Chelsea's first-team players are currently ensconced in Abu Dhabi, hopefully enjoying much warmer and dryer weather than they would be in Cobham.
But they are not on holiday, as some may think. They have a job to do and an opportunity to win the FIFA Club World Cup and become England’s third winner of the competition behind Manchester United (2008) and Liverpool (2019).
It may be inconvenient in a season bedevilled by injuries to key players and compounded by players getting Covid-19 – and the highest number of fixtures endured by the club for many a year.
And some might say that this competition is an unhealthy distraction from the focus on winning the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup. All arguably bigger prizes.
Others might concede that it may provide some relief from an arduous season and a chance for some much-needed team bonding.
But for me, the Club World Cup is no glorified friendly. For me, this is a must-win trophy.
A European club only gets the right to win this trophy by being champions of the continent and surely that brings with it some kudos and stature?
Chelsea have only competed in this competition once before, after winning the Champions League in Munich in 2012. Had they won the trophy back then, they would have done so before Liverpool and only four years after Man Utd. That counts in my book.
That we did not can be blamed on the awful tenure of one Rafa Benitez.
Chelsea supporters were riding a crest of a Champions League-winning wave until Robbie Di Matteo was summarily sacked after losing 3-0 away to Juventus in the Champions League in November 2012. Our despair was compounded by the hiring of the loathed Benitez as interim manager.
The only silver lining on that particular cloud was the fact that Chelsea had the opportunity to become world champions, the best club in world football, if they lifted the Club World Cup to be held in Tokyo, Japan.
It all started quite well with a fluid and dominant 3-1 victory over CONCACAF champions Monterrey in the semi-final.
Even Benitez’s tactics and peculiar team selections couldn’t screw that up, although it should be noted that captain John Terry was still out with a knee injury sustained against Liverpool in November and Frank Lampard was only just fit again having been injured for even longer, and came on as a substitute.
Fernando Torres got himself on the scoresheet and had found some form. It augured well for the final against Copa Libertadores champions: Corinthians from Brazil.
The FIFA Club World Cup is the successor to an earlier iteration of a Club World Cup; the Intercontinental Cup, established in 1960 to pit the European champions against the Copa Libertadores champions from South America. The winners were declared the ‘best team in the world’.
The Intercontinental Cup was plagued by controversy, extreme violence on and off the pitch, and a reluctance of clubs on both continents to actually take part.
Celtic lost 1-0 in the Battle of Montevideo, a replay to Racing from Argentina and had four players sent off, with Racing having 2 players sent off. Manchester United, England’s first representatives in 1968, lost 2-1 to Estudiantes from Argentina in a match that was equally bad-tempered.
Liverpool declined to participate in 1977 and 1978, as did Nottingham Forest in 1979. Forest then lost 1-0 to Nacional from Uruguay in 1980; Liverpool lost 3-0 to Flamengo from Brazil in 1981; Aston Villa lost 2-0 to Penarol from Uruguay in 1982 and Liverpool lost 1-0 to Independiente from Argentina in 1984.
That meant British teams vying to be the best club side in the world were six-and-O in the competition, and these teams were among the best we’ve seen. More pertinently, our strongest teams seemed no match for the South Americans.
I grew up with this in the 1970s and 1980s and was fascinated by the exotically named South American sides with a penchant for flair, dark arts, and violence in equal measure. South American football was clearly a very different game and at the time, Chelsea could not have been further away from a chance of competing against sides from the continent.
When Chelsea finally had the chance to compete in a competition that I recalled as a boy, I remembered the feeling of something mythical and magical about playing South American opposition and even more so when playing a Brazilian team.
Anyone thinking that this is a competition to be taken lightly should have been in the Yokohama stadium in December 2012.
Around 30,000 Corinthians fans invaded Tokyo to see their club crowned world champions. Some had sold cars, their house, and quit jobs just to be there. For them, this was the chance to see their club win what they believed to be the most prestigious trophy in world football.
Pitting themselves against Europe’s elite and, in particular, a club representing the inventors of the game was a very serious business.
They were not to be disappointed. Aided and abetted by Benitez’s negative tactical approach and inconsistent team selection, he was outthought by Corinthians manager – and Brazil's current head coach – Tite and the players were outfought by the aggressive and physical Brazilians.
Torres reverted to type and missed two gilt-edged chances and Corinthians duly won 1-0 and the opportunity of a lifetime crumbled to dust.
My dream of seeing Chelsea become the best team in the world, legitimately, was shattered along with all the long-suffering 600 Chelsea fans who had travelled 6,000 miles over land and sea, at great expense, to provide support for the team.
Try telling them this was a pointless glorified friendly that didn’t really mean anything.
Maybe it’s an age thing as to whether you take this competition seriously and have a great desire to see Chelsea winning it.
I didn’t believe I’d ever see Chelsea win the FA Cup again in my lifetime and was resigned to looking on at the likes of Liverpool and Man Utd winning trophies galore at home and abroad from the 1970s to 1990s.
Winning the FA Cup twice, the League Cup, Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Super Cup prior to Roman Abramovich’s arrival exceeded my wildest dreams, but still I never really believed I’d see us win the Premier League.
All that changed in 2004, a year after Abramovich bought the club and hired Jose Mourinho, undoubtedly the best manager in the world at the time.
With Jose at the helm, I knew we would win the league that season. I was pretty convinced we’d follow that up with the Champions League, after all that’s what Champions League-winning manager Jose Mourinho was hired for wasn’t it?
Of course, football is a cruel and fickle mistress, and we didn’t win the Champions League under Mourinho, although arguably we did win it with his team in 2012 having got so close in the seven years preceding that.
And this in essence is what makes the Club World Cup so special and important to win. You only get to compete for it if you win the Champions League and in spite of being a good enough team to win the Champions League several times between 2005-2012, we only won it once.
Few people, me included, expected Chelsea to win it again last season, but the fact that Chelsea did gives us an unexpected chance to finally win it all and exorcise the ghosts of the Benitez-infused wrongs of December 2012.
Football supporters might be considered small minded and petty, but I can assure you that having been on the receiving end of opposition supporters chants and ‘banter’ for a long time before we started winning more trophies than them, the satisfaction of chanting “we’ve won it all” and being 100% correct in this assertion will be priceless.
Over and above that, we’ll be up there with Manchester United and Liverpool, who have both only won it once.
And for me personally, its another trophy to add to the club’s collection. Call me weird and obsessed if you like, but I have a website page bookmarked on my phone outlining the all-time English football trophy winners. It tells me how many trophies Chelsea has won in comparison to our competitors.
In my lifetime I am very unlikely to see Chelsea overhaul Liverpool on 43 and Man Utd on 42, but Arsenal are very much within our sights with 30 compared to Chelsea’s 25.
As it stands, we have won more European trophies than every club on that list except Liverpool. These are the kind of stats I like; 30 years ago, we were not even part of that conversation and look at us now; making history not re-living it.
I’m not sure if the Club World Cup will even count towards this running total, but trust me, there are some of us who take it very seriously indeed, not least the 1500 Chelsea supporters who have travelled to Abu Dhabi to support the team, yet again at great expense and with no little logistical difficulty.
The Club World Cup matters to many of us and I very much hope that we will all be singing “we’ve won it all” with complete accuracy come the next Premier League match against Crystal Palace.
David Chidgey
@StamfordChidge
David Chidgey is on the Board of the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust and presents the award-winning Chelsea FanCast every Monday & Friday available from Acast, ITunes, Spotify or chelseafancast.com .
