CSFC goes international

Då jag har erbjudits och accepterat att bli en av de regelbundna skribenterna på den förmodligen största fansajten för Chelsea på internet, Vital Chelsea, kommer CSFC att vara representerat internationellt.Vital Chelsea publicerar artiklar och har en mycket livfull debatt med deltagare från många delar av världen. CSFC är enda svenska skribent, än så länge.

En del av CSFCs krönikor kommer också att publiceras på Vital Chelsea, en del material kommer att vara skrivet enbart för Vital Chelsea - kanske kommer det dock att dubbelpubliceras, det återstår att avgöras. (Oöversatt).

Min uppgift blir precis som här att delta i debatten, hålla reda på fakta och vilka som ljuger. Stå för min kärlek till Chelsea och försöka förklara den. Ta del i allt som har med Chelsea att göra.

Här nedan är mitt första bidrag (på Vital Chelsea publiceras det i två delar 18-19 feb ). I original.

Här hittar du Vital Chelsea >>>

----

I kvartsfinalen till FA Cupen har vi lottats möta Tottenham. Inte idealiskt men inget som skrämmer oss alltför mycket. Vi fick återigen en hemmamatch, vilket innebär att vad som än händer har vi fått hemmamatcher i alla omgångarna, då semi och final spelas på neutral plan. Vilket inte är illa. Annars såg lotten rätt uppgjord ut, för tv-bolagen, och med en möjlig skräll för Plymouth mot Watford. Det är dock en del omspelsmatcher som ska spelas i de två andra kvartsfinalerna innan vi vet vilka som verkligen möts.

----

Vital Chelsea:

FROM A CHARMING, LOVABLE LOSER TO A ”BOUGHT, ARROGANT” CHAMPION.

A long wonderful journey with Chelsea FC.

You start to love a football team for two reasons, your family are already Chelseaites or because Chelsea catch your imagination, respect, hope and love. Probably because they do something special. For me it was a lovely win versus Watford in the FA Cup (1970) before their triumphant win later that season. Incredible players with everything, except a winning stamina.

My love with Chelsea started then. Today I remember almost every member of the team, all captured in very rare tv-pictures in black and white. We got to see Chelsea play 1 or 2 times a year.  I actually even love yellow football socks since then. I wanted to be a goalie, that was before my finger was kicked off. I loved the Cat. He was the best. Actually Gordon Banks was better, but the way the Cat played in goal was just such a pleasure to watch. Their situation was a bit like the one between Cole and Bridge, it is just a question of preference who is the best. Though  in the history of Chelsea Petr Cech might very probably turn out to be the best goalie we ever had, if only Stephen Hunt could learn to avoid collisions.

Well, anyway – this is the story of how you are considered many different things during a life as a Chelsea supporter.  Muck sticks, as all writers in tabloids and sport papers well know. Your reputation though takes forever to repair, which they also know.

And if a few tens of supporters, maybe even a hundred, use your beloved club to form gangs for fighting others, preferably unsuspecting ones, it is easier than to fight likewise inclined fighters. The difference from warfare is only in the weapons and flags they are fighting about. I hated having to take the blame for these idiots. I loved Chelsea. They took it hostage. But their actions had no relationship to me as a supporter or to the club I’ve taken to my heart. They tried to steal away my club.

My first live memory of Chelsea was from the early 70s when I came over from Sweden and ended up at the Shed. Before hooliganism became a way of life. It was rough people there. Scaringly rough for a foreign teenager. People only in nylon shirts mid-Winter, peeing in beer bottles they offered to their mates!

After the FA Cup win and the European Cup Winner’s Cup win I started a fan club. It rapidly became official, connected to the Official Supporterts club and spread throughout the Nordic countries. Of course it grew too big for a teenager pre-internet. Actually the biggest in the Nordic countries for a while.

But what killed it was the hooliganism. I lost interest. Not in Chelsea FC and its players – but in supporters. I am not sure I have regained that interest. The new official club is more a supporters club.

Meanwhile, we were allowed to win the odd cup now and then. We had been known for our celeb supporters. Replaced by hooligans. You got a pat on the back, maybe an offer of a beer for being a good sport (losing to their teams).

No one took your love for the club seriously.

Some even said, as we probably say to Tottenham-supporters. How can you support a club that never wins? What does that matter when your heart is captured? That is something I respect in every supporter.

Those were the comments from local scousers, gooners etc. Supporters that started to like their clubs when they were successfull. Or supporters that never understood that the love for a football team is the truest love there is. Love for people, even wifes change., but never for the team in your heart. Have you given that away, then there is nothing to change it. And if you change team, then you are no supporter.  Your are worse than a traitor. Supporter love for Chelsea is the easiest thing in the world. It is black and white, or truely blue and white. No other shades.

Still people smiled benignly when I told them I loved Chelsea and could not care less about any other team (except for my local team here in Sweden, Djurgården – the closest equivalent). Nobody seemed to take me seriously. Unlike all the other teams that are popular in the world, Chelsea never had a Swedish player. TV never showed Chelsea, it was red shirts after red shirts. Something that decides the support for so many foreign kids. Man U are getting them from Sweden by the dozen now when Henrik Larsson plays there for a few weeks.

After more than 30 years defined as a Chelsea ups and down-supporter, they started to become a team to reckoned with. But still not. We could play brilliantly, just to lose the next game to almost anyone.

In the mid 80s I had an epiphany that made me a Chelseaite for life, despite the fact that I did no longer work actively with the supporters. We lost 6-1 to Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road. I was there. Not among the Chelseaites, but the other side. Still, the only supporters heard – were Chelsea’s. Myself I was ashamed of the way they played and hated the result so much that I could hardly speak. I then realised that there are different kinds of supporters and different kinds of love. I loved Chelsea as much as them – I just could not take the losing. I so much prefer the opposite. They made me proud of being Blue.

Today some supporters criticise Chelsea for winning. Because we do not win the beautiful way every game. We have supporters like that here in Sweden too. They used to cheer for the biggest losers there are, and their supporters had mainly a working class background, used to regard themselves as losers. A few years ago their team won the league. After that they lost membership, because the diehard supporters could not cope with being a winning team.

I’m not that kind of supporter. I love winning with Chelsea.

What I never thought about was when we became a winning team was that is meant that among other supporters we suddenly became people to hate.

That has taken me almost three years to get over.  I simply could not fathom why I one day was a charming, lovable, cuddly fan to suddenly being a hated supporter. Accused of being bought and arrogant (well, all winners are arrogant – that is the nature of the beast). I can’t say I like it,  I prefer to be a winner.  I  just have to take it, and give some back.

I can take the hatred, even understand it because it is born out of envy. There isn’t nobody that would not like to be us right now. Not anyone apart from hopeless losers.

What I can’t take is the lies. In the press, among other supporters. I can’t stand lies and I have never lied about other teams, not even the ones I hate as much as one should hate (not so much that you can hurt anyone!). Hence I restarted my old fan club as the unofficial one, www.filmworks.se/csfc/ - just to face the lies, tell the truth about Chelsea and expose the liars (in the press mainly).

Ok, maybe we lucked out. We had an owner that once saved us. But then put us in an even worse pickle. Weeks from bankruptcy. An owner that hardly was liked but I respected him for what he had done (but then he bought Leeds!) Then a Russian billionaire chose us as his team. Maybe his reasons were different from mine, they are just as valid. He had the money, something only the red clubs had before. Now they can’t get enough of telling us that we are upstarts etc and hate us because we have a good economy, something only they had before. Today they are green with envy and hatred. Ok, let them hate us. We still love Roman for what he has and IS doing for us.

The by far richest club in the world is Real Madrid, they have spent much more money on players year after year than us. Still they have won nothing for years. Because that is the truth of sport, money alone is not enough. Ask the Moratti family.

Roman brought us José M. A manager that loves winning and hates losing just as much as I do. And he has about the same diplomacy skills when we lose as I do. No one dares talk to me when Chelsea lose points, for hours. And I still try very much to be polite.

And we had the players to build on. After Zola, Vialli, Gullit people realised that we could attract good ones. We built from youngsters like Lamps and Terry.  Today we have the best mix of old like the incredible Maka, some in between and young from all teams in the world. And we do now have a winning mentality. Not for just one win, but a thirst for trophies I find very healthy.

That set of minds is probably what our opposing supporters envy us the most.

I’d love if we could get cudos for our game too (which I think we deserve much more than we get), but I rather win than have anyone congratulate me with another pat on my head saying good luck, you played well – but lost.

True blue forever. Champions are only those that deserve  (and some very lucky red teams sometimes)

My love and interest for Chelsea just escalates. I’m worse than any kid and proud of it. Chelsea is a very important thing for me. I still hate to lose, but  then we don’t very often. But I try to behave nicely about it, I even managed to keep an stiff upper lip when I saw the last Tottenham game with the Spurs Swedish Supporters Club. (It took some effort).