Soon an awful lot of Chelsea’s millionaires are going to start acting like petulant children. And who can blame them?
They’ll lash out like I did, aged 11, when my coach Roy Hodgson (later to manage European Cup finalists Gothenburg, Neuchatel Xamax, Switzerland, Inter Milan and Blackburn, but then a youth coach at Berea Park, an old NFL outfit in Pretoria) decided he he had better midfielders than the skinny blond English kid with zits and George Best side-lacing boots.
So he put the little ginger winger, Eric Kritzinger, on in my place at half-time. Eric, who loved to get one over on me, grabbed my shorts in a slightly homoerotic show of one-upmanship. He may have been trying to show his sympathy, but at the time shorts-pulling-down was all the rage in the badlands of Downtown Pretoria, so I gave him a quick kick.
And of course then it all went off. I’d kicked Eric because I’d been subbed. What a bad little bugger.
And of course, they were right, though I denied it until, like my Berea Park shirt, I was a ghastly maroon in the face.
Nobody likes being replaced during a football match, not unless their leg has fallen off or their eye is hanging by an optical nerve.
Ever since then I have refused to concede to the indignity of substitution. I have reset my own dislocated shoulder at least 50 times, ignored large holes in my forehead and laughed in the face of torn hamstrings in a bid to play the full 90 minutes.
The utter rejection of being pulled off is too much for me. The harsh reality of being told you’re not as good as the nerd on the sideline who brings his cushion to training is simply too much.
So can you imagine what it’s like at Chelsea, where they’ve got 13 midfielders? You can play like a bloody Brazilian on ballet shoes and still get jerked off at half-time, as the actress said to the bishop.
Just look at this little lot for world-class midfielders: Frank Lampard, Damien Duff, Scott Parker, Claude Makalele, Joe Cole, Geremi, Juan Veron, Jesper Gronkjaer, Emmanuel Petit, Mario Stanic, Alexic Nicolas (who? Some local lad with an Italian name apparently), Filipe Oliveira and the superb Alexei Smertin, on loan at Portsmouth.
Petit and Stanic are both off on free transfers at the end of the season, but PSV Eindhoven’s much-sought-afer £12-million midfielder Arjen Robben is on his way.
And so too, apparently, is a local London lad called David Beckham, who has played for most of his career with a fading northern outfit before enjoying an extended shagging and sunning holiday in Spain. Becks, they say, will cost £25-million plus £100 000 a week, mostly to cover his text messaging costs.
Look, I’m not saying they won’t win the league, the cup, the Champions League and even the bloody Iraq war next season, but how much fun is it playing in a side so overloaded with midfielders?
It’s not like they’ve ever been short on the defensive or striking fronts either. Highly talented Dutch defender Winston Bogarde played just one game in three seasons at fullback while Carlton Cole (Charlton) and Mikael Forssell (Birmingham) have been forced to take their striking ability away on loan to get a game.
In fact, if you count Boudewijn Zenden at Middlesbrough, Chelsea have nine loan rangers around the Premiership, nearly enough to make another whole team.
It’s a bloody nonsense in my book. All that talent, all that money, all those fast cars, all that bad behaviour.
Roman Abramovich should be stopped before it all gets out of hand. We all know what will happen when he leaves or, heaven forbid, joins his other Russian oil magnates in a Siberian hostel with locked doors.
So far, Abramovich has spent £117,8-million on transfers and his annual wage bill costs a further £26,5-million. Those new signings — Glen Johnson (£6-million from West Ham), Geremi (£7-million from Real Madrid after a loan spell at Boro), Wayne Bridge (£7-million from Southampton), winger Damien Duff (£17-million from Blackburn) Joe Cole (£6,6-million from West Ham), Makalele (£16,6-million from Real Madrid), Scott Parker (£10-million from Charlton), Veron (£15-million from Manchester United), Adrian Mutu (£15,8-million from Parma) and Hernan Crespo (£16,8-million from Inter) — have scored 43 goals this season.
According to the Daily Mail, that means Abramovich is forking out £3 355 069 per goal. Seems a trifle steep to me.
Oh, and now Chelsea’s big-spenders have three managers too. The doomed Claudio Ranieri insists he’s going nowhere, Porto’s Jose Mourinho claims he’s got the job and Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon is, I’m reliably informed, currently visiting Monaco boss Didier Deschamps, a former Chelsea player, about this strange non-vacancy.
Sometimes, Roman, quality should come before quantity. But when you’re worth £43-billion, who’s counting?