Chelsea v Barcelona

The fury that has erupted in recent clashes between Chelsea and Barcelona may return when they resume hostilities on Wednesday

BARCELONA at the Bridge is the event that dare not call itself a rematch. Publicly, nobody from the Spanish champions will so much as whisper the idea of unfinished business, nor amends to be made. Chelsea have their own sound reasons not to rehash what happened last time, 12 months ago almost to the day.

Call it a sequel and the fixture runs the risk of scrutiny from the official censor. Even before the X-rated language at the end of last season’s second leg in London, the accusations of skulduggery in the first game in Barcelona, the subsequent ban from touchline activity of Chelsea’s manager, Chelsea versus Barça was seldom gentle and had already acquired its habit of running close. Twelve months ago, Chelsea reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League 5-4 on aggregate, the winner arriving late in the second half of the second leg. Six years ago, Barcelona came to London in the last eight of the same competition. The Chelsea of Gianluca Vialli scored three times in nine first-half minutes. That contest had almost three hours still to run, Barça the winners 5-4 over two legs and extra time.

Not long into that tie, in April 2000, something happened off the ball that set the tone. It was early in the match, and the shortest footballer in the Barcelona team hurried over to take a corner. To his surprise, he found himself pursued by an even smaller man in blue, a fellow apparently bent on an act of aggression. The incident stuck in the Barcelona player’s mind because it seemed so gratuitous. “I was just going to take a corner and he followed me in order to hit me,” recalls the Barça man, still at a club and known to most as a civilised, sympathetic individual. His pursuer, by the way, had been Jody Morris.

That detail may or may not have been noted by the observant fellow on the Barcelona bench. He was Jose Mourinho, then an assistant to Barça’s Dutch head coach Louis van Gaal. “I sometimes think I was the only guy who believed in Jose,” van Gaal said in Mourinho: Anatomy of a Winner, a recent study of the Chelsea manager. “He was known as The Translator.” He’ll live with the implied sneer — he was no more than a mere translator — and has been called much worse. The head of Uefa’s referees’ committee, Volker Roth, labelled him an “enemy of football” after what happened at the Nou Camp last year. The Translator, a role Mourinho once performed for Bobby Robson in Portugal and at Barcelona, will not return to great affection from the grandstands come March 7, the date of Chelsea’s visit for the second leg.

Nor will his assistants. Andre Villas Boas, one of Mourinho’s deputies at Chelsea, took a conspicuous role in the shenanigans after the final whistle of last year’s second leg. He appeared to direct a provocative comment at the Barcelona head coach Frank Rijkaard, a man who has made coolness a trademark of his managerial style. Rijkaard bristled. Nor was Rijkaard’s own assistant, the burly Henk Ten Cate, a mute bystander. It turned ugly.

Samuel Eto’o, the Barcelona striker, said he was racially abused by a steward during the fracas. Already there was baggage from the first leg. Mourinho claiming: “Rijkaard was in the referee’s (Anders Frisk) room for over five minutes. I know because my assistants were at the door while the meeting took place.” It sounded a tall story, and the version of events would be challenged to the point where Mourinho explained: “If my people say to me ‘I saw this, this happened’, I have to believe my people.” Frisk says he received menacing phone calls and promptly retired as a referee.

In the period since John Terry scored a controversial winner in the second leg at Stamford Bridge, ably assisted by Ricardo Carvalho’s tug on Barcelona goalkeeper Victor Valdes, the two clubs have at least developed some things in common. Both became league champions, Barcelona for the first time in six years, Chelsea for the first time in 50. Both lead their leagues this season, Barça by seven points from Real Madrid after a 5-1 thrashing of Betis last night.

Barça imagine they are less vulnerable to ambush, Chelsea may be less conservative. But domestic champions or not, the clubs are still easy to caricature as chalk and cheese. One wants to be an institution that represents a people, the expression of a Catalan nation. The other looks like the plaything of a singularly unexpressive individual, Roman Abramovich, a billionaire who has the spending power to perhaps spirit Eto’o or Deco away.

Meanwhile, a puzzled Catalan press wonder how so much wealth can’t provide a good pitch at Stamford Bridge and snort that, well, Chelsea’s brand of football hardly needs one. Conspiracy theories abound. Last week, Chelsea executives in London were on their phones within hours of a Spanish tabloid printing a tame piece wondering who might referee the game. They are all Translators now.

The Times, UK