Long before Chelsea FC (a football club in London) became a powerhouse in world football, they were perennial strugglers, both on the pitch and at the bank.
When I first started following them, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, they had a self-imposed freeze on buying new players. They were that broke.
In the period after they had finally won a couple trophies in a row (FA Cup 1970, Cup Winners Cup 1971), they got ahead of themselves and invested in a new stand, the cost of which almost ruined them.
This and other bad business decisions relegated them, literally and figuratively, to a lower status for years after.
But none of that weighed on me, because, as a kid, I had no real understanding of the business of sport.
I was attracted to Chelsea at that young age, because blue is my favorite color, my pals in Galway were fans, which was probably the biggest reason, and they had the late great Ray (Butch) Wilkins in their team. And I’ve stuck with them through thick (now) and thin (then). Bankruptcy, insolvency, receivership, Ken Bates buying the club for a pound (Sterling)… you could have told me all this was coming in the years that followed, but all I cared about was Steve Finnieston sticking the ball in the back of the net. My loyalty for Chelsea was imprinted on me. (People develop deeper loyalties the younger they are, maybe?) Needless to say, drained of opportunity by their money woes, Chelsea didn’t put the ball in the net nearly as much as I hoped.
I suppose I mention all this because of this lesson that I was taught at an early age, that good business and good strategy are key to success in professional sports, no matter how much ‘Roy of the Rovers’ stuff a young kid dreams about. I didn’t grasp these teachings until I was much older, however.
Perhaps, since it is a fact that most businesses don’t have a good strategy, if any at all, they can be likened to the kid I was, fingers crossed, dreaming of things that just didn’t happen.
Final note: while things are a lot brighter for Chelsea now, and they have had so much success and won so many trophies in the last 20 years, there is one image of the old days I will never forget: those cars parked behind the goal on one end of Stamford Bridge.
I never found out who those cars belonged to. Was it players, coaches, big-shot Chelsea fans, the grounds crew? No one seems to know