Foreign Billionaires Bring English Football to World, Agony & Ecstasy to Fans

This crowd is unlike any I’ve seen before. Maybe 10,000 people, Chelsea Football Club supporters. Far fewer than were inside Stamford Bridge Stadium a moment ago when the final whistle blew, but I’ve never seen more human beings per unit of pavement. I’m moving without any control over my direction. Bodies are wedged against me on all sides. And they’re singing. In one booming voice, to the tune of “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”:

And now you’re going to believe us,
And now you’re going to believe us.
And now you’re going to believe u-uuuuussss . . .
We’re going to win the league!

The hairs on the nape of my neck are standing up. A strange feeling sweeping through. Hyperreality: an experience inexplicable without reference to the television version known previously. Because I’ve heard football songs before. I’ve joined the Chelsea crowds many times via broadcast signals ghosted off satellites in geostationary orbit in the exosphere overhead. I’ve felt the connection. At least I thought I had until I entered this narrow surge channel passing from the West Stand up onto Fulham Road and encountered the passionate, on-the-ground reality of team devotion.

Now my mobile is ringing and I struggle to get it out. It’s my London-based friend, Sean, shouting to be heard: “We’re in the pub across the road.”

“I can’t cross. I can’t change direction. I’m being swept along here.”

“Cut left, cut left. I can see you. I’m waving my arm now. I’m waving my arm!”

No saying excuse me. Working this human river takes shoulders and arms. You have to slide and roll, pick your spots. I’m carried sixty feet before I escape to the wall, where I work my way back to the pub door. But even inside, upstairs, beer in hand, I can’t take my eyes from the streets below. A tide of blue and white, a celebrating sea of song, all the more impressive knowing Chelsea didn’t even win tonight.

A nil-nil draw. That was the result I travelled 7,600 kilometres to see. Chelsea at home against crosstown rivals Arsenal, the Premier League defending champions and a team Chelsea hasn’t beaten in league play for an agonizing ten years. But even without a win, Chelsea is eleven points clear in first place with just four games remaining in the season. And on the street below, the fans of a club that last won the league when Winston Churchill was in Downing Street know that the curse is over.

Now the Arsenal supporters are leaving Stamford Bridge, their coaches inching from behind the East Stand toward Fulham Road. And everybody below and in the room around me bursts again into song. Sean’s friends too, who, like me, aren’t your typical English “footy” supporters. No beer guts, replica jerseys, Burberry ball caps, or gold chains. These are educated, new-economy types. City financiers, an aromatherapy products entrepreneur, an Eton-educated son of money who runs an organic farm north of the city. But even they lean out the windows and shout the refrain down to their departing rivals: