Having home thoughts from abroad during five-star show

WHEN I was invited to a wedding in Colombia, the first thing I did was check the fixture list: There was no way I was missing out on a trip to Bogota, but any doubts I may have had were laid to rest when I saw that the game I would be missing was Boro away. Hmmm . . . South America or an industrial wasteland?

Not the most difficult decision I’ve had to make.

Even if you put the less than picturesque setting to one side, and the ridiculously early kick off time, the games up there are rarely exciting so I was safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t be missing much.

So it was just so typical that this one game that I will miss all season turned out to be a classic. I expect phone, text and mail traffic between Bogota and Middlesbrough increased exponentially on Saturday at 3.30pm (GMT). I was told in no uncertain terms to stay in Bogota if this was the effect that my absence was going to have.

Just like the game against Villa, there had been mutterings of a potential upset, especially taking into account our much publicised injury list. Scolari refuses to cite this as any sort of excuse. He believes in the squad and they look as if they believe in him too.

Whatever he is doing on the training pitch it’s obviously working, as the level of understanding between the players seems to be at an all-time high. He is also getting the best out of players who previously struggled to live up to their potential — Malouda, once dismissed as ‘Captain Pea-Heart’, being the most obvious. He is involved in almost every attack and is causing the opposition no end of problems.

He is less ‘lightweight’ than even a few weeks ago, putting in a few challenges. This, added to his speed, ability on the ball and creativity promises good things. He could finally be the replacement for Robben that we have been missing. Scolari has also given Belletti a new lease of life as both a defensive and attacking midfielder and I’d wager we’ll be seeing a few more thunderbolts from 30 yards or so.

The score and performance aside, the game against Boro was also another landmark for Chelsea or rather one of its most important players. Frank Lampard made it into the top 10 of all-time Chelsea appearances with 380, equal with the legend Peter Osgood. He also entered the top 10 of the all-time Premiership appearances and he still has a few good years in the game — hopefully still with Chelsea now that they’ve prised him away from the clutches of Mourinho with a five-year-contract.

In a time when all we hear about is the mercenary nature of the game it is good to be reminded of players like Lampard, Giggs, and Scholes . You can add Carlo Cudicini to that list. Carlo, who kept a clean sheet up at the Riverside (his 100th for Chelsea), is due a testimonial next season. A player who as a number one and more recently as loyal understudy to Cech, has never let us down and has earned his day in the spotlight. It is a sad indictment of the game that we do not see many testimonials these days.

So back to Colombia; here, like most of South America, the people are football crazy, but I was surprised to find that they are as obsessed with the Premiership as is the rest of Europe — and surprisingly Chelsea is the name on all their lips. On getting into a taxi and being asked the inevitable ‘American?’ we replied that we were English, the driver, delighted, exclaimed ‘CHELSEA!!’. He did follow this up with the words ‘Nottingham Forest’ which took the wind out of our sails a little but at least it wasn’t ‘Manchester United’ or ‘Liverpool’.

One of the reason that Chelsea is so well known here is that many supporters of Bogota side ‘Millionarios’ adopted Chelsea years and years ago because they felt that the two teams had so much in common. Ironically given the name they were broke just as we were, both teams wore blue, both never won anything, both were the second team of the capital city (bizarrely the more successful first team of Bogota, Santa Fe, even wear red shirts with white sleeves) and both were followed by a fanatical but often violent support.

Of course recent years have been kind to Chelsea and we have seen success, money, fantastic players, great managers and loads of silverware and I can’t help but want the same for the Bogota Millionarios and their supporters.

So I fly back just in time to watch us take on Roma tonight and then Liverpool this weekend — I hope my return doesn’t break the spell.

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