TheChels.net – Features
On August 4th, Roberto Di Matteo and Gus Poyet will line up in opposing dugouts for a pre-season friendly between Brighton and Chelsea. The match will precede a Premier League campaign that will feature Steve Clarke as manager of West Bromwich Albion and Mark Hughes at QPR, as well as former Blues coach Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. The number of former Chelsea players – particularly from teams around the turn…
The final year of a player’s contract is always an uncertain time. If they’ve not been extended before the beginning of the final year of their terms, it’s usually an indication that they may well be on their way come the end of the campaign. That was the case with Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou and Jose Bosingwa at the end of the 2011-12 season and as we embark upon another…
The alarm clock on my mobile rang. I was surprised. Why was I using my mobile as an alarm? I reached out and looked at the time. It said 06.00. Why was I in an unfamiliar room? Suddenly I realised I was in Stuttgart and in less than two hours I was going to be on a train to Munich to watch my beloved Chelsea play in the Champions League…
This night had it all. There was hope. There was despair. There were tears. There was joy. And that was just the three and a half hours after the game it took from the time we got on the U-bahn until the time the 03.25 Munich to Stuttgart express departed Hauptbahnhof. At 04.25. But most of all it was a night at the end of which, for all those who travelled…
There will come a point in time when I sit down and explain to my children precisely what it means to be a Chelsea fan. I was told of the Kings Road swagger embodied by that ‘70s team and the legend of Osgood, Cooke, Bonetti and Harris; the sheer numbers of away support in the ‘80s and the rebirth of the club under Hoddle in the ‘90s. I will tell…
A “Travels” is a rare visitor at this time of the year; however as we have reached the Final of Europe’s premier club competition what better way than to mark it with recollections of what was, for many of those who went, a very favourite European trip. The 2010 – 2011 Champions League campaign began with exceptionally smooth progress through a first stage comprising Marseille, Zilina and Spartak Moscow, ending…
Didier Drogba affirmed his status as the King of Wembley on Saturday with his eighth goal in as many competitive appearances under the new arch. Keen statisticians will have noted that the decisive effort came courtesy of his supposedly ‘weaker’ left foot, and in fact, exactly half of his Wembley goals have come in that manner. In honour of the goal and of another fantastic moment in his Chelsea lore,…
Goals in consecutive Wembley FA Cup ties. An astonishing chip and key assist in home and away clashes against Barcelona. Relentless enthusiasm and energy impacting game after game. Chelsea fans hardly need to be told about the impact of Ramires on the 2011/12 season, but as the campaign reaches the business end it has become more and more apparent that the Blues have another amongst their ranks who produces when…
In the second edition of the Chelsea ‘IF’C series we travel back to the turn of millennia and imagine “What if… Lionel Messi had been found by the Chelsea scouts and was signed by the Blues” Yes, he probably would’ve been sold to Huddersfield Town or shipped off abroad only to shine on international waters and make the fans wonder “why have we let another one go?” But what if…
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was print. James A. Catton was the earliest significant figure in football journalism, writing for the Preston Herald in 1875. Forty years later, he recalled “”In days long ago when Association football players wore beards and breeches, instead of being clean shaven and donning shorts or running pants, newspapers, as a whole, took very little notice of matches. The reports were…