Nsomeone saw it Chelsea comes the last time they won the title. The key moment came in the sixth game of the season, when they trailed 3-0 to Arsenal at half-time. They had lost at home to Liverpool the week before and drawn against Swansea the week before that. Their manager, Antonio Conte, who had tried to adapt to the team, decided that enough was enough: the team had to bow to him. At half-time he switched to his favorite three players and in the reassuring dullness of a goalless second half of a match that had already been lost, the revolution was born.
Chelsea won their next thirteen league games and by the time anyone had figured out how to deal with their 3-4-2-1, with N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matić as a seemingly impenetrable shield at the back of midfield, it was too late. . There was no European football to worry about – the previous season Jose Mourinho had collapsed and finished in 10th place – so Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso remained fresh enough to continue tearing up and down the pitch at full-back. Elsewhere, the stars aligned: Manchester City were still getting used to Pep Guardiola in his first season in English football, Arsenal were still in the late Wenger drift, Liverpool were still building under Jürgen Klopp, and so Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham were Chelsea’s biggest challengers. But whoever came second would probably have won the competition with 93 points.
Could this happen again eight years later? Once again Chelsea started in chaos, with Raheem Sterling releasing a statement protesting his negligence just seconds after the team sheet was released for the opening game of the season, a 2-0 home defeat to City. Once again they have a manager who has brought unexpected clarity. Once again, last season’s disappointing performances have lightened the burden on European football; although Chelsea have the Conference League to play in, Enzo Maresca has turned what could have been a chore into an advantage, effectively creating a shadow side that, in a largely pressure-free environment, has become comfortable with its playing style and can step up when necessary.
Does this mean that Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali knew what they were doing all along? That might go too far and it remains unclear how the rifts in their leadership reported in September have been resolved. After all, if you throw enough money at a project, things tend to click eventually.
But every week Maresca seems a more inspired choice as manager. Potential PSR pitfalls remain ahead, while it says a lot about the waste of the project that 24 senior players have been brought under current ownership for a fee of £550 million, having started less than three games for Chelsea this season (admittedly three of these have already been sold – at a combined loss of £20 million). Maresca’s greatest achievement yet may be going through the box and figuring out which pieces don’t fit.
It seems to work. Sunday’s 4-3 win over Tottenham was Chelsea’s fourth straight win in the competition, despite a pair of slips from Marc Cucurella giving Spurs a two-goal lead. With 35 goals, Chelsea is comfortably the league’s top scorer. Despite having played one more game than Liverpool, they have finished within four points at the top, so close that Liverpool can feel the breath on their necks even with a game in hand.
History says that teams this far ahead at this stage usually win the title, but the sample size is limited. It is tough to be the only leader for a long time, and as Arne Slot has done excellently so far, he has been lucky with injuries and the way the games have gone. No one knows for sure how Liverpool will react to adversity. City are in the grip of their worst crisis since Guardiola arrived at the club. Sunday’s draw against Fulham showed that after being unlucky with injuries and playing many of the toughest games, Arsenal are still struggling to play fluidly.
After fifteen games, this is a season with, at least at the top end, a pleasantly old-fashioned feeling. Everyone but Liverpool seemed fallible, and there is a sense of uncertainty about them too. At the same time, the big mid-table of the league is full of sides – such as Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford – who can upset anyone on their day. Liverpool may still be able to pull it off, but for now there is a satisfying sense of unpredictability, and that means that despite everything Maresca and his players try to deny, Chelsea are – unexpectedly – firmly in the title race.
after newsletter promotion
On this day
It would have been much easier for Great Britain if Australia had qualified for the 1966 World Cup, which was hosted in England. But because they were ill-prepared, they lost 9–2 on aggregate to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, causing major headaches for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although the Korean War, in which Britain had brought nearly 100,000 troops and its Far Eastern fleet, had ended with an armistice in 1953, Britain had never formally recognized the northern part of Korea as a sovereign nation, nor was there ever concluded a formal peace treaty. signed.
This raised three major concerns: the national anthem, the flag and the terminology to be used. It was decided that ‘North Korea’ was correct, without necessarily granting statehood. An agreement was reached that the flags of all 16 competing sides could be flown at each match. But what to do with the national anthem? On December 9, 1965, a clever diplomatic solution was found: national anthems were not to be played before every match, as was customary, but only before the opening match and the final. The (correct) assumption was that this would mean that the North Korean national anthem would never be played. be heard, although they caused a major shock by eliminating Italy to reach the quarter-finals.
-
This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.com and he will provide the best answer in a future edition