Chelsea may be champions of the world, but can Blues really compete for the Premier League title?
Champions of the world, champions of Europe if you want to get all West Ham about it, there is only one logical next step for Chelsea. But could Enzo Maresca's side really become the first to simultaneously hold the Conference League, Club World Cup and Premier League title belts (there aren't belts but there should be)?
Ask Levi Colwill and he'd tell you that it is eminently possible, that winning the biggest prizes in the game is nothing less than a requirement for anyone in his shirt.
"We're a team and that's in the Chelsea identity," he said after lifting the Club World Cup title. "You stick together no matter what. I think players like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, they started that and we're carrying it on.
"They were all amazing players, the best players who won a lot but we've got the best players in our team -- young players for sure -- and that's our plan: to win the biggest trophies for Chelsea. We're definitely capable of doing it. I think we've shown that. Everyone said that PSG were the best team in the world but we won 3-0."
You could hardly blame the academy graduate, well over a decade into his time at the club, for believing that the best is still to come, certainly not in the afterglow of the best performance by any Chelsea side since they secured their place at this competition by winning the 2020-21 Champions League. Enzo Maresca's gameplan was executed to perfection, his players were aggressive, organized and fearless. Play like that across a 38-game season and the sky is the limit for any team.
That, of course, is the problem. Chelsea did not play close to that level all that frequently during Maresca's first season. That is why they ended up 15 points behind Liverpool, scrapping for a top-five berth when at the midway point their manager had been suppressing any talk of title contention. The final Premier League table offered a better reflection of who they were than the giddiness of November and December, safely ensconced in the third to fifth zone but a long way off title contention.
Chelsea didn't score enough last season, and while their defensive record was the third best in the league with 43 conceded, it needs to be far superior when only 64 goals go in at the other end. Their expected goal difference of 21.16 was more than half that of Liverpool and a fair way off an injury-addled Arsenal.
Their win against PSG was all the more brilliant because of how atypical it was. Against the remainder of last season's top four, Chelsea lost four, drew one and won the other, an impressive 3-1 defeat of a Liverpool side whose feet were already resting on the Premier League title. Luis Enrique's European champions registered just 17 touches in the box, four fewer than the average top-flight opponent of Chelsea, despite having two-thirds of possession. A side that can occasionally be guilty of passivity with and without the ball snapped into the first 10 minutes, setting the tone there. Maresca's men were brilliant. Atypically so.
There is a risk that the cups tell an aggrandized version of Chelsea's progress under Maresca. They did the only thing they could do in the Conference League, romping through it, and got the breaks in the Club World Cup. Their second place seemed fortunate enough when Benfica knocked Bayern Munich out of the last 16 tie in Charlotte. Then Al-Hilal and Fluminense cleared the road of Manchester City and Inter.
None of that is to discount from the excellence with which they took down the European champions nor whatever jubilation their supporters might feel on the sight of that big gold badge on sponsorless kits (which it must be said, is a vibe). It is just worth balancing out Todd Boehly's robust assessment of Chelsea's Club World Cup campaign -- "The boys have shown that they are a force to be reckoned with," he told Talksport -- with the fact that their semifinal opponents Fluminense are rated by Opta as slightly inferior to Coventry City and Elche.
Still, this offers momentum, right? Probably, but there are plenty skeptical as to how that will balance out against the five weeks of rest and preparation before their 2025-26 season begins. And Chelsea are evidently an improved team from last season, right? It is fair to factor in a fair wedge of individual growth from this young side but there are questions to be asked of their transfer business.
Joao Pedro started brightly stateside but scrub penalties from the equation and he has 10 goals from 58 Premier League matches over the last two seasons, averaging two and a half shots and 0.3 xG per 90. For Nicolas Jackson, now being circled by Manchester United and AC Milan, those numbers are 24 scored, 2.78 shots and 0.55 xG. Swapping out Noni Madueke for Jamie Gittens gives Maresca another option on the left, where Chelsea have long struggled to find the guy. However, it is hard to shake the sense that a remarkably impressive short-term trajectory for the new signing coming to a tougher league is to play at the level of the guy he is replacing.
What makes Chelsea's approach curious is that there looked to be an avenue for this team to become legitimately excellent, particularly now that it has Club World Cup prize money burning a hole in their pocket. There is an opportunity here to briefly zag away from the model of $70 million-ish youngsters with upside and put a bit more down to add star quality. Suppose they swapped out Jackson for a Victor Osimhen-level striker, acquired an elite-level center back to anchor their defense and bought just one more goalkeeper, this one from the very upper echelon. Then you would have a team that ticks every box.
After all, the future still looks incredibly bright for any team that has Moises Caicedo as its anchor and Cole Palmer as its creative spark. There are fine constituent parts surrounding them in Reece James, Marc Cucurella and Enzo Fernandez to name but a few. Chelsea are not that far away from at least entering the title conversation, even if it seems at this moment in time that their recruitment department is not making the optimal moves to get them there.
Still, while the high watermark of Chelsea is a team that can blow apart the champions of Europe, heavy-legged as PSG seemed to be, then there is reason to believe in the vision. It will just take a fair few more games up to this standard before the world champions can realistically aspire to be the best team in their homeland.
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