Every Love Story Has a Beginning

The year was 1996. 

I was a wee Form 2 student making my way through the hallowed hallways of Penang Free School. 

As was the case with most Malaysian boys my age, football was the sport of choice. My long-term (and still going strong today) affair with football had just begun to blossom. 

The World Cup of '94 in USA had captured my 12-year old imagination like no other sport had done before. I was captivated by the beautiful game's alchemic ability to seamlessly fuse together entertainment, athletic prowess and the sheer depth of the human spirit into a rectangular pitch where 22 grown men chased after a leather ball for 90 minutes.

The proverbial football bug had bitten me. Like a radioactive spider to a high school student, the effects were life-changing. Soon after the World Cup ended, I was in need of another football fix. A longer lasting one, preferably. And not one which I had to wait every 4 years for.

Enter the English Premier League, still in its infancy in terms of coverage by Malaysian television stations. Those were the early days, way before the advent of ASTRO and the sea of money that the sport currently swims in thanks to TV rights and branding.

I had heard a bit about this ... English Premier League then. Vaguely. I had heard that it was this competition where 20 English teams duked it out home-and-away against each other from September to May, every year, and with a couple of Cup competitions thrown in between, for domestic glory and bragging rights. 

I had heard that it was a quite an old and prestigious competition. I had heard many older folks (of my dad's generation) reminisce, misty-eyed, about clubs such as this Manchester-whatever and that Liver-something. I had to find out what the big deal was. 

So I started watching Premier League games as and when I could. It does help your cause tremendously to have a footie-obsessed man as your father. Here was a quiet, responsible and well-mannered man whom I had always looked up to as an example of how a gentleman should behave. And yet, come certain Saturday or Sunday nights, he would be sat glued to the telly, a beer in hand, munching on Tong Garden salted cashew nuts, brows knotted and occasionally letting rip an ecstatic cheer, an irate scowl or a string of expletives whenever the occasion called for it. If football was religion, he  was definitely part of the congregation.

So, as I mentioned earlier, it was still early days for me. I had not found a team yet. I rooted for no particular club and I just watched every match for the sheer love of the game. 

I soon discovered that you can't fight human nature. And human nature dictates that men are hardwired to have tribalistic instincts. Put a random crowd of people together and soon they'd start to form mini "groups" based on certain shared traits. It could be based on the tone of their skin, their height, their spoken language or even colour of their t-shirts. All we need is some common cause or thing to rally behind, without reason nor logic. 

And so, it was time for me to draw battle lines with my peers and "support a team". No one likes a fence-sitter. You had to be "identified" with a particular club to "qualify" as a "real fan" of the game. Only women or young children can get away with the "I don't support any team in particular, hee hee" line. By default, a real bloke must support a club, understand the offside rule and hate referees. Don't look at me, I didn't make the rules.

All around me, friends were fans of either Liverpool or United. Quite understandably, as the former was a former giant whilst the latter was a monster of a Devil in the making.

I was never one to follow the crowd. It would've been so easy to go either way, either support the most successful club in England (at that time) or ride the bandwagon of the behemoth in the making under a relatively young (at that time) but highly promising Alex Ferguson. 

I chose neither. 

My search for a team to support took me far and wide. I briefly considered Spurs, then Aston Villa, then Boro and even Leeds United. Heck, I almost became a Wimbledon supporter too as I was particularly attracted to the antics of the Crazy Gang and their novel strategy of kicking lumps out of opponents to glory. 

But then I laid eyes on Chelsea. It was love on second sight.

I started noticing them because they wore blue (I am a huge fan of the colour blue). But what separated them from the tons of other clubs in blue was this rasta-looking Dutchman called Ruud Gullit. Here was a player who possessed immense technical abilities, who had bags full of confidence and who swaggered like a dreadlocked rock star. And he played for Chelsea.

I was sold. 

From Gullit, I was introduced to a couple more interesting players whom I grew to idolise shortly thereafter. The impish determination and sheer tenacity of that man-pitbull, Dennis Wise. The thunder-thighs of the Welsh striking legend Mark Hughes. And the lung-bursting overlapping runs of the Fox Mulder-lookalike Dan Petrescu. Throw in a young manager who was once hailed as the most skillful English midfielder apart from Gazza, i.e. Glenn Hoddle, and my metamorphosis from a partisan bystander to a celery-chucking member of the Blues Army was complete. 

The fact that they finished the 1995-1996 season 11th place in the league sat well with me. I had no respect for glory-hunting friends who supported Liverpool or United or whoever else was on top at the moment. Secretly, I enjoyed Chelsea's relative non-success. Thanks to their non-achievements then, not many I knew supported Chelsea. It gave me "street cred" to be a supporter of a club whom no one else supported. 

At the same time, Chelsea's stock was rising. Over the years, they became known as the club who attracted Continental-style-passing players to their ranks. Di Matteo, Le Boeuf, Dessaily, Deschamps, Gus Poyet, Petit, Stanic, Gronkjaer, Gudjohnsen, Vialli and Tore Andre Flo followed. And then you have the little magician from Sardinia, club legend and football's true gentleman, Gianfranco Zola. I hold him in such high regard that his name simply cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the aforementioned players. He was, and still is in my books, the greatest player to have ever graced the turf of Stamford Bridge. 

Chelsea started playing scintillating stuff. Free-flowing, beautiful, attractive football coupled with high octane drama made Chelsea one heck of an interesting club. Chelsea produced English football's 2 only player-managers (Gullit and Vialli) ever in their recent history (that I am aware of). Chelsea was the club who could slay giants such as United, Liverpool, Arsenal, with ease ... and yet crash to Charlton Athletic the following week. Following Chelsea's fortune was like being a stockbroker in Wall Street or riding a roller coaster at a theme park. It made football interesting. 

The "glory years" of my Chelsea love story were indeed at its best during the 1996-2002 era. Right before the Russian Army came marching into town. 

In 2003, in came Roman Abramovich with his limitless ruble, designer 6-o'clock shadow and hordes of bandwagon-jumping fans into Chelsea's annals of history. Success was soon ushered, but together with it, came contempt and the unavoidable derision from fans of other clubs who would not hesitate a second in reminding us that "there's no glory in buying your way to success". 

The Roman invasion left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. True, as a fan I was happy at the achievements won under the Russian billionaire owner. But having to now co-exist with millions of post-Roman, so-called fans and being given the "here's another glory-hunter" look when you answer "Chelsea" to the question of "which club do you support?" still pisses me off. Big time. 

If there was, however, a silver lining in the Blue cloud, it would have been known by only two words. Jose. Mourinho. 


Enter the Special One. If my love for Chelsea had somewhat been diminished by the Ruski Revolution and the crass commercialism it brought to the Bridge, it was Jose who pulled me right back. 


It was Jose with his larger-than-life personality, cockiness, charisma and the ability to make grown men believe in his cause and to bleed as a team for him, that made me realise that we were on the brink of greatness.


And great things he achieved. Jose was his name and ruthlessly winning was his game. He forged a team so solid that they steamrolled opponents with sheer tenacity, efficiency and professionalism. Chelsea soon morphed from a team of mere entertaining underachievers into a world-class powderkeg of a mean fighting machine that embodied the 'win-at-all-costs' mentality of their Machiavellian gaffer. 


At this point, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how I felt about his less-than-deserving departure the moment Roman felt the club wasn't big enough for his ego's and Mourinho's. When Jose was shown the proverbial door, millions of Chelsea faithful were gutted, me especially.


It has been 5 managers ever since, and the revolving door at the Bridge has yet to stop spinning, and still I wait with bated breath for the return of the prodigal son. None more has this yearning felt as strong as it does now, quite ironically, when Chelsea's fortune are currently held in the hands of Jose's one-time protege, the coiffed-haired but not-so-special Andre Villas Boas.


And so, with Chelsea floundering in what could best be described as their worst run of form since Jose left, and with morale and support by its supporters at its lowest ebb,  I thought it apt timing for this blog to be kicked off (pun unintended). 


For years I had felt the urge to put into words the various gamut of emotions felt following Chelsea's ups and downs. For years I had felt the need to articulate strategies, talked formations and pondered many 'what-if' scenarios of players who should and could be donning the Blue of Chelsea. For years I had felt the yearning to be an armchair pundit. 


And now, with the power of the keyboard in my hands, and amidst the warm glow of the monitor staring back at me ... I shall step up. From the blue corner. With proverbial fists flying.


And so it's time. The bell has rung. Let's keep the blue flag flying high.