You can’t buy that” & “Money Can’t Buy You Love” – New songs for Chelsea Blues.

John Terry’s recent quote to the media after beating West Ham, “You can’t buy that” may have come back to bite him on his proverbial backside.

Unfortunately for him, you can’t buy a Champions League final either, one of the most expensive teams in Europe tried their utmost to intimidate the referee, and at times it looked like an Olympic diving competition, the Chelsea players displayed arrogance to the point of presuming that they had a divine right to be in the final.
Of course the reason Chelsea lost The game was because of bad refereeing, and match fixing by UEFA, sound credible? It’s a big claim to make… Arsene Wenger is perhaps one of the few managers that doesn’t, regularly, blame the referee when his team loses, the same can’t be said about Chelsea. The sign of a great champion is gracious in victory and defeat, but this sight is becoming far too common in football and with particular teams, you don’t see child like tantrums in a rugby or tennis final, do you?

So there was one clear cut penalty claim when Malouda was bundled inside the penalty area, but let’s not forget the same happened against Henry in the first leg with the same outcome - no penalty. The other penalty appeals were very tenuous indeed, as for the ‘hand ball’ claim, the ball was rocketed towards the Barca player, he turned his back to the ball and it hit him near the top of his arm, is this a handball? It all smacks of desperation, Anelka commented that there is a huge pressure on players to win every game. If people are appealing for a penalty for the Anelka, Abidal incident, the latter being sent off, it was clearly not a penalty let alone a foul, consequently Barca had to play a third of the match with ten men – now that’s what I call an injustice! And to their credit Barca accepted it without verbally abusing the referee, instead they fought like champions and well the rest is history, as we know Iniesta scored a scorcher in the last minute of the game, every bit as good as Essien’s first half goal. Some people have commented on the incompetence of the referee, but let us not forget that it’s a game of two halves, or in this case two legs, and Barca came into the match with a slight disadvantage of an away game, but with a huge advantage of having no goals scored against them at home from the first leg, hence a goal on the night would put them in the driving seat - who’s fault was it that Chelsea played an unimaginative stifling game instead of an attacking one in the first leg, putting them in a vulnerable position?

Barcelona had 65% possession overall, and tried to play the beautiful game as it should be played: the attacking, passing game on the deck. I think from a neutral’s point of view Barcelona versus Man United will be a dream final, two positive attacking teams with bags of creativity and amazing goal scoring talent. Although many whinge about him I have to agree with Platini - who wants to endure a deja vu of last year’s premier league teams playing each other in the final again? After all we want to watch less familiar European teams fight it out for the ultimate prize in football, don’t we? Although I’m sure many Chelsea fans won’t share that sentiment.

The Beatles once sang that ‘money cant buy you love’, but try telling that to Abramovitch! I’m sure we’re all aware, there are many things that money can’t buy, but try as they did, testing the referee’s resolve by intimidation in order to win a game they were clearly in danger of being outclassed in, the referee would not budge and couldn’t be bought. Maybe John Terry’s quote is most fitting for these moments: “you can’t buy that”.

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