Football Food For Thought / Jonathan Wilson / 13 May 2010 /

Shortly after the final whistle on Sunday afternoon, John Terry told an interviewer how Chelsea had suffered over the last couple of seasons by not winning the Premier League. The Chelsea skipper doesn't know the meaning of the word, says Jonathan Wilson...

Generally speaking, I'm against the nostalgists who believe football was better 20 years ago. Anybody who actually watches a game (not one of the games we know are classics, like Crystal Palace 4 Liverpool 3 or Red Star Belgrade 2 Bayern Munich 2) but any random game, will see that it wasn't. Yes, for big games the atmosphere may have been great, but I remember going to Sunderland when we got excited when crowds hit
16,000; now anything under 40,000 is considered a little disappointing. And that's without mentioning the violence and the hideously aggressive policing.

Old football generally was worse than football today. But at least old footballers had some sense of perspective. Chelsea deserved to win the Premier League title this season. They scored a record number of goals and beat Manchester United and Arsenal home and away. They were the best team in what was a pretty undistinguished, if occasionally exciting, season, and have every right to lap up the applause.

I watched it all on Sunday with a gentle contentment. Carlo Ancelotti, who seems to have had no problems adapting to life in England, was gracious and amusing in victory, as he usually is. And then John Terry opened his mouth to announce that this was Chelsea's vindication after all the "suffering" they've gone through. The suffering?

Let's make allowances. Let's accept he was speaking in a strictly football sense and not make trite analogies with starving children in Africa or jailed democracy activists in Burma. Let's even assume that the term "suffer" has taken on a slightly different meaning in English football because those with Spanish as a first language tend to use it in the sense "try really hard" or "struggle". Let's be as sympathetic as we can to him - and it's still nonsense.

Chelsea have not "suffered" in the three years they've failed to win a title. Not-winning is not suffering. Suffering is Grimsby going out of the league, or Rochdale spending 36 years in the same division, or Portsmouth collapsing, or even Manchester City or Tottenham constantly underperforming, or Liverpool slowly deflating and apparently becoming a second-rank club. It's not finishing a little bit off the top of the table.

Terry, though, is not alone. One of the things that is wrong about modern football is the sense of entitlement of the elite. Playing in a final should in itself be a privilege, and players should treat it as such. If they win, then celebrate. If they lose, then congratulate the winners with dignity, applaud your fans and leave the stage. Don't hang around weeping like a spoiled six-year who got the wrong type of Barbie at Christmas. If you want to punch a couple of walls and get mortally drunk to get over then fine, but do it in private.

To speak of "suffering" in the context Terry did, is to devalue real suffering. Look at France in 1982, when they lost in the World Cup semi-final after their substitute Patrick Battiston was knocked unconscious seconds after coming on by Harald Schumacher, who went unpunished. Not only did they go through the psychological trauma of seeing a friend suffer a potentially life-threatening injury, but they also effectively lost the use of a sub, something that proved crucial in the heat of Seville ad West Germany fought back from 3-1 down in extra-time to win on penalties. That is suffering; a sense of outrage and anger and injustice. Chelsea just weren't quite as good as another very good team. At most, that's disappointing.

But the fact that tears are such a common feature of losing sides in big games, that the likes of Terry can use the word "suffering" without being widely ridiculed is indicative of a profound change in the game. Players at a club like Chelsea now judge their careers not
by whether they won a medal, but by how many. The hegemony of the glamorous clubs is so complete that it does feel like some dreadful let-down if they don't win something.

Bill Shankly won just three league titles over his career. Brian Clough only won two. Greatness is not won by a tally of your medals, and nor is suffering measured by a couple of seasons when you "only" finished second.

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