Published: 24 May, 2012
by RICHARD OSLEY

WHEN the final whistle went on this draining football drama, the commentator needed to think carefully about how to sum up what had taken place.

He went with: “Today they have won greatness, today they have won a measure of immortality, today they have won for themselves an ineradicable chapter in the history of our national game.”

No, this wasn’t Chelsea’s Champions League triumph – that was ITV’s John Champion describing the final whistle in the last match of Arsenal’s invincible season back in 2004; he trails off with: “Arsenal won 26. Arsenal drew 12. And most famously of all, historically, Arsenal lost none.”

An ineradicable chapter in the history of our national game.

As much as Arsenal fans and for that matter Spurs fans and Man Utd fans and fans of every other club but Chelsea might want to live in the past and make jokes this week about the ever more ludicrous John Terry in his kit and shinpads, there has to be a moment where we all step back and say: Chelsea did just write their own ineradicable chapter in the history of our national game.

Despite being repeatedly outplayed for large sections of this Champions League season – Napoli, Barcelona and Munich were all better than them – and deservedly ending up in sixth place for their mediocre domestic pursuits, the club has done what others haven’t. Never before has a team from our city won Europe’s big trophy.

Their resistance to defeat was engrossing to the end.

But there is sourness to this praise.

A distaste. Ineradicable chapters in the history of our national game now come at such a grotesque price that if we weren’t all addicted we’d have stopped watching due to repetitive nausea.

Chelsea in Europe and City in the Premiership – the formula for winning isn’t too difficult to work out.

If they weren’t winning, Chelsea fans would need the sick bucket too.

In 50/100/200 years when sports historians look back at this particular ineradicable chapter, historians will see: Chelsea won in 2012, just when the world was in a horrible recession ”they must have done it on a shoestring budget, well done them”.

But it will take those same historians next to no research to find out the strange anomaly of a team and a sport that mocks the economic misfortune of planet Earth and carries on regardless.

Chelsea, of course, are not the only ones in the dock but when the winning team has a player on the bench worth £50m – a national newspaper at this stage works out how many nurses you can buy with that – there is a need for financial fair play to come as soon as possible.

Chelsea spent a billion pounds to get Roman Abramovich the trophy, yet at the same time the global financial crisis partly meant Chelsea could hardly half fill their away section at Liverpool this season and needed to advertise for fans for their FA Cup quarter-final at Stamford Bridge.

If we weren’t all addicted…

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