Why Aren't We All Laughing at Chelsea?
£1.5 billion for a Conference League. The "Champions of the World" banner. Imagine if ...
“You’ve seen Chelsea,” Jamie O’Hara said a few weeks back while explaining why Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta should be sacked if he doesn’t win silverware by May. “They’ve won trophies. You can’t get away from it. They won the Club World Cup. Won the Conference League.”
I couldn’t resist popping into the comments.
“If Arsenal spent £1.5 billion to win the Europa Conference League,” I wrote, definitely not mad at all, “they’d be the laughingstock of world football.”
I agree (somewhat) with O’Hara that Arteta should face a fierce evaluation at the end of this season, though I doubt he will be sacked barring a really poor campaign. But this idea that Chelsea are in a better place than Arsenal simply because they won two trophies is the kind of binary nonsense that’s taken over football discourse.
Trophy? Good. No trophy? Bad. Warra UCL. Second place trophy.
This is the zombie banter that’s taken over Instagram comment sections. Caveman logic. Any trophy is better than no trophy? So, Leeds United had a better season than Arsenal because they won the Championship last year? Serie B champions Sassuolo had a better campaign than Inter Milan, who narrowly missed out on becoming champions of Italy and Europe?1
There is a hierarchy of competitions, and some are much more difficult to win than others. Finishing second in a (far) superior competition is not inherently worse than winning a (far) inferior competition. Who are these Ricky Bobby wannabes saying otherwise? Finishing as a Champions League semifinalist is clearly a more difficult and impressive achievement than winning a tournament — the Conference — that’s two tiers lower in the European pyramid.
The biggest factor is who you have to beat along the way. On their path to Conference League Glory, Chelsea defeated FC Copenhagen in the Round of 16, Legia Warszawa in the quarters, Djurgårdens in the semifinals, and Real Betis in the final. How is this superior to what any of the Champions League quarterfinalists did? Chelsea didn’t even have to contend with anyone dropping down from the Europa League with the change in format last season.2
BUT WAIT, you say: Liverpool lost to PSG in the Champions League Round of 16. Arsenal lost to them in the semifinals. But Chelsea beat the same PSG in the Club World Cup final!
First of all, it’s worth debating whether it really was the same PSG. But for the sake of advancing this unhinged rant, let’s grant that they were playing at exactly the same level in the United States in mid-July that they were in the spring. (They weren’t, but let’s grant it.) PSG were well beaten on the day and Chelsea were good value for the victory as Cole Palmer went cold in the searing summer heat of the Meadowlands. 3-0, trophy lifted, and what an appropriate trophy it was for Chelsea’s cabinet.3
But who did they beat to earn the opportunity to share a field with the European champions? Two Brazilian sides, Palmeiras and Fluminense, who’d caused their share of problems for opponents throughout the tournament but are not among the world’s top teams. Benfica, who finished second in Portugal last term. (Losers!) And in the group stage: LAFC, Flamengo, and ES Tunis.
On August 17, their first home game of this new season, the Blues of West London unfurled a massive banner reading, “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD,” then drew 0-0 with Crystal Palace. They are referring to their victory in a competition where Liverpool, Barcelona, Napoli, and yes, Arsenal were not there.4 It is true that Chelsea are “CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD” thanks to a competition invented yesterday that they got into thanks to winning the Champions League four years ago, and yet it’s borderline shameless for them to say so.
But nobody seems to laugh at this. In fact, it’s taken at face value. They took home the third-tier European cup and the shiny new spinning orb thing, and that’s all that matters.
I hope at least some Chelsea fans are trumpeting this primarily as a piss-take, because their team have recorded just two victories over top teams in calendar year 2025: that spanking of PSG, and a 3-1 victory over Liverpool in May when the title was won and the Reds were on the beach.5
Part of it was that Chelsea were very poor throughout much of the winter, but they also rarely faced top sides because of the competitions they played in. And that’s what’s truly aggravating about the Conference League braggadocio: After a billion-five spent, why were Chelsea playing in Europe’s third tier in the first place? And please don’t start with the Net Spend. Even with their impressive player sales, they’re a billion in the red. They wouldn’t be making a mockery of the financial rules with all their chicanery if their net spend was so formidable.
Yes, I’m bitter as an Arsenal fan. My team took a significant step back domestically last season, but we battered Real Madrid and lost out to a brilliant PSG side in the world’s highest-level football competition — and now have to listen to this nonsense. Which doesn’t mean I’m against firing Arteta if he fails to come up with the goods at the end of this season. It’s just that if he came up brandishing the Conference League after all the money Arsenal have spent, O’Hara and the Chelsea fans and everybody else would be chortling, wheezing. There might even be a guffaw. Unlike their neighbors to the West, apparently, the North Londoners are expected to win the biggest prizes. Nobody will give Arsenal much credit for winning the League Cup. It has to be the league or the Champions League.
Now Arteta and Enzo Maresca will do battle in all the same competitions, and we can have a proper look at this Chelsea side. Maybe they are the real deal, the true World Champions, and they just need the chance to show it. Personally, I’ll wait for them to do so before crowning them. If they truly compete in the Premier League and the Champions League over the next nine months, going toe-to-toe with the world’s best teams, maybe the Blues will have the last laugh. Until then, I’ll be chuckling at that banner.
Even Bologna, a team I love, cannot claim to have had a better season than Inter despite winning the Coppa Italia.
This is also why I think the Europa League is ripe for a reassessment. Without Champions League teams dropping down, it’s an easier path to the final — which is why two teams who were Spiritually Relegated from the Premier League made it.
Well, the replica anyway.
Seriously. The champions of England, Spain, and Italy. Not there.
They didn’t beat too many teams in contention for the European places, either: Aston Villa in early December 2024, Newcastle in October, Brighton in September, Nottingham Forest on the final day … but the pickins’ were slim.