Chelsea: Defense is Best Attack

Belgian women's soccer team SK Berlaar had to stomach a 50-1 defeat against rival KV Mechelen a few weeks ago because their goalkeeper skipped the match to attend a music concert instead. KV Mechelen scored their first goal just four seconds into the game. "After half-time, the score was 27-0. But after half-time we were able to recover. We had to stomach only 23 goals and we scored once ourselves, right at the end. They allowed us to score. That was sweet of them," local newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws daily quoted substitute goalkeeper Charlotte Jacobs as saying. i wonder the outcome would be very different if the pop fan was there. Mathematically, SK Berlaar would turn out to be the winner with 1-0 should they have not conceded the 50 goals.

i enjoy watching the defense as much as the attack. Defenders are usually the unsung heroes in a team who work in most of the 90 minutes, closing gaps, blocking, tackling, heading, and setting up offside traps. Forwarders score a goal in the blink of an eye. Still, the defense is of utmost importance as good backers and goalkeepers produce the confidence for every player of the squad.

It was the pair of center backs of Chelsea that first impressed me in 1999 when i started watching English Premiere League. French national team players and 1998 World Cup Champions Marcel Desailly, nicknamed the Rock, and Frank Leboeuf formed a solid wall. The Rock was tough and experienced. Labouf's accurate and decisive tackles were somehow similar to those of the presently serving Ricardo Carvalho. Despite the strong defense, the team as a whole was not yet world-class. It is infamous for the lack of consistency in performance, beating frontrunners including Manchester United in one weekend and losing to lower ranked rivals in the next. Nevertheless, Chelsea managed to finish the 1998/99 season the third in the league.

The then Italian manager Gianluca Vialli was too busy playing on the pitch as a striker, by his own order, to give enough direction for the whole team. He was in the following season replaced by another Italian Claudio Ranieri, who contributed to building the team as it is today.

Under the management of Ranieri, Chelsea didn't go further and stayed around the sixth place most of the time. But the ranking didn't tell the whole story. Ranieri inherited the strong defense force and made it even stronger. He imported from French defender William Gallas and raised up the then teenager John Terry. He also brought in Italian goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini and the now superstar midfielder Frank Lampard.

Terry, now Chelsea's captain, was awarded best player in English Premiere League last season. It has been a decade since a defender got that award. i watched him score the only goal when Chelsea visited Hong Kong a few years ago. No one knew that teenager back then. Terry has recently thanked Desailly and Leboeuf for their inspiration in his early career.

In what later recognized to be one of the most important matches of Chelsea's history, Chelsea defeated Liverpool 2-1 in the last game of the 2002/03 season, which qualified the team to play European Champions League the following season. i saw the broadcast and watched Ken Bates' wife wiped her tears in the celebration in the end of that match, only to figure out why much later. Chelsea was in financial troubles then and looking for a new owner. It was that Champions League qualification that Russian oil tycoon Roman Abramovich was eyeing when he chose to buy Chelsea from a short list of English teams.

Abramovich hired last summer Jose Mourinho as a new manager and signed more world-class players. Mourinho guided Chelsea to the top of the league last season, ending the decade-long dominance of Manchester United and Arsenal. Many people criticize that the winning was built upon money. The manager's egocentric speech and defensive tactics were also under fire. However, a brief history of Chelsea should have convinced you, i hope, that strong defense is not built overnight. Even though you may maintain that defensive football must be boring, you cannot deny that it works. Now Chelsea runs way ahead in the league table after winning all its first eight games. Football commentators like saying "Attack is best defense". It is time to think of rephrasing the sentence.

Oddly enough, attack is the weak spot of Chelsea. Last season's top scorer was Lampard, the midfielder. The team's striker Didier Drogba has physical strength but his skills cannot compare to Arsenal's Thierry Henry; his opportunistic instinct not standing up to Ruud van Nistelrooy. Because of the lack of attacking force, Chelsea usually wins a match by a narrow 1-0. The consistency helped Chelsea win the League last season.

Warren Buffett once gave such an investment advice: "Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1," stressing the importance to preserving the capital principal. That is right. For every dollar you lose in one stock, you need a dollar of gain from other stocks to offset it. Touch wood, you might end up with a net loss. Play defense is no easy game. It requires years of experience, lots of hard work and consistency. But it pays. By now, SK Berlaar should have found a new goalkeeper, a devoted one.

Abramovich has apparently adopted Buffett's advice, or Chelsea's tactics. It has been reported that the smiley Chelsea boss sold his oil company Sibneft, a move seen to be politically correct, as Russia president Vladimir Putin appears to have decided to crackdown the oligarchs. Fellow-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkhovsky was recently jailed for eight years for tax evasion, and has his assets frozen. It seems that Abramovich parking most of his capital outside his homeland is a way to preserve capital principal, or play defense.

Oct 6, 2005
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