Post by QPR Report on Nov 28, 2008 7:51:14 GMT
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Chelsea
An article from some while back. Certain analogies to elsewhere...!
Telegraph/Michael Henderson -
Chelsea, a soulless brand that loves to be loathed
Some years ago, when Baroness Philippine de Rothschild was entertaining Robert Mondavi at the chateau that bears the famous family name, they were talking about the things that wine makers like to talk about: grapes, soil, sun. Then she said: 'Making wine is a pretty simple business. It's the first 200 years that's difficult'.
Just like that – voila! Mondavi, quite a player himself, crept back to northern California, pierced to the quick. There are certain things understood in the blood, the first lady of wine was saying, which constitute an inheritance that has nothing to do with spending money or vaulting ambition.
The Rothschild rapier came to mind the other day when Peter Kenyon, Chelsea's chief executive, spoke freely of their intention to become the biggest club in the world – 'brand leader', no less – by 2014. More specifically, he was telling his previous employers at Old Trafford, where he is not the most popular man, that their days as top dogs were numbered.
In the mephitic world of football, which attracts so many people of exceptional venality, Kenyon stands out as possibly the most absurd figure of all. Not bent, not nasty in the way that others are; just absurd. For all his talk of world domination the former sportswear salesman from Stalybridge is little more than a highly-paid errand-boy, sent on missions by a mysterious, easily bored Russian, for the benefit of a manager who labours under the misapprehension that he is Count Bismarck, and the Premiership represents a map of Europe in 1870.
So those of us who are slightly sceptical about the Stamford Bridge revolution cannot pretend it does not give pleasure to inform 'Roman the Terrible', 'Jose the Horrible' and their lap dog 'Petrushka' that, even if they win the Premiership every season until the stipulated 'harmonisation' year of 2014, they will still come a distant second to Manchester United. And Liverpool. And Arsenal. And a few others beyond these shores.
Status is not something you can buy over the counter at the grocer's, like a bag of King Edward's. 'I'll have half-a-pound of tradition, please, and throw in a few slices of heritage while you're at it. Oh, and some turnips, for Michael Ballack'. It is something that develops incrementally over decades of achievement.
Of course, if the acquisition of players counted for everything, Chelsea have already planted their pole on top of football's Everest, and there are untold millions in the kitty (not generated by success on the field, as at other clubs) to buy dozens more. They could bring in Dan Carter, Roger Federer and Ricky Ponting tomorrow if they wanted, and perhaps they should. Those entertainers would bring a touch of class to what is essentially a soulless, mercenary team.
Class is the key word. The people who own, manage and administer Chelsea underline, week in, week out, what Oscar Wilde meant when he defined a cynic as 'someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'. They spend money like drunken sailors, and brag about there being 'more where that came from'. Then they wonder why the world outside their frantic little parish withholds its respect.
For let us be honest: Chelsea are loathed with greater intensity, by more people, than any club in the history of English football. Don Revie's Leeds United side were not liked because they kicked people, and tried to laugh it off. Manchester United are disliked and envied in roughly equal measure, but they are admired for their football, and their history. Arsenal used to send crowds to sleep every week. Now they are rhapsodised by the very people who, not so long ago, wouldn't pay 'em in washers. Even Liverpool in their glory years had their detractors.
But Chelsea are loathed because they have spent half-a-billion pounds to keep internationals in gravy, and yet prefer to grind out victories; because 'The Interpreter' considers himself to be 'special'; because they decline to behave with the grace of champions (they don't even acknowledge the possibility of grace); because some of their players earn £130,000-a-week and grumble it's hard to find a suitable property in London; because their supporters, an odd compound of ample-buttocked 'A3 Men' and 'Showbiz Charlies', many of whom couldn't tell a goal-post from the groundsman's cat, present such a disagreeable spectacle.
Even in the old days, when Charlie Cooke and Peter Osgood offered sound reasons for enjoying their football, there was something unappealing about them: all that guff about whooping it up with film stars in the King's Road (it's Fulham Road, actually), and tales of 'Chopper' Harris, a so-called hard man who was regarded as a joke north of the Trent. 'I always scored against Chelsea', a true warrior of those bloody times once confessed. 'Harris never came near me, and he got rid of the ball pretty sharpish if I went looking for him'.
Chelsea may well retain the Premiership, even if Michael Ballack and Andrei Shevchenko continue to play like Hinge and Bracket (value for money there, gentlemen!). They may even win the Champions League. Having doled out so much brass, and banged on about what it would mean to win that bloated competition, they will look pretty silly if they don't.
If referees or opponents get in their way, their fans can always fire off death threats (the full story of the Anders Frisk affair has not been revealed), and 'The Interpreter' will pout away like Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati.
Or they might, at this late hour, absorb a lesson that even 'dynamic brands' might find useful. Great football clubs have a sense of history; not only their own, but also that of the game. Anfield and Old Trafford reek of history but so too do the Parks of Villa, St James's, and Fratton, where success has been more spasmodic. Proper football clubs want to be successful but they feel a responsibility to the game at large, if it is possible to put it so romantically without people sN-Wording. Chelsea are not interested in anything so opaque. Furthermore, they give the impression that they actually enjoy being disliked. Envy, they call it. A sense of detachment, others might say.
West Bromwich Albion is a football club. Accrington Stanley is a football club. Chelsea has not been a football club for some while. It is a vanity publication, run by vulgarians for whom modesty is a badge of shame, and underwritten by a rich man whose loyalty to a foreign investment cannot be taken for granted.
Top dogs, eh? Woof, woof!
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/2351268/Chelsea%2C-a-soulless-brand-that-loves-to-be-loathed.html
Chelsea
An article from some while back. Certain analogies to elsewhere...!Telegraph/Michael Henderson -
Chelsea, a soulless brand that loves to be loathed
Some years ago, when Baroness Philippine de Rothschild was entertaining Robert Mondavi at the chateau that bears the famous family name, they were talking about the things that wine makers like to talk about: grapes, soil, sun. Then she said: 'Making wine is a pretty simple business. It's the first 200 years that's difficult'.
Just like that – voila! Mondavi, quite a player himself, crept back to northern California, pierced to the quick. There are certain things understood in the blood, the first lady of wine was saying, which constitute an inheritance that has nothing to do with spending money or vaulting ambition.
The Rothschild rapier came to mind the other day when Peter Kenyon, Chelsea's chief executive, spoke freely of their intention to become the biggest club in the world – 'brand leader', no less – by 2014. More specifically, he was telling his previous employers at Old Trafford, where he is not the most popular man, that their days as top dogs were numbered.
In the mephitic world of football, which attracts so many people of exceptional venality, Kenyon stands out as possibly the most absurd figure of all. Not bent, not nasty in the way that others are; just absurd. For all his talk of world domination the former sportswear salesman from Stalybridge is little more than a highly-paid errand-boy, sent on missions by a mysterious, easily bored Russian, for the benefit of a manager who labours under the misapprehension that he is Count Bismarck, and the Premiership represents a map of Europe in 1870.
So those of us who are slightly sceptical about the Stamford Bridge revolution cannot pretend it does not give pleasure to inform 'Roman the Terrible', 'Jose the Horrible' and their lap dog 'Petrushka' that, even if they win the Premiership every season until the stipulated 'harmonisation' year of 2014, they will still come a distant second to Manchester United. And Liverpool. And Arsenal. And a few others beyond these shores.
Status is not something you can buy over the counter at the grocer's, like a bag of King Edward's. 'I'll have half-a-pound of tradition, please, and throw in a few slices of heritage while you're at it. Oh, and some turnips, for Michael Ballack'. It is something that develops incrementally over decades of achievement.
Of course, if the acquisition of players counted for everything, Chelsea have already planted their pole on top of football's Everest, and there are untold millions in the kitty (not generated by success on the field, as at other clubs) to buy dozens more. They could bring in Dan Carter, Roger Federer and Ricky Ponting tomorrow if they wanted, and perhaps they should. Those entertainers would bring a touch of class to what is essentially a soulless, mercenary team.
Class is the key word. The people who own, manage and administer Chelsea underline, week in, week out, what Oscar Wilde meant when he defined a cynic as 'someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'. They spend money like drunken sailors, and brag about there being 'more where that came from'. Then they wonder why the world outside their frantic little parish withholds its respect.
For let us be honest: Chelsea are loathed with greater intensity, by more people, than any club in the history of English football. Don Revie's Leeds United side were not liked because they kicked people, and tried to laugh it off. Manchester United are disliked and envied in roughly equal measure, but they are admired for their football, and their history. Arsenal used to send crowds to sleep every week. Now they are rhapsodised by the very people who, not so long ago, wouldn't pay 'em in washers. Even Liverpool in their glory years had their detractors.
But Chelsea are loathed because they have spent half-a-billion pounds to keep internationals in gravy, and yet prefer to grind out victories; because 'The Interpreter' considers himself to be 'special'; because they decline to behave with the grace of champions (they don't even acknowledge the possibility of grace); because some of their players earn £130,000-a-week and grumble it's hard to find a suitable property in London; because their supporters, an odd compound of ample-buttocked 'A3 Men' and 'Showbiz Charlies', many of whom couldn't tell a goal-post from the groundsman's cat, present such a disagreeable spectacle.
Even in the old days, when Charlie Cooke and Peter Osgood offered sound reasons for enjoying their football, there was something unappealing about them: all that guff about whooping it up with film stars in the King's Road (it's Fulham Road, actually), and tales of 'Chopper' Harris, a so-called hard man who was regarded as a joke north of the Trent. 'I always scored against Chelsea', a true warrior of those bloody times once confessed. 'Harris never came near me, and he got rid of the ball pretty sharpish if I went looking for him'.
Chelsea may well retain the Premiership, even if Michael Ballack and Andrei Shevchenko continue to play like Hinge and Bracket (value for money there, gentlemen!). They may even win the Champions League. Having doled out so much brass, and banged on about what it would mean to win that bloated competition, they will look pretty silly if they don't.
If referees or opponents get in their way, their fans can always fire off death threats (the full story of the Anders Frisk affair has not been revealed), and 'The Interpreter' will pout away like Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati.
Or they might, at this late hour, absorb a lesson that even 'dynamic brands' might find useful. Great football clubs have a sense of history; not only their own, but also that of the game. Anfield and Old Trafford reek of history but so too do the Parks of Villa, St James's, and Fratton, where success has been more spasmodic. Proper football clubs want to be successful but they feel a responsibility to the game at large, if it is possible to put it so romantically without people sN-Wording. Chelsea are not interested in anything so opaque. Furthermore, they give the impression that they actually enjoy being disliked. Envy, they call it. A sense of detachment, others might say.
West Bromwich Albion is a football club. Accrington Stanley is a football club. Chelsea has not been a football club for some while. It is a vanity publication, run by vulgarians for whom modesty is a badge of shame, and underwritten by a rich man whose loyalty to a foreign investment cannot be taken for granted.
Top dogs, eh? Woof, woof!
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/2351268/Chelsea%2C-a-soulless-brand-that-loves-to-be-loathed.html