It was entirely predictable that Manchester United supporters should sing a less than flattering song about Peter Kenyon, the former chief executive at Old Trafford, on Sunday afternoon. What made this rendition interesting was that some of the Chelsea fans joined in. It was the only time when red and blue shared one voice.
Proof, then, that it is not only Chelsea fans of my acquaintance who look forward to every public utterance from Kenyon about as much as they long for Roman Abramovich to wake up one morning and think “I’m bored of football, how much for Ferrari?” Memo to the chief executive: leave the talking to others, especially the boasts.
Kenyon had unwisely — some might say ludicrously — declared that Chelsea will be the world’s No 1 club by 2014 which even José Mourinho might consider impertinent. The manager may speak with unbounded confidence but he knows only to promise what he is sure that he can deliver. A third successive title? Happy to oblige. Ask him to pledge that he will win the Champions League, and he won’t.
He would presumably be reluctant, too, to talk about Chelsea becoming the No 1 club in the world when, by 2014, he will probably be sitting at AC Milan or Real Madrid. The siren voices at the San Siro and Bernabéu will be hard to ignore.
These are great institutions that survive the worst that their leaders can inflict on them — two match-fixing scandals in AC Milan’s case, the “gálactico” era in Madrid’s — and never lose their aura. Chelsea fans know that even the wealth of Abramovich and the driving ambition of Mourinho cannot fast-track membership of this exclusive band.
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They know that it requires more than market research revealing that the fan base in England has risen to 3.8million. They know that it takes far more than the soaring turnover of which Kenyon spoke.
They do not want to hear a man in a suit talk about “the brand” and they do not even want to hear him denigrate Manchester United as less “relevant”. They want the football team to speak for them.
Perhaps Kenyon’s least advisable comment was when he declared that “Chelsea didn’t have a tragedy” like the Munich crash. Coming in a sentence that listed all the great achievements in Old Trafford history, it was clumsily expressed.
What is the No 1 club anyway? It cannot simply be the European Cup holders or that would have made Oporto the centre of the Universe a couple of years ago.
Presumably it can only be defined as worldwide renown, which suggests a cocktail of ingredients; repeated success and glamour among them. Chelsea’s trophies take them halfway there although Mourinho’s power football demands respect rather than affection. The committed fans will happily take the triumphs, but it will not sell out a club café in Singapore.
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The irony in all of this is that there is one man who could sell Chelsea to the world — and he is the one individual who refuses to say anything. Abramovich has allowed the image of his club to be shaped by Mourinho and Kenyon and, from what some of his associates tell you about his ambitions, it does not sound like they are peddling his vision at all.
We have been told that the Russian fell in love with football when he watched Ronaldo score a hat-trick for Real at Old Trafford a few years ago and that his purchase of Chelsea was in pursuit of that spine-tingling moment when the Brazilian walked off to a standing ovation.
The way he continues to license spending on the likes of Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko is certainly consistent with a man who dreams not of making a profit but owning the best and most exciting team on the planet. A man who wants his team to be renowned for their glorious football. A man who wants the brand to succeed but puts the football club first.
If they are his values, it would be wonderful to hear him articulate them and he could even borrow someone else’s words to do it — those of Sir Bobby Charlton some years ago when asked to explain what Manchester United stood for.
”For men who work on the shop floor, the one highlight of their week is to go and watch football,” Charlton said. “Matt Busby used to say you should give that man something he can’t do himself. That’s why Manchester United always play attacking football.”
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Abramovich must long to say the same of Chelsea — but Charlton’s is the sort of boast that could only come from one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Celtic raise the bar