2023-04-18 15:53:36
“The dressing room of Chelsea It is the most complicated in England. It is full of young people with more ego than talent and the arrival of Bohley has brought more players with that profile. He asked me what someone like Azpilicueta, who has played with Terry or Lampard, would think of them.This is Simon, a 35-year-old ‘blue’ partner who sees how his team has become “a theme park”.
A walk through the Fulham neighborhood
Stamford Bridge is reached by walking quietly through the streets. Going down Fulham Road one comes across the terrace of the Broadway Bar and Grill, where a gang of vintage fans, with their imposing physiques of 80s rugby piliers, enjoy a few pints in the sun. Further on, a Methodist church emerges and on the next bend, emerges without warning Stamford Bridge among the neighborhood buildings. Something like it happens with the Paternon in Rome. Suddenly, but less majestically, one comes across this cute old stadium that turns 146 next week.
The lampposts of the Fulham neighborhood are taken by banners where you can read ‘Proud of London’ with fOthers of the team players. Azpilicueta, the German Havertz and the youth squad Mount are the most repeated faces. There’s no sign of Steerling or Joao Felix. The female girls also have a lot of presence. And he has not yet given time to place Lampard on the fences.
lampard is welcome
for simon “The only good thing they’ve done is choose Lampard, because he respects the shirt and he’s going to make those young millionaires in the dressing room stand firm”. The feeling is shared. Theresa, a shopkeeper at a flower shop near the stadium, expresses herself in similar terms: “They are not hungry. They look more for the name on the back of the shirt than for the shield that they wear in front. And so it is difficult. If Mourinho caught them…”.
Disenchantment is rampant in the neighborhood and it seems that it is spreading to the club. Last Saturday the new owner of Chelsea, the American billionaire Todd Bohley, went down to the locker room after his team’s defeat against Brighton (1-2). The team has lost five of the last six games, the three led by Frank Lampard. Boehly was serious, but many of his players are already with their heads set on next summer. The team is eleventh with 39 points. The border with Europe is marked by Tottenham, with 53. The Champions League is even further away, with Newcastle being fourth with 56.
Chelsea will miss their appointment with Europe for the second time in twenty years. Only in the 2015-16 season did he miss it. The problem is that the locker room is full of players who cost a lot and earn unaffordable chips at other clubs. “In that squad there are people who believe that they are much better than what they show on the pitch. And that sufficiency is killing Chelsea.” Simon diagnoses while we taste a toasted pint at a table on the most populous street in the neighborhood. “And then there are inexplicable maneuvers. They bring Joao Félix on loan and sit Mount, who is a youth player and much loved by the people. It is true that Mason has been punished for some time due to injuries, but now there is talk that he will not renew and will go to Liverpool. Is in the end it ends up causing us to lose the little identity we have. Something that Chelsea have always been accused of.”
Nobody expects a comeback against Real Madrid. Three youngsters pass by on the sidewalk of North End Road, wearing Real Madrid shirts, and people greet them and joke with them by putting their thumbs down at the traffic lights. Not a bad face or a bad word. This is a mestizo neighborhood where people of all races and beliefs live together with a bohemian touch. Behind the Church of Saint John, the patio of the ‘Peques Anglo-Spanish Nursery Schools’ was filled with little ones who did not reach the age of four.
London, the infinite stadium
Mary has been working here for three years. “I’m not from Chelsea, but he has gone to a few games since I’ve been working in the neighbourhood. I moved when I started working at the nursery and I’ve gone several times. There are people here from Arsenal and Fulham too, but most of them are Chelsea. And you can tell in the spirit of the neighborhood that the team is not doing well”. In front of the stadium, in one of the houses that adjoin it, an Arsenal flag and scarf remind the ‘blues’ fans that “London is very big. Here we live fans of all teams. And that makes this city so different footballingly.” Today Real Madrid will meet 40,000 blue flags in the stands of the charming Stamford Bridge, where the corridors of its tenth stadium tell the story of their successes and the five times that England surrendered to the ‘blues’. Today that team has more to do with the bonfire of vanities than with the pride of Peter Leslie Osgood, that titanic striker who led Chelsea to reign in Europe for the first time, winning a Cup Winners’ Cup in 1971. His statue guards the stadium and the neighborhood “and reminds us that work always pays,” concludes Simon, who drank his beer and left.
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