利用者:RoeMelanson523
Five Champions' League semi-finals in the past six years. As Chelsea's newly appointed manager, Carlo Ancelotti, pointed out in his first interview, that's a wonderful achievement. However, it clearly isn't quite adequate. The fact that those five semi-finals only have led to one ill-fated final appearance must be a source of incredible frustration for Chelsea's billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich, and also the club's supporters - although rather less so for them, perhaps.
The reason the long-standing Chelsea fans might be a a bit more philosophical about 'only' reaching the last in five attempts is that many of them are most likely still only becoming accustomed to challenging for honours whatsoever. Until 1997, when Chelsea won the F.A. Cup, the club had won nothing for 26 years - if you don't include the old Second Division title. Chelsea's fortunes within the 1980s, after they had been bought by Ken Bates for that princely amount of £1, slumped to this kind of extent they almost found themselves in English football's third tier.
But how it turned around over the past decade of the century. Even before Abramovich's arrival in 2003, the entire process of recovery had started. Managers from the international pedigree of Glenn Hoddle, Ruud Gulli, Gianluca Vialli and Claudio Ranieri all helped establish the club as one of England's leading outfits and also the F.A. Cup was won in 1997 and 2000 and also the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1998. The Chelsea of this time were ground breakers in a lot of ways - using their continental managers and their overseas players particularly - becoming the first club to take the field having a team with no single British or Irish player in a fixture against Southampton in 1999.
So, once the Russian oil magnate brought in Champions' League winner José Mourinho to take over the team in 2004, just about everyone suspected that 'the special one' would create a special team.
So it proved. The Premier League was won on two consecutive occasions, as well as the F.A. Cup again and also the League Cup (twice). From March 2004, the team embarked on the record-breaking run of 86 matches in which they remained unbeaten in their Stamford Bridge ground.
With some of England's finest players - John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley and Joe Cole - and with some outstanding foreign imports - Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Michael Ballack and Nicholas Anelka - the world sat and waited for that trophies to carry on. And especially for that 'holy grail' that Abramovich wanted a lot; that Champions' League.
But for the past two seasons Chelsea have flattered to deceive - and frustrated their supporters so much. There are occasions when they are so powerful they overwhelm the strongest opponents; almost bullying them into submission due to their physical, and mental, superiority. But there seems to happen to be some fatal flaw in the club's make-up which has stopped them making that ultimate breakthrough.
Some have said that it's because some of the overseas players haven't been committed enough; however when they showed their passion and commitment after losing controversially to Barcelona in 2009 those self same players were criticised for their insufficient sportsmanship.
Some have blamed successive managers because of not being able to control 'big' players - as though which was ever a problem for somebody like Luiz Felipe Scolari.
Some have even blamed Abramovich for either losing patience with Mourinho too rapidly in 2007 or apparently losing his enthusiasm for the club for a while.
However, having failed to persuade the admirable Guus Hiddink to stay in the club after his rejuvenation of the team in his short spell in charge, Chelsea have appointed someone who has won the Champions' League Trophy twice as a person and twice as a manager. Surely, Stamford Bridge - a wonderfully atmospheric ground to watch your football compared to some of the other more 'soul-less' stadiums around - will probably be in a position to witness something only the most optimistic of fans might have dreamed possible twenty short years ago; a team able to winning the Champions' League.