Written/Hot-Blooded Brother
This may be one of the saddest farewells in the history of world football. It's about life and death, but it's higher than life and death.
Because of the outbreak of the War between Russia and Ukraine, Russia has encountered unprecedented sanctions and blockades in the Western world, not only the economy, but also the "war" has extended to the sports world. The British government and the Premier League forced Russian billionaire Abramovich to transfer Chelsea and hand over the ownership and management of the club, or both Abu and Chelsea would be sanctioned and assets frozen. So, with no choice left, Abu accepted the fate of leaving.
Behind this farewell, we may be able to have a different understanding of civilization and barbarism, justice and evil charm.
Pull back the clock back to a month ago. Chelsea lift the Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi. What does it mean? Chelsea have won a Grand Slam for the fullest range they can reach. There are very few european football players who can achieve this achievement. In terms of vitality, Chelsea is the most exuberant. From the time Abu came to power to this day, this is a story that took 19 years to grow into a towering tree.
In last year's Champions League final, when Chelsea Lickman City lifted the Big Ears Cup again after nine years, it was an interesting phenomenon: the focus of the world's media was not on Tuchel, nor on any of the Blues, but on the boss Abu. Put it on any other big club, which is unlikely to happen.
Bosses, investors, have always been behind the scenes, not the people who stand in the center of the stage. But Abu can do this, nothing else, just because this team is too deeply branded by Abu. Deeply, the name represents this team.
In 19 years, Abu spent £2.1 billion for Chelsea and won 21 trophies. Have you found that over the years, few people have called Chelsea "local tycoons", they have been classified into the real big club camp, the kind that can compete with Real Madrid Barca Bayern United. Psychological identification, for a club and the investors behind it, is a more face-saving and far-reaching thing.
The world's respect for Chelsea is not inexplicably given by others, but earned by Chelsea itself. Of course, the most inseparable person behind this must be Abramovich.
There has always been a discussion in international football: did gold dollar football start from Abu? The answer given by more people is: that's it. Well, since such a decision cannot be swayed, how about being labeled the title of "Originator of the Golden Yuan"? There is nothing inherently wrong with the logic of football based on the gold dollar.
When Abu bought Chelsea one title after another with a sum of real money, what were his contenders doing? Look at the American bosses of Manchester United and Arsenal, sucking the blood of the club. grades? Important? Maybe. But in the eyes of those businessmen who are more worthy of the name of "capitalists", the most important thing is always whether they can cut that part of the dividend.
In 19 years, Abu has changed managers for Chelsea 15 times. Harshness and cruelty have become another label for Abu, but strangely, few managers and Abu have ended in farce. It is enough to see that Abu is not a demon, he wields the baton of power, but he also knows how to soothe people's hearts. He made a team that was originally just defined as a "local tycoon" have flesh and blood, a soul, and a feeling.
When I was young, looking at the thinning Serie A, and comparing it with the dream of Mourinho's Blue Bridge in the take-off, there was only complete envy. The era constructed by Lampard, Terry, Essien and Drogba is all flesh and blood men, the best endorsement of iron blood and passion, the most explosive hormone, compared with the bubble gold dollars piled up in the previous years of the Chinese Super League, this TM is the charm that gold dollars should bring to football.
That was also Abu's best years. In 19 years, Abu has gone from a 37-year-old spirited life to a small old man with white hair and a silver beard. In the second half of your life, watching the foundation laid in the first half being eaten away, this bitterness is enough to swallow too many people, even if you come from the fighting people, let alone Abu is only a Jewish descendant of the fighting people.
"It was a very difficult decision and it pained me to be separated from the club in this way. However, I do think it's in the best interest of the club. “
Behind Abu's words, there is helplessness that can be understood, and there is indescribable calm. There are probably three kinds of calm in the world, one is a calm and idyllic mood, the other is to replace all answers with silence, and finally to suppress the pretense of the waves. Which kind of Abu belongs to, the answer is curious and painful.
Chelsea, which is in escrow, still owe a debt of £1.5 billion to Abu. By selling the club, you may be able to reap a higher income than this money. But Abu had another option: In his farewell letter, he wrote that he had instructed the team to set up a charitable foundation that would donate all the net proceeds from the sale of the team, which would help all the victims of the war in Ukraine.
You can't simply use the words "good" and "noble" to praise Abu's choice. Abu is a businessman, and I fully believe that he was born poor and was an orphan since childhood, and the road to prosperity is not absolutely clean and pure, and there must be deception and attachment behind it. But after Abu's worldly success, he put a pure heart into football. Perhaps the most tiring thing in his life, but also the most intoxicating thing for him.
Football, this damn football. Maybe what Abu can see through football is a complete humanity and life, so that he can have the open-mindedness he has now, a kind of open-mindedness that you don't know how heavy and painful it is behind it. And this kind of open-minded action is worthy of awe.
At that time, Abu, waving a ruble, stepped into Stamford Bridge, and in the mouth of the mean British media, he was a barbarian who broke into the civilized world. Then, 19 years later, his graceful turn told the arrogant Westerners who were the real gentlemen and aristocrats, and who were just a bunch of hypocrites?
Isn't the same true of the real world outside of football? Too many people wear the cloak of hypocrisy and do dirty things. The so-called people who uphold fairness and justice, under the guise of procedural justice and ZZ's correctness, are committing robbery. This is the biggest joke in the world.
Abu's departure, to put it more broadly, is also a mockery of so-called Western civilization. The so-called Western civilization is nothing more than 300 years after the Industrial Revolution, mastering the right to speak and packaging things. They can wantonly transmit to the world a distorted view of cognition: the thousand-year-old civilization of the East is just an uncivilized world.
But actually? True civilization is carried out by a long history and culture, and the values of Westerners are filled with only crude and arrogant cognition. Their so-called truth is only within the range of the cannon, and justice exists only under strength. Of course, if they encounter more horizontal ones, they will be infinitely cunning, those disgraceful dark weapons, they can beautify the rhetoric, and then put it on the table.
Back to the beginning, why is Abu's farewell higher than life and death? If the innocent lives lost on the battlefields of Ukraine were the direct cause of Abu's farewell, then, as Guardiola said, how did Yugoslavia explain? How does Syria explain it?
So many living lives, after all, did not bring Abu-style results to the "ZZ right" side, no NFL boss left, no NBA boss left. Abu's farewell is a ZZ game, and those lives and deaths, in the ZZ world where the right to speak, what can be counted?