It is much more important than that

"Football is not just a matter of life and death: it's much more important than
that" - Bill Shankly

Regular readers of this blog will know that I do not write about football very often, particularly about FC Barcelona. That is even though I am a paying member of the club and have been so for many years. The issue is that FC Barcelona is an anomaly, the freak result of a series of historical accidents and social circumstances that would have been impossible anywhere else. As much as I love the club and enjoy the recent superb performances of the football team (always on Sky Sports), the truth is that the club has a perverse influence in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain.

Again, this was explained very clearly by Victor Alexandre (cat, eng). Barça is “more than a club” because Catalonia is less of a nation that it could be.

Anyway, today I am not going to write about the social role the club plays in the conscience of the nation. Today is about Chelsea and that game.

If you are interested in football at all, you will know that Barça went through on Wednesday against Chelsea to play in this year’s Champions League final in Rome against Manchester United.

There has been a big stooshie in the English (and some Spanish) media about the alleged referee bias against Chelsea. Conspiracy theorists claim that UEFA did not want an English final and the referee obliged.

Well, I have had a lot of fund winding up Chelsea fans since the end of the game in the different English newspapers. Very amusing.

Here is a selection of comments posted:
----------------------------------------------------
+ first leg: Henry's penalty and second yellow for Ballack
+ second leg: Dubious accidental handball by Piqué (hardly a clear-cut penalty) and sending off of Abidal for nothing.
I think the referee was poor indeed .

These other penalty claims only exist in the febrile imagination of some Chelsea fans or by some blinkered English journalists. The thing is that the English media wanted an English final (revenues are down this year) and it did not happen and hence we have to put up with the most stupid and ludicrous ref bashing ever. Chelsea's classless antics are bringing down (a lot of) the English media too.

I don't remember all this outrage at Collina's a few years back... remember the special one going to the ref's dressing room at half-time? That did word, didn't it?
Chelsea is the football equivalent of fast food: cheap nasty and tasteless.

Get over it folks: Chelsea are out and most people in the football world are happy about it.
----------------------------
Brilliant: Drogba is so good at cheating that he even fooled his own manager!
Chelsea is proof that money does not buy titles, let alone class.
Against the thuggery and diving of Chelsea, the values of FC Barcelona.
----------------------------
Chelsea is the football equivalent of fast food: cheap, nasty and tasteless.
Justice was done and karma does exist.
Remember the shocking refererring of Collina?Or even the Henry penalty denied last week or the blatant second yellow card for Ballack? And what about Ballacks handling of the ball early in the game before Chelsea's goal?
Well, what goes around comes around boys. Get over it.
----------------------------
The vitriol coming back was quite remarkable. Poor souls.

But even after the debatable referering, football values and styles of the two clubs, which I admit are debatable as there is no shame in being a solid defensive unit (as long as your players do not constantly cheat and dive when they go forward); even after the different reactions over the two legs with regards to refereeing decisions, even after all that, there remains a fact:
On a moral and ethical basis, Chelsea CF are well, well below FC Barcelona.

Who are Chelsea? Chelsea is a London club, infamous for its minority of neonazi, BNP support. OK everybody has skeletons in the closet.

Chelsea is a club that should have gone down a few divisions, drowned by debt, until a Russian billionaire bought it for a token sum a few years ago.
And this man, in London to escape Putin’s attentions, has poured million and millions into this football club. And still they have players that are nothing more than thugs and cheating divers. And play shite, really shite football. And with their antics and behaviour, keep bringing the game into disrepute.

I hope UEFA takes some action against these bunch of overpaid whining, cheating, diving thugs.

Chelsea is a club whose ethos and whose modus operandi, on and off the pitch, is the antithesis of the values of FC Barcelona.

The sad thing here is that there must be, surely, some Chelsea fans out there hugely embarrassed about what has become of their club. The playground for Russian mafiosos, thuggish footballers and pathetic football. The day FC Barcelona becomes an plc or something similar and we become a “business”, I will give up my membership.