View from a non-fan

[communicate 2,703]

First of all, before I start off; It's very sad to see that moderators here on TalkChelsea hop on the bandwagon when people post memes in general forums where they actually aren't supposed to be posted - you should know that. You're a moderator, be a role model to the other forum members. If you can't bother reading the original post because it is too long, then leave it. Just so stupid.

Back to the original topic; I think Chelsea have played very well in the previous games before the final. It is difficult to beat teams like Napoli and Barcelona, and they made it. However, from a completely un-biased view as a Madridista, Bayern Munich deserved to win the Champions League final. It all reflects on the game statistics. Bayern had the possession, shots, passes, corners and all the rest while Chelsea had none of it. Bayern were dominating the game, Chelsea wern't.

I am happy for Chelsea though, you finally won the Champions League title and I don't mind it, at all. Just saying that based on the final performance, Bayern should have won it.

If you're going to reply to my opinion, at least reply maturely and unbiased, please.

If you are saying that Bayern played better than us, they did but it does not matter.

We won and the rest is history :blue scalf:

In football, the better team does not always win.

[Arjen Robben 55]

If you are saying that Bayern played better than us, they did but it does not matter.

We won and the rest is history :blue scalf:

In football, the better team does not always win.

Yeah of course mate, that's how football works and has always worked Just mentioned my opinions based on the teams' performances last night But yeah, what you're saying is true.

[zolayes 14,489]

I am not a Chelsea fan... What is it that you don't understand? Where have I claimed that I am a Chelsea fan? Please provide me with any statements or such where I have claimed to be one.

I am a proud Madridista and have been one for over 10 years now, and will always be.

Just sad seeing people like you jump on other members for no reason..

YOUR PROFILE seat in Matthew Harding Upper...

in any case the thread was started by a bitter Celtic fan who has posted a few times before ,,people didnnt like SO you charged making criticisms of how

our forum is run ,,, visitors here who show respect are given respect ,,,you showed NONE so expect none in return

[Arjen Robben 55]

YOUR PROFILE seat in Matthew Harding Upper...

in any case the thread was started by a bitter Celtic fan who has posted a few times before ,,people didnnt like SO you charged making criticisms of how

our forum is run ,,, visitors here who show respect are given respect ,,,you showed NONE so expect none in return

My profile says Metthew Harding Upper because I couldn't select any seat from the Santiago Bernabeu, obviously. I was required to choose one seat so I just randomly selected one. Please, if you have a problem with me, send me a PM or something where you can throw all sorts of words out, no need to do it in public.

Also, I wasn't criticizing how the forum is run... Just please, leave me alone, this "argument" you're starting isn't going anywhere...

PS: I managed to remove the seat from my profile. Happy?

[termninja 5,290]

I know this is long, but please, take your time to read it because it's worth it.

Let me just start off by saying I'm not here to vent anger, I'm not here to cause trouble I'm just here to give my views and get some back from Chelsea fans on their two big Champions league games against Barcelona and Bayern.

Very well. I personally always like having other fans join in and take a part in discussions with us. You are welcome here as long as you stick by the rules. I will respond to your post in detail and hopefully explain our view on things.

Often sides have played defensive football against Barcelona due to their brilliant attacking football. It wasn't a great game of football but there have been a few bad semi-final games in history because an underdog really wants to get through to the final. After the end of the game Chelsea were the better team because Barcelona do not have a target man they can put into the box and they demanded to much to come from Messi. If you watch La Liga Barcelona's away form let them down because the majority of their goals came from Messi.

Aye, Barca game wasn't pretty, but the ultimate goal was to go through, not look awesome and get humiliated. We were lucky also, but ask any Chelsea fan and he'll respond it was karma. We were ripped of in 2009 and for me, the biggest evil in sport is cheating in order to win. The only way to survive Barca was to park in the whole London bus station and hope for the best which we bloody did.

Moving onto the final I had high hopes for a good game of football. Bayern aren't as dominating as Barcelona and they do have a target man or two.

The Champions league, the ultimate inspiration in club football for clubs, supporters and youngsters coming through. The final last night has done nothing good for the sport, I'm sure Chelsea fans will be delighted. At the same time I've seen fans complain about the lack of youth coming into your team. Several young talented footballers have been shifted away and not a lot of them have been given game time to progress. The performance from the team sums up why this has happened, the main thing a football club should be doing in bring in and develop new young footballers. Sometimes you have to buy youth and then develop them which is fine as long as the new club provides a platform for them to develop.

I don't know how much you followed Chelsea this season, but I am someone who has watched our every match since the preseason had started. Games I missed I downloaded and watched the fully not knowing the result (except the Newcastle game we lost where my mate spoiled the results for me so I watched only the highlights). I not only watch our matches, but also analyze and discuss them a lot here so I know the way every Chelsea player moves on the pitch, how fast is he, how fit is he, what is our tactic and how generally everything went. I'm telling you this, with the team we had available, Bayern team we faced and the stadium we played our match in, chances of us winning the trophy every Chelsea fan dream of would've been very very low if we attacked. No, instead we played to our strongest attribute which is defense, and defense is also a part of football.

What really bothers me with people, is that they act is like there is an written rule in the official book of football rules that every team must play beautiful attacking football and that starting the match by acting defensive is forbidden. It is not. Football is a sport, and a rather exciting one. It is a sport you play, and your goal is to score more goals then the opposition in order to win. Sometimes, you do not have to win the game in order to archive something higher, but your ultimate goal is to win. That's what Chelsea did and that's why Chelsea have so much trophies in the last 7-8 years. A Champions League, 3 league trophies and 4 FA Cups. We follow the ultimate goal of winning no matter what the media thinks, no matter what the opposition thinks and no matter what all those football experts think. Everybody just wants to win. It is a mentality you build and it lets you grow. Arsenal had a great team couple of seasons ago, but no winning mentality. Liverpool had a great team also, but no winning mentality.

People hate us because we don't have a big history like other big teams have. Fair enough, but that doesn't mean are not allowed to be successful because of something that had happened in the past. For me, it's a breath of fresh air in today's football to see a club which is not a grandiose name rise up and be successful.

Manchester City is an example. I don't like them but they keep the football interesting. Their clashes with United this season have given PL lots of publicity and given the world of football some great moments.

We went through a troublesome period under AVB due to his inexperince which is irrelevant now, but since Di Matteo took over, he played to our strengths which is great defense and rock solid midfield. Not tricky fast wingers who rip the opposition like Bayern have and not midfield maestros who unlock everything in a couple of passes like Barca have. No, we do not have players like that at the moment and therefore we can't play like they do. Simple as that.

Our players are not at the peak of their careers. Lots of them had their best years behind or have struggled to play like some of us think they can play and this trophy was something they desired the most in the world. When you desire something the most in the world, you don't give a flying fuck about what the world is thinking if you have the means to archive it. You don't give a flying fuck about the tactics and the way you are going to attack if it means you are going to win. All you want is to win and it's simple as that. We knew it, Robbie knew it and the players knew it.

This was probably the last chance for the players like Terry, Lampard, Essien and Drogba to win this amazing trophy and their amazing careers wouldn't have been complete without it.

But not only all this. We finished 6th in the league, that means no CL next season. That also means huge money losses and failing to attract world's most talented players and seeing that there are a lot of players who will depart this season from the club that would've been a suicide. I don't know really that much about Financial Fair Play rules coming in, but without the usual 40m a season we earn from CL we would've been in deep financial losses.

Players like Hulk, Hazard, Falcao, Cavani, Lavezzi, Modric and others wouldn't want to come here and the board would've been reluctant to spend big due to the money lost for not taking part in the CL.

The question I have for you is how will Chelsea really benefit from winning the UCL last night? A win with style with youngsters would have been an inspiration to London as the 1967 win was an inspiration to the whole of Scotland and to an extent the whole of the UK as Man United was the second British team to win the European cup in 1968.

Winning a CL with youngsters is something we can talk only in theory, it will not happen. As someone already said, we even gave a great chance to Bertrand and he used it very well. No my friend, winning Champions League in today's football is much more difficult then it was before.

How will we benefit? I explained already, now we are European Champions finally which will help us attract the world's elite football players. It will earn us a lot of money and will strengthen the winning mentality I spoke of. It will earn us better sponsorship deals and get us more fans.

It is the greatest achievement in our history and we did it in style. We kept this season CL interesting and gave the world of football something new and fresh. We played for the badge, left everything on the pitch and got rewarded for it. That's all that matters in the end. Nobody remembers the losers, only the winners and that's what will people remember when they look back and see a team that survived at Camp Nou being a man down and 2 goals down. That's what people will remember when they see a team winning this amazing trophy after a bad season and facing Bayern Munich on their own stadium in the final. Going down to penalties against a German side while losing our previous final on penalties also. Taking this penalties in front of Bayern fans.....yet we done all those things and stand here before you.

That's who we are, that's how things are and that's what this is all about.

You can either love us or hate us. If you love us then we love you too, if you don't you better avoid us.

There, I hope I gave you a good response in order to explain that we are not a team with no history, that we are not a team that won the CL only because of they've been lucky and that we are not a team that is playing only for the money.

Cheers.

[nullabletype 987]

Let me just start off by saying I'm not here to vent anger, I'm not here to cause trouble I'm just here to give my views and get some back from Chelsea fans on their two big Champions league games against Barcelona and Bayern.

Often sides have played defensive football against Barcelona due to their brilliant attacking football. It wasn't a great game of football but there have been a few bad semi-final games in history because an underdog really wants to get through to the final. After the end of the game Chelsea were the better team because Barcelona do not have a target man they can put into the box and they demanded to much to come from Messi. If you watch La Liga Barcelona's away form let them down because the majority of their goals came from Messi.

Moving onto the final I had high hopes for a good game of football. Bayern aren't as dominating as Barcelona and they do have a target man or two.

The Champions league, the ultimate inspiration in club football for clubs, supporters and youngsters coming through. The final last night has done nothing good for the sport, I'm sure Chelsea fans will be delighted. At the same time I've seen fans complain about the lack of youth coming into your team. Several young talented footballers have been shifted away and not a lot of them have been given game time to progress. The performance from the team sums up why this has happened, the main thing a football club should be doing in bring in and develop new young footballers. Sometimes you have to buy youth and then develop them which is fine as long as the new club provides a platform for them to develop.

I support Celtic and we won the European cup in 1967 with the Lisbon Lions and with the way we won it pushed our club to where it is today. We got decades of benefits from winning it with style and all the men playing came from within 30 miles of Celtic park which was a inspiration to Scottish football. That is the true benefit of winning the UCL, not the win but the way it was won. It's effect can still be felt through the club today and is a massive inspiration to the youngsters and fans.

The question I have for you is how will Chelsea really benefit from winning the UCL last night? A win with style with youngsters would have been an inspiration to London as the 1967 win was an inspiration to the whole of Scotland and to an extent the whole of the UK as Man United was the second British team to win the European cup in 1968.

We had no chance against Napoli, we beat them. We had no chance against Benfica, we beat them. We had no chance against "the best team in the world", Barcelona, we beat them. Then, even after that run, people still give us no hope against Bayern... we beat them. Chelsea's story of how we came to win the UCL is a great one. An under performing team full of ageing players who were facing their last chance of every wining it. And what did they do? They beat the best teams in Europe and took home the prize.

I use another forum where there are supporters of clubs from around the globe. Last night there were so many people complaining about "anti-football" and who really "deserved" to win. Talking about how Barcelona deserved to be in this final. The rules of football are simple, score more than your opponent. That's what we did, and that's why we deserve it.

Football and it's fans are starting to get on my nerves a bit lately. It seems Barcelona have set the standard for football, which is fine, but now all of a sudden everybody seems to think that's the only way to play. It seems many folks feel hard done by if they are not entertained, well here's the skinny... Football clubs do not win games or make money by entertaining. They do that by competing and winning. The sport is made up of two critical aspects, attack and defence, and it's the latter that people all too often seem to forget about or undervalue. As Chelsea fans, would we love to watch Chelsea go out every game and play tika-taka football? Of course, but we don't have the personnel to do it. So what we do instead is go out and play to our strengths. That is to defend to the death and attack on the counter. Is it pretty? To most no, I however think so. A good defensive display is as good to watch as a good attack. To go out and try and play the Barcelona way would be as good to go out and lay down, because it just wouldn't work.

My biggest annoyance about the complainers is they're never fans of the team in question, in this situation Chelsea. It's all well and good fans of MUFC, Liverpool, Spurs, whoever etc, complaining about Chelsea not coming out to entertain or not trying to play the right way. But you can bet your life if it was their team in our shoes they wouldn't want their players out experimenting with a footballing style they simply can't match/play purely to entertain the naturals at the cost of a win. Football is about tactics and winning the game and that is what we done.

I could go on forever because they subject really does bug me, but I think you get the picture.

Edit: just to draw a parallel using Barcelona and Chelsea as an example. It would be like putting a technically superior welter weight boxer up against and heavy weight brute. He may be able to move faster, duck, weave and deliver a barrage of blows. But it's all fruitless in the end if he can't deliver the knock out blow. All the fancy passing and ability in the world is worthless if you can't get through the brick wall of a defence that's between you and the net.

[LDN Blue 7,903]

Nice question OP.

We'll benefit in simply one way - Transfer Market. With this in our trophy cabinet, with Europe assured next year & a billionaire owner, we now have the lure of the dominant football club in Europe. This means we're a definite target for players from Hazard to Gotze to even an outside shot at Neymar.

[Kezza 1,965]

Bayern Munich deserved to win the Champions League final. It all reflects on the game statistics. Bayern had the possession, shots, passes, corners and all the rest while Chelsea had none of it. Bayern were dominating the game, Chelsea wern't.

Stats in a game mean shit.

If you want to have a look at the stats you'll see that bayern actualy didn't deserve to win. They had fourty something shots on goal and got ONE in. If a finalist can't capitalize on that amount of shots, they shouldn't win it. Bayern failed to capitalise on all corners, where Chelsea took the chance and drogba slotted one home.

Don't get me started in the penalty.

Again, if a player can't score from the spot in a UCL final they shouldn't have a medal.

Stats don't win you trophys. Goals do, or in this case, converting in penalty shoot outs

[Kezza 1,965]

.

[KonohasOrangeFlash 2,607]

Let me just start off by saying I'm not here to vent anger, I'm not here to cause trouble I'm just here to give my views and get some back from Chelsea fans on their two big Champions league games against Barcelona and Bayern.

Often sides have played defensive football against Barcelona due to their brilliant attacking football. It wasn't a great game of football but there have been a few bad semi-final games in history because an underdog really wants to get through to the final. After the end of the game Chelsea were the better team because Barcelona do not have a target man they can put into the box and they demanded to much to come from Messi. If you watch La Liga Barcelona's away form let them down because the majority of their goals came from Messi.

Moving onto the final I had high hopes for a good game of football. Bayern aren't as dominating as Barcelona and they do have a target man or two.

The Champions league, the ultimate inspiration in club football for clubs, supporters and youngsters coming through. The final last night has done nothing good for the sport, I'm sure Chelsea fans will be delighted. At the same time I've seen fans complain about the lack of youth coming into your team. Several young talented footballers have been shifted away and not a lot of them have been given game time to progress. The performance from the team sums up why this has happened, the main thing a football club should be doing in bring in and develop new young footballers. Sometimes you have to buy youth and then develop them which is fine as long as the new club provides a platform for them to develop.

I support Celtic and we won the European cup in 1967 with the Lisbon Lions and with the way we won it pushed our club to where it is today. We got decades of benefits from winning it with style and all the men playing came from within 30 miles of Celtic park which was a inspiration to Scottish football. That is the true benefit of winning the UCL, not the win but the way it was won. It's effect can still be felt through the club today and is a massive inspiration to the youngsters and fans.

The question I have for you is how will Chelsea really benefit from winning the UCL last night? A win with style with youngsters would have been an inspiration to London as the 1967 win was an inspiration to the whole of Scotland and to an extent the whole of the UK as Man United was the second British team to win the European cup in 1968.

Who cares how we won, stop being Jealous. This will only make us an even bigger club. Pride of England!

[capriccioso 2,545]

To answer the question of the opening poster:

This is a celebration of a frankly awful (relative to the stature of our opposition from the semi finals and onward) team winning the greatest prize in club football. Overcoming all the odds. Overcoming ourselves and our painful history in this tournament. It is a celebration of passion and positive mentality and never giving up. It is a celebration of David triumphing over monsters far larger than Goliath. It is being stuck up shit creek without so much as a banana leaf to paddle with and getting out of there in one piece. In short, it is a celebration of what truly makes football great- not a million passes in 90 minutes and winning every game 7-0; not taking 42 shots and having 20 corners. No, what makes football great is that anyone and everyone can dare to dream.

On a more detached and less emotional note, the suggestion that our playing style in this tournament is in any way lacking or liable for criticism is insane. The difference in the quality of our players vs theirs, the difference in the club ethos- since 2004 we've always been Mourinho, pragmatic, 4-3-3 and it's many variants (4-1-4-1, 4-2-3-1, 4-3-2-1, 4-5-1) - and finally the type of players available to us, makes any other style of football suicidal. As I said when Frank de Boer criticised our playing style; people who think 2-3-5 up and at them are as backward as early 20th century military leaders. 2-3-5 is as effective in the modern world as climbing out of your trench between the years 1914 and 1917 and walking very slowly towards the enemy who has a machine gun capable of killing 400 a minute.

I know there's a school of thought that goes "Chelsea have spent 800 million putting this squad together, spend that kind of money and you are honour bound to 'play' the right way."; but that is incredibly flawed. For one thing, nearly all of that was spent in the opening years of Roman's rule. And transfer fee's don't dictate how to play football. Barcelona have only spent some 75 million less than us since 2007 (take out David Luiz and Fernando Torres and that's identical) and play football a completely different way. What influences the style of football played by a team is it's mentality and technical ability of its players. Look at Schweinsteiger and Kroos, look at Xavi and Iniesta, then cast a glance at Ramires and Meireles. There is simply no way we can compete with them on their game. We play to our strengths, discipline and physicality, they play to theirs. What's wrong with that? It is another thing that makes football the greatest game in the world, the diversity in playing styles.

[buccaneer 16]

"I support Celtic and we won the European cup in 1967 with the Lisbon Lions and with the way we won it pushed our club to where it is today"

You lost me there.