I've been giving a lot of thought to the subject of what constitutes a Big Club recently, and yesterday's news has finally got me putting my thoughts down on paper (so to speak). Let it be known that this article is not intended to kick somebody when they are down - and some of my best friends are Chelsea fans - it is intended to be a dispassionate argument based on some of the most reasonable of premises.
The astonishing demise of Chelsea this season is one of the biggest football stories of this and many a year. Currently overshadowed, of course, by the ongoing investigation into the fallout from corruption within football politics at the highest level, but at club level certainly gigantic news. What has brought it about can only be a matter for conjecture, but whilst anything Jose Mourinho does is news in football (he has made it thus), I still can't bring myself to call Chelsea a Big Club. And why is that, I hear you ask...
In a nutshell, firstly I feel that there is a need to differentiate between a big club and a Big Club. Chelsea are a big club, but they're not a Big Club. They're notorious; not famous. Like an East End gangster trying to muscle in on High Society.
So what are the criteria for being a genuinely Big Club? In my opinion, you need to qualify in a certain number of categories, and I'll list them here:
- A large fan base, irrespective of success on the field of play
- A history of sustained achievement
- A club which has made a mark, or left a legacy, in their own country or in the world of football
- A certain 'je ne sais quoi'; something intangible that indicates 'class' - either on or off the pitch
- A club whose success is not based purely on spending large sums of money, or on bandwagon-jumping so-called 'fans' who follow whoever won the Premier League in the previous season
If there's an intangible word that one can put to these criteria, I suppose that it's Pedigree. And on that basis, here's my list of the Biggest Clubs in Europe:
Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Bayern Munich, Paris St Germain, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Ajax. A total of 11 (it would have been neat to keep it to 10).
I believe that you can safely say that each of these clubs scores extremely highly on most or all of the first four bullet points - and I don't think that I need to spell out my reasoning to any football fan. But despite the recent history of Real and United spending obscene amounts of money recently to sustain their position - and to a greater or lesser extent succeeding - I think that due to the past you can (almost) excuse those two clubs their recent financial excesses.
In England, there are a number of clubs now plying their trade in lower divisions with far richer histories than Chelsea. I include the likes of Huddersfield, Preston North End, Blackburn Rovers and even Leeds United in that group. Although Leeds are a fine recent example of how the misuse of money can do irreparable damage to a football club. One may wish to add the likes of Bolton Wanderers, Blackpool and Aston Villa to that group. If they had the sort of money that Chelsea have had thrown at them over recent years, their previous history would mean that your average football fan would look at them differently to the way they look at Chelsea. In their day, they were Big Clubs.
Whereas the relatively recent rise of Chelsea - whilst it had started under the much-maligned (until recently, of course) Claudio Ranieri - has essentially been built and sustained on the back of the injection of over a billion pounds of Russian oil money. Without it, Chelsea would likely be vying with the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham for Europa League spots. There is of course no point in denying that Mourinho is a very good coach, and brings success wherever he goes. But - and here's what preventing me adding Chelsea to the above list - what he can't deliver is a legacy.
It is of course distinctly possible that a change of manager will see a massive turnabout in the fortunes of the Chelsea team, and that they will start to rise inexorably up the table towards where the inherent talent of their players dictates they should be. But when a club's recent success is based on shaky foundations, there's not much to fall back on except for the money to get them out of trouble. They have no other Credit in the world of football.
Whereas Manchester United dropped to 7th in their first post-Ferguson season, yet they missed just a single year of Champions League qualification. And whilst they have a massive Ferguson-sized hole still to fill, their fall from grace has been nothing like that of Chelsea. 7th, or 16th?
Whereas following the re-direction of funds into a new stadium meant that Arsenal fell from the lofty heights they had achieved under Arsene Wenger around the turn of the century, he still managed to keep them in 3rd or 4th spot - and that's with the likes of Eboue, Denilson and Bendtner in the side. No mean feat. Does that make him a Specialist In Failure? Compared to the collapse of Chelsea this season, I hardly think so. People may be aware that these days I am no Wenger apologist - I think that he has missed a trick or five by not spending more of the money available to him over the past two or three years - but there is simply no comparison between the genuine legacy that Wenger will leave and the mess that Mourinho has left behind (as he often does). And not forgetting that he is the second Arsenal manager to have created a dynasty, after Chapman in the 1930s.
I am not questioning Chelsea's right to join the exclusive Big Club Club. What they need to do before they call themselves one is meet the above criteria. If Abramovich is genuinely interested in moving Chelsea into that bracket, he has to build a brand built around those criteria. As we know, throwing lots of money around does not suddenly mean that one has Class. Good intentions, Roman; just the wrong choice of manager.
And in the same way that I can't capitalise the first letters of 'big club' when I think of Chelsea, I feel much the same about Manchester City. But to give credit where it is due, they are doing loads for their local community etc., and whilst the amount of money they have to spend is of course absolutely obscene they are at least spending a chunk of it in the right way. But whilst that makes them, like Chelsea, a big club, it doesn't make them a Big Club.
Of course, there is a path to becoming a member of the Big Club Club; but it's a club that's not quite as easy to join as some hope it is.
Pedigree. Legacy. Dynasty. Either put up or shut up, Chelsea FC.
