The Empire Strikes Back.
We, and especially I, have labored a few points on this site over the years – how much we hate Liverpool, how much we hate Liverpool`s fans etc, but few more so than the media bias and generally held acceptance that we are, as a club, The Enemy of Football. I always think the “football” part is said quietly – to give the statement echoes of The Enemy of Freedom/Liberty/Democracy/Decency/Morality/Good/Orphans/ Small Bunnies and Kittens etc. Has there ever been a more widely despised club as us?
I think it started when Roman came. It was exacerbated by Showercap “winners from a group of one” Kenyon, and ingrained into people`s psyches with the introduction of Jose Mourinho partly for his occasionally rather poor losing and snidey comments, and partly because he started actually winning things. That upset a lot of people. Of the football fans in this country, I read somewhere that United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham account for something like half of them – we`re talking untold millions. That`s an awful lot of people to upset, and a very big section of the readership of the sports papers, which handily explains why they hate us. Chelsea win? Why write things nobody wants to hear? You either play to your readership or they`ll stop buying your paper. With margins squeezed (due to NewsCorp having to pay millions to people they hacked, and the rest squirreling away warchests for when they too get hauled up in front of the Levesen Enquiry) every reader counts, so anything thought provoking, original, challenging or free thinking, God forbid anything not scathing about us, is well out. Lazy journalistic bias, trotted out dogmatic clichés and ladles of spiteful sour milk for when we do achieve things is just to ensure that your average scouser, manc, gooner or whatever picks up the paper, reads it, and puts it down totally validated and thus mollified into buying the same paper tomorrow. Job done.
And of course, the more they write, the more people despise us. Factor in some diving and play acting fully in keeping with the rest of the modern game, lots of money getting spent, also in keeping with the modern game, and some daft off-the-field stupidity from our high-profile players (guess what? – also in keeping with the modern game) and there is a lot of pen fodder. Sprinkle in some arch-twattery from the folks running the club and a degree of very un-British ruthlessness with the Big Red Firing Button, and the headlines basically write themselves. The more you write, the more the readers hate us. The more they hate us, the more they have to write. It is the original journalistic downward spiral.
And running through it is the part that I think makes me the most angry. In everything that is written about us there is a theme of – “they are evil, evil never pays, good will win over in the end”
For those of you who, like me, enjoy a good bit of Star Wars, I cannot help but be drawn to a few major comparisons. It`s a bit like watching Star Wars I guess for most people – not us.
You see Darth Vader, you see the Death Star, you hear The Emperor cackling and you root for the Rebels. You are chuffed to bits when the Ewoks are dancing in the end of Return of the Jedi, playing bongos on the helmets of (we assume) slain stormtroopers. You feel elated when you see the Empire come crashing down, validating all you`ve ever thought about good triumphing over evil, about how bullies never win, and how tyranny always loses out to freedom and bunnies and kittens and stuff.
It is somehow pleasing to imagine the billions watching the game in Munich beamed live across the world viewing proceedings much like the end sequence in Star Wars IV – when the X Wings and Y Wings go streaking through the trenches on the surface of the Death Star. Every corner to Bayern cheered like Wedge Antilles blowing those nasty Empire Tie Fighters into kingdom come. Every effort on goal willed in with baited breath like a torpedo into the exhaust port. Every Chelsea clearance groaned at like a torpedo falling short. Schweinstieger or Robben step up to take the penalty and the imagine the ghost of past greats in their head telling them to feel righteous and use the force.
He shoots!
Cech Saves.
Evil, diving, cheating, playacting scumbag Chelsea player steps up. Scores.
Hang on a minute.
That wasn`t in the script.
What happened on Saturday was roughly equivalent to the Millennium Falcon dashed to fragments in some lonely gully, deep inside the battlestation`s sinister inner workings. Chewbacca taken out by a laser round between the eyes in the fight for the shield generator. Princess Leia getting decapitated. Admiral Akbar`s Mon Calamari cruiser rebel flagship rendered to twinkling space dust by the main weapon of THIS FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLESTATION. The Emperor finally dumping Luke Skywalker`s lifeless body down the bottomless pit, not the other way round. Darth Vader not being in the slightest bit good after all, living through the whole thing and then going back to his little pod thing, having a cup of tea, blowing up Endor and eating a few kittens. You get the idea.
Imagine the wails of lament and misery on Coruscant when they find out the news. The rebels lost. The Evil Empire won. You can imagine their holo-newspapers reporting it in much the same way as ours did on the Sunday morning.
The Luckiest Win in History.
The Best Side Did Not Win` says Yoda`s Ghost.
This is a disaster for the entire Universe.
You get the idea.
Funny how the neutrals never support us, or indeed, The Empire. You don`t hear people complimenting the Grand Design, very speedy construction and revolutionary environmental friendliness (its carbon neutral you know) of the Death Star, on the really cool suits the stormtroopers wear, on the simple genius of the ground assault on Hoth where the Rebels were completely overwhelmed in a masterclass of mechanized warfare tactical genius. Nobody goes “Cool!” when the Empire fleet emerges from the shadow of Endor, outflanking and completely stitching up squid boy on the Rebel flagship. Nobody thinks the Empire lads were really, really unlucky when the most bizarre of imponderably unlucky occurrences sees a tiny A Wing take out the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer, like some ludicrously implausible some 93rd minute Iniesta sucker punch. Nobody is ever concerned that we, as Brits should really be rooting for the Empire, as most of the people in the Empire have comedy pseudo-sinister English accents, versus the yeehawing of the rather tiresome and clichéd Rebels – echoing the confrontation in Munich where it was English vs Germans, only the English were rooting for the Germans. Look, if you can`t root for Peter Cushing, then who can you root for?
There is no question that if The Empire had a football team it would be us, but there is a degree of double standards also. If Jar Jar Binks or the incongruous mutterings of C3PO were Empire characters, they`d get slaughtered – like Luis Suarez`s diving or Karl Henry`s arch-thuggery, and yet as it`s not The Evil Empire, people laugh it off. If that was us people would be screaming that we should be docked points/fined/brought to the Pit of the Sarlac etc.
Ok I`ve labored the metaphor enough.
So as I sit here in my office, which if you squint resembles the meditation chambers in the Death Star, plotting universal domination, I`m left to wonder about it all. Does Chelsea, much like the Empire just have a bit of PR problem? Wouldn`t it be better if everyone – even the QPR fans – fessed up to the fact that, despite all their protestations, Juan Mata, Frank Lampard and the now sadly departed Didier Drogba are their favourite players outside of their own team? That Drog Vader is the panto villain that everyone loves to hate, but secretly thinks is easily the coolest Sith Lord or football player out there? Trust me, Star Wars and The Premiership is a much less cool place without the big guy.
Taking aside all media bias – and clunky Star Wars metaphors – shouldn`t it be time that people started to realize that we aren`t the Evil Empire. We won. We cannot therefore by definition be evil. We`re just the Empire.
The Roman Empire in fact. A lot of people, Christians for instance, reckoned they were pretty evil, but they won things and people judged them on the good things they did, rather than who they fed to lions or which Christian saints they grilled on flatirons etc. Few, apart from the Romans, loved the Romans but everyone gave them respect – is it too much to ask that we now get the same?
Or maybe it`s all in my head. Do we even need people`s admiration and respect? Saturday`s events appear to suggest not.
I`m left grinning at the thought of Darth Vader, The Emperor, Captain Needa (in an England shirt) and about 700 stormtroopers all getting hammered at the cantina bar on Mos Eisley as the band plays Liquidator and they burst into impromptu song:
F**k em all!
F**k em all!
United, West Ham and Liverpool!
Cos we are The Empire and we are the best.
We are The Empire,
So f**k all the rest!
AREFREE!
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