Tommy Martin: Hold your nose and choose. City and Chelsea can’t both lose

Even the ‘stick to the football’ cohort are struggling with this final

Thu, 27 May, 2021 - 07:00

Any sports fan knows that the idea of neutrality does not really exist. Whether it be a random match on telly or two drunks brawling outside a chipper, it is impossible to watch a contest without leaning toward one side or another.

Maybe your loyalties are deep and heartfelt; maybe they are an arbitrary preference for the nicer jersey — regardless, in sport, there is no Switzerland.

So how does one approach this season’s Champions League final?

Unless you are a confirmed Manchester City or Chelsea fan, it’s hard to pick a dog in this race. City are the favourites but you can’t call Chelsea plucky underdogs. Both play pleasant, well-orchestrated football, so you can’t choose on stylistic grounds. The two managers are urbane, intelligent Euroboffins and neither squad contains a particularly loathsome bastard to root against.

And then there’s the fact both are owned by powerful, morally questionable overlords whose grotesque spending has, some say, hideously distorted global football. Admittedly, they do wear slightly different shades of blue, so there’s that to work with.

For many, this final is a contest that falls into the category of ‘Can’t they both lose?’. This is an increasingly common malaise, mainly because football clubs are now the playthings of unscrupulous billionaires rather than old duffers who own a local cement factory. It’s hard to pick a team to like because many of them are so dislikeable.

This season’s Champions League semi-finals brought the matter to a head. Coming the week after the European Super League debacle, they featured three of the foiled mutineers — Real Madrid, City, and Chelsea — and one team who had remained aboard the good ship Uefa.

Confusion ensued for conscientious football fans, who were left asking themselves a mind-bending philosophical question: “Are … are PSG the good guys now?”

If it seems strange to base your opinion on an entire football club on the wealthy rotter who owns it, then blame the times we live in. The Super League affair provided further evidence that rich people are sometimes not that nice, and there is now a heightened suspicion of what they might be up to when they start dabbling in football.

While neither of the Champions League finalists were particularly gung-ho about the whole thing, nor is anyone mistaking Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour for bleeding heart philanthropists. How do we choose between the two flies racing up the proverbial wall when one of the flies owns a yacht the size of Belgium and the other puts gay people in jail?

Not that everyone is troubled by human rights and the wholesale snaffling of the Russian people’s mineral wealth. It drives a lot of left-leaning journalists and campaigners mad that many sports fans are happy to enjoy the show no matter what terrible things are happening backstage. But that’s simply a reflection of society. Some people believe we should seek to right every wrong and protect the vulnerable; others join Fine Gael.

However, even the ‘stick to the football’ cohort are struggling with this final. They feel that City and Chelsea skipped the queue to climb football’s pecking order, sidestepping the hard decades of legend-building graft. The fact that both are seen as having bought success is a red line, particularly for fans of traditionalist clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United, who, of course, are hippy collectives who eschew all the trappings of modern capitalism.

Like all nouveau riche, Manchester City and Chelsea are bitterly resented for their change in circumstances. There are many for whom Chelsea will always be the club of Combat 18 and Ken Bates. This is why they were the natural home for Jose Mourinho’s sulphurous charms.

For all their success under Abramovich, some refuse to accept them as a fundamentally changed entity, as if some day expecting Thomas Tuchel to throw on Kerry Dixon in search of a late goal.

City, in contrast, were perfectly lovable losers for so long. Hell, they were Jack Duckworth’s favourite team. In two decades they’ve gone from Shaun Goater and Joe Royle to Sergio Aguero and Pep Guardiola.

Twenty-two years ago this month they were playing Gillingham in the third division play-offs. Now they annex titles and global subsidiary clubs with cool, imperial ease. Try to slow their march and, as Uefa found out, they will park a battalion of lawyers on your front lawn. This season, there wasn’t even their annual Champions League cock-up to remind us of happier times.

What we are dealing with here is a difficulty for the so-called neutral to get emotionally invested in this Champions League final. But what if, for the sake of this special day, we put all that aside? What if we forgot about the dastardly owners and the obscene spending and the arriviste gaucheness?

After all, just because they are dislikeable, doesn’t mean there is nothing to like. Take the owners, for example. Sure, they are appalling, but terrible rich people have been sponsoring great art for centuries. Without the bloodthirsty Borgias in Renaissance Italy, there would be no Mona Lisa. I’m not saying playing Kevin De Bruyne as a false nine is up there with the Sistine Chapel, but you get the point.

And, in their semi-final win over PSG, City showed guts and character that made them seem more human than the cold precision of Guardiola’s football often allows. For once the manager didn’t lumber them with some serpentine tactical stratagem and his players rose to the occasion. By the end of the second leg Ruben Dias and Oleksandr Zinchenko were throwing their bodies on the line like Spartans at Thermopylae.

As for Chelsea, is it possible to totally dislike any team of which N’Golo Kanté is a member? Humble, gentle-natured, and thoroughly gracious, yet the most complete destroyer the game has ever seen and able to gambol up the field to lethal effect — a wondrous, unstoppable Ewok of a midfielder.

Hold your nose and pick a team. It only comes once a year, so stop worrying and enjoy the Champions League final. Besides, they can’t both lose.