“In extra time, it’s Klopp’s kids against the blue ‘billion-pound bottlejobs’.”
Gary Neville’s brutal assessment of the Chelsea men’s first team in the aftermath of their Carabao Cup final loss to Liverpool last year was a damning indictment of their scattergun recruitment. It also captured the grim reality of what they had become: a team that had gone from being a ruthlessly successful institution to a hodge-podge that kept finding new levels of hilarity and mediocrity.
After last night, that assessment from Neville can be pushed aside into the annals of irrelevance — Chelsea are now UEFA Europa Conference League champions.
Make no mistake: Chelsea needed this. The fans needed this. The players needed this. Enzo Maresca needed this. But most importantly, the Todd Boehly–Clearlake consortium needed this sense of lift-off. This trophy marks the first piece of silverware for the Chelsea men in the Boehly era.
Now, with all due respect to the competition, the Conference League is not the type of tournament Chelsea wish to be in. Usual venues Madrid, Milan, Paris, Munich were replaced this season by the likes of Astana, Heidenheim, and Servette. The Blues certainly did not spend north of £1 billion only to play in places like these. In fact, their opponents in the final, Real Betis, were easily the toughest opposition they came across in the entire competition, and even their squad cost a tenth of what this Chelsea squad has been assembled with.
Rival fans will greet this victory with sneering whispers and public ridicule. But at the end of the day, it is a tournament that requires winning, and win is what Chelsea did.
Chelsea will look back at their Conference League campaign with a bittersweet feeling. While winning this competition has etched them into the history books—they’re the first club to complete the European set—their very participation in the tournament highlights the litany of mistakes the hierarchy has made over the past three years.
However, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And with this trophy, there’s a sense of things finally looking up for all involved with the club.
The biggest beneficiary of this win will be the head coach, Enzo Maresca. He won his own derby against Betis—having spent four seasons with their Andalusian rivals, Sevilla. He has not only delivered a trophy, but also Champions League football amid the pressure of managing a bloated squad, injuries, loss of form among key players, and questions about his own suitability for the job. His penchant for control, his characteristically Italian doggedness, and an unbridled faith in his methods have given him the results thoroughly deserving of his efforts.
“Hopefully it can be a starting point,” said Maresca after the win. “To build a winning mentality, you need to win games, you need to win competitions and for sure the trophy we won tonight is going to make us better. But also I am very proud of the path and the journey we had in the Premier League, for me it is the most difficult competition in the world. You have to be consistent for 38 games and these players, they showed it.”
Chelsea now have a launchpad. They have a trophy in the bag, and a return to the competition they’ve been longing for. They now travel to the US for the Club World Cup with an astute sense of momentum, believing they can add another trophy to their ranks.
What was that thing they said about London buses, again? You wait ages for one and then two come along at once. Perhaps that time has come for Chelsea, and they are all set for it.
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