It’s been a little while since I last posted on this blog… 474 days to be precise and as I sit here typing this it’s a little over 24 hours until Chelsea’s Club World Cup campaign gets underway. So, you guessed it, what better time to attempt to revive the blog and give myself something to do over the summer months?
Much has changed since I last posted. Enzo Maresca has called the shots at Stamford Bridge in the dugout for over a year now and every possible emotion associated with football has been experienced in that time.
Depending on who you listened to, we had our Chelsea back, and then we didn’t. But ultimately it ended happily enough with a well-earned fourth place and our fifth unique European Cup.
Rumours of a revamped Club World Cup competition have been around for some time, I can remember when I was in my early teens thinking how cool it would be to have a global competition for club football. Of course, the previous format of the Club World Cup did exist at this time but it was a pretty gated group of teams playing in each edition, with the winner of the Champions League almost always winning. And no, I haven’t forgotten when we inexplicably lost to Corinthians in 2012.
For the most part, I’m not sure anyone has ever really asked for this revamped edition. Summer international tournaments aside, it’s generally nice to have a few months off each summer to rest and recharge from the sport players and fans alike. In recent years, as cup fixtures, international friendlies as well as pre- and post-season fixtures have increased, I feel we’ve seen a noted drop in the quality of games as well as an increase in injuries from sheer fatigue.
However, as I sit here on Sunday afternoon, with the football season having ended over two weeks ago as Paris Saint Germain demolished Inter Milan in the Champions League Final, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of excitement for the tournament.
Certain elements to it are of course farcical. I don’t want to name an exhaustive list but here are just a couple of the things I can’t quite get my head around:
- The Location – Did the United States really need to host another sporting event in such quick succession?
- The Eligibility Criteria – It’s a global competition, so I very much understand the need for global representation. However, this will almost certainly make the group stage games almost entirely redundant. 11 of the 12 UEFA teams will make it through the Group Stage as a certainty, and I still fancy Red Bull Salzburg to qualify over Al-Hilal.
- Player Fatigue – I mentioned it above, and I know they get paid a lot of money, but do they really need another summer tournament?
All this being said, there does come a time in every summer where, even if I’ve spent the majority of the season complaining, I do start to long for the return of football and I expect this itch to be scratched rather nicely by this tournament.
Watching England vs Senegal on Tuesday night, I really got the sense for the majority of the England players on the pitch that this was one game of football too many. It was hard to see any real motivation for the game apart from a handful of players wanting to stake a claim for inclusion in Thomas Tuchel’s 2026 World Cup squad.
I suspect that many of the group stage games may have a strange feel to them. Demand for tickets has been lower than anticipated, and in many cases the big teams are not going to have to get out of 2nd gear to dispatch their opposition.
However, as we head to the knockout phase of the tournament and we start to get the European giants facing off, I fully expect excitement and hype to build, and build fast too. It’s not just the quality of the matchups, but the huge prize money on offer too.
A European team receives up to $38 million just for participating in the group stages, and the winner of the entire tournament will net up to $125 million. To put that into perspective, that’s $35 million more than you’d get for winning the Champions League.
It will be nice to see Olivier Giroud face off against Chelsea one last time tomorrow night, but the gulf in quality should be far too high for LA FC to pose any serious threat to an opening win. Of the two other teams in Chelsea’s group, Flamengo and Espérance Sportive de Tunis, it’s only Flamengo I can see posing any real competition over 90 minutes.
All being well, up next we’ll face the runner-up of Group C. In all likelihood, barring an upset by Boca Juniors, that will be Benfica. If successful in that tie, the Champions of Europe in the form of PSG will be waiting.
Only time will tell how deep into this competition Chelsea will go, but I’m excited to watch us play with a slightly new look team with both André Santos and Liam Delap now very much in the fold. I’m without a doubt most excited to watch Delap play, he was my number one strike target going into the summer so to have concluded business and get him linked up with the team so quickly is fantastic.
I’ll be posting very sporadically, basically whenever I feel like it, during this tournament. With all games being televised free to air on DAZN and Channel 5, I fully expect to be watching an unhealthy amount of post-season football in the coming weeks.
The Shed Diaries 