Chelsea are the European Champions!

“How did they do it?” My twitter news feed was flooded with this message the moment Chelsea lifted the Champions League trophy. Almost all the anti-Chelsea fans were dumbfounded while the neutrals congratulated the club and the fans on the win (although they were equally astonished). Chelsea fans just couldn’t believe what just happened. There was and still is only one question in everyone’s mind. How did Chelsea just do that? Some said Chelsea rode their luck while others said it was destiny, that it was written in the stars.

Surely, De Matteo must have learnt some kind of Black Magic in Italy!

“I believe a lot in destiny. It was written a long time ago that we would win but we did not know it and we had to believe. God is wonderful. It was the most important goal I have scored – Didier Drogba

I’ll come to the luck/destiny part later, but this was the season for Chelsea to establish themselves among the elite in Europe. Sure, Chelsea has huge fan following all over the world thanks to the effective media strategy by the club and the money brought in by Abramovich. But within Europe. Chelsea aren’t in the same league as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich. They are not football pundits’ favourites and more importantly, they are not an institution like the aforementioned clubs. They have had great success domestically, but were limited to semi-finals in the Champions league more often than not.

This is somewhat similar to Andy Murray‘s situation in Tennis. Winning is all that matters. With time running out on Drogba, Lampard, Cech and Terry, this was realistically Chelsea’s last shot at the beautiful cup. A bad run of games in the premiership also meant that Chelsea had to win the Champions League in order to be in it next season. A season without playing in Champions League was a luxury Chelsea couldn’t afford and perhaps this is what prompted Roman Abramovich to fire Villas Boas, given that this was his signing. So this was basically a Do or Die situation for Chelsea, something which they always seem to come out victorious, as they have shown once again.

Now coming back, Chelsea were indeed lucky. It might well be the case that it was destined for them. One of the tweet on my news feed read “Chelsea are the luckiest side to have won the trophy”. But don’t forget that Chelsea were one of the most, if not the most, unluckiest team in European competition over the decade or so. The Moscow heart break in the penalties, shocking refereeing at Stamford bridge against Barcelona and so on meant that Chelsea never got their hands on the cup. You knew that the likes of Lampard, Drogba, Cech, Terry, Cole and Essien deserved to be Champions. If anything, this realistically was the last shot for their generation and, as it turned out, they did win it. Well, the Law of Averages holds true in this case. For all the heartbreaks they have endured, this was totally worth it.

On the other hand, you could also argue that Di Matteo was correct tactically. There was no way in the world Chelsea would have won this going forward and attacking Bayern, as Frank Lampard said in the post-match interview. That is the reason Di Matteo had to start Bertrand although everyone were expecting Fernando Torres or Daniel Sturridge to start. Bayern dominated the ball and had 43 shots on goal but only had 7 shots on target, with 22 of them blocked! This Chelsea played the way Jose Mourinho taught them to play and Mourinho’s Chelsea was one of the best teams in the world, off the ball.

Does this mean Chelsea played a perfect game? No. Things didn’t pan out exactly as they would have hoped. Their transitions were poor. Juan Mata, in particular, had a poor game and was unable to deliver the final ball on many occasions. Even defensively, sometimes the game came down to those individual moments when Cole, Cech and even Cahill had the awareness to clear the danger, which they could have avoided. But things don’t always go as planned and the important thing is they didn’t let their heads down during crisis situations, whether it was 2-0 down in 43 minutes at Camp Nou or 1-0 down after 82 minutes at Allianz Arena. You got to give it to them for that.

Destiny, luck, written in the stars, whatever! Sometimes, things happen beyond reasoning and this was one of them. But in the end, Chelsea are deserved winners of the trophy for the determination they have shown throughout the season and in the larger context, for the last decade. It would be very interesting to see where the club goes from here on.