Kepagate shows Chelsea’s problem under Abramovich… player power, undermining managers and knee-jerk sackings
The bizarre mishap was a specific product of the long-term culture of Abramovich’s Chelsea - this is what happens when you offer managers no support
THE main problem with Chelsea Football Club is clear and obvious now — it’s the doctors.
Sometimes the doctors run too fast and the manager ends up getting sacked.
Sometimes the doctors run too slowly and the manager ends up humiliated at a major cup final.
If only Roman Abramovich, wherever he is, could find a doctor to run at just the right speed, maybe he’d avoid these dramas and his club wouldn’t be a laughing stock.
Jose Mourinho’s second coming was cut short after Dr Eva Carneiro ran on to the pitch too quickly to treat Eden Hazard in the first match of Chelsea’s 2015-16 title defence.
Mourinho had a meltdown, players downed tools and, plunged to within a point of the relegation zone, the Special One was toast by Christmas.
After Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Manchester City, when it appeared as though Kepa Arrizabalaga had committed mutiny by refusing to be substituted, Chelsea explained that it had all been just another medical misunderstanding.
This time, Dr Paco Biosca decided Chelsea’s keeper didn’t have cramp — only not to inform Maurizio Sarri until the end of extra-time rather than during that excruciating three-minute Mexican stand-off between player and manager.
Maybe the Doc was wary of the fate of Chelsea medics who act too quickly — Carneiro suffered demotion, departure, threats of death and sexual violence from ‘fans’ and a constructive dismissal tribunal before her unreserved apology from the club.
Or maybe the story was a sham concocted in a desperate attempt to save the manager’s skin.
Or, more likely, the reputation of Kepa, a £71.6million asset.
The point here is that Kepagate was not the random act of one footballer gone rogue.
And neither was it a bizarre mishap which could have happened to any football club in the heat of a chaotic, high-pressure moment.
It was a specific product of the long-term culture of Abramovich’s Chelsea — one of player power, undermining of managers, knee-jerk sackings and, since the owner virtually disappeared off the face of the Earth in a visa dispute, a leadership vacuum.
This is what happens when you offer managers no support. Even a young player feels safe to defy and embarrass him.
It was difficult not to feel sorry for Sarri after Sunday’s penalty shootout defeat.
An eccentric, almost pitiful figure, obsessed with chalkboards and Marlboro Lights, Sarri had actually been having a good day until Kepa refused to be replaced by penalty-saving specialist Willy Caballero before the shootout.
Sarri commented that, if Abramovich had a good enough TV signal on whichever super-yacht he was frequenting, then he’d have witnessed a good performance as Chelsea kept a clean sheet against ‘the best team in Europe’.
It was also even possible to feel some sympathy for Kepa who, having kept a clean sheet, was being ordered off just as any goalkeeper has his prime chance for heroism.
That was until Kepa winked into a camera. And, as Cristiano Ronaldo can testify, winking into a camera is a capital offence in English football.
Of course, Kepa would have known that Chelsea’s managers always get the ejector seat in a car crash.
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But when player power began to grip Stamford Bridge early in Abramovich’s reign, at least those players had genuine leadership qualities.
Petr Cech, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba were famously ‘the spine’ of three title-winning sides. This current Chelsea team is spineless.
Contrary to popular belief, that previous generation only truly went out of their way to oust one manager, Andre Villas-Boas, whose high-line defence was killing them.
Ashley Cole only ever accidentally shot the work experience kid, he never popped a cap into his boss.
And Chelsea went on to win the Champions League two-and-a-half months after AVB rode off into the sunset on his Harley Davidson, so maybe the players knew something.
Also, Villas-Boas was quietly, almost diplomatically, knifed in the back.
This lot did their manager in cold blood before a watching world — by refusing to tell Kepa to follow Sarri’s orders, stripping the manager of all authority.
Abramovich has allowed this culture to ferment — as when he refused to back a title-winning manager Antonio Conte over the trouble-making Diego Costa.
After Eden Hazard’s likely summer departure, there will be precious little genuine world-class talent left at Chelsea, following years of poor recruiting and cut-price selling of gems.
Some hope that a Fifa transfer ban will lead to the overdue promotion of homegrown youngsters. Some hope.
Sarri, the footballing philosopher who was supposed to break Chelsea’s vicious circle of hire-and-fire, seems to mistrust kids like Callum Hudson-Odoi.
And, in the expected event he is sacked, the next bloke is hardly likely to believe he’ll receive the necessary patience to go down the youth route.
Right now, it seems the sale of the club is the only way out of this mess — if any potential buyer can get hold of Abramovich.
Chelsea’s keen interest in Zinedine Zidane still seems like wishful thinking on their part.
More likely is the summer return of a man who knows much about ‘player power’ — Lampard.
Weirdly boosted by the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer love-in at Manchester United, the romantic idea of a Lampard reunion is said to be gathering momentum at Chelsea.
After just one fair-to-middling campaign at Derby, you might think that wouldn’t make much sense.
But if you believe that common sense means anything at Chelsea, you’d better call for a doctor.