wherever else Mourinho has gone, I feel his being away from Chelsea meant he’s in the wrong place. That’s how synonymous, for me, he has become with Chelsea. Is there a better way for me to describe the emotional attachment some of us have to Chelsea? I’m not sure. Each fan of the club however has their own way of stating how they feel about Chelsea. Mine I know, and it is the reason I feel nothing negative should be allowed to happen to Chelsea.
The Premier League reportedly took many of the decisions that put Chelsea in a tight corner because of the connection of its owner to the Kremlin. Alright. But we know that the Premier League was bowing to the dictates from the corridors of political power. In UK’s case, the other attachment I have to this country, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is in charge of that political power. As my recent interventions have shown, his political survival is of importance to me. The only other entity that is of almost equal concern is Chelsea FC and its survival. Let the bid for the club continue. Nothing must go wrong though, and no twist must be allowed in this unfolding tale. And this ordeal should be brought quickly to an end. The wellness of the emotion of many of us who love the club depends on it. So I urge Prime Minister Johnson to see that all goes fine for Chelsea, and I assure him that he would get the loudest applause from this end when this deal is done, Premier League or no Premier League.
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