The current leaders of the table in the Premier League have managed an excellent transition of their team after the Champions League victory two years ago.
It’s the natural course of things. A team plays successfully and wins a lot of titles but eventually the players become older and in the end are not competitive enough anymore.
However, the fans still love the players for their past achievements and the club also doesn’t want to seem disloyal by getting rid of them. So, the everlasting question for teams in professional football is, how to maintain the success without appearing to be ungrateful by transferring the popular players.
Interestingly this is a problem even for the best teams in football. We can see for instance the strategy that teams miss the right time for a successful transition because they hold on too long to their current players.
A good example for that is right now is Barcelona which was the best team in club football for the time between 2008 and 2012. Despite some changes on the coaching bench they never really changed their team and playing style, so that they eventually lost their dominant position.
This was impressively demonstrated in last year’s Champions League semifinal against Bayern, which they lost with an aggregate score of 0-7.
Right now they are doing a little bit better but are still far away from their past successes. It seems as if players like Xavi, Iniesta, Pique, etc. could decide themselves when they want to stop playing for the team, just like the two key players Valdes and Puyol appear to have done.
This loyalty to the former club heroes might be likeable but unfortunately in most of the cases not really efficient when you want to maintain the club’s success.
Another strategy was shown by teams like Real or Bayern who got rid of popular club icons in a very pragmatic way which gave them the image of cold and only success orientated teams. At Real we have right now the dishonourable treatment of the club icon Casillas and this happened also in a similar way with players like Raul or Morientes, who probably wouldn’t have left the team if they weren’t forced to.
Also the current Champions League winners Bayern, there have been similar cases with popular players like Elber, Lucio or Demichelis. Of course there are also some other examples like Kahn, Scholl or Matthaus who just played forever for Bayern, but the club has a policy that they give players over 30 only contracts for one year.
However, there is an example of a respectful and successful team transition in European club football.
Chelsea won the Champions League two years ago and it was probably more the sheer will of players like Cech, Lampard or Drogba than their actual performances that led the team to this big triumph. These players together with other team mates like Terry or Ashley Cole marked the most successful period in the club history from 2004 until 2012 with winning three Premier League titles and four FA Cups plus the Champions League in 2012.
At that time however it became obvious that several players weren’t able to play on their highest level anymore.
The club reacted in signing some very talented young players like Hazard and Oscar among others, but at the same time didn’t send their former key players away. Cech and Terry are still starters, while Lampard and Cole are now mainly substitutes and Drogba voluntarily went to China.
Of course Chelsea have also sold some players in the last two years and some of them might want to have stayed there, but nobody got the impression that they were treating their legends in a disrespectful way. Still they managed to stay successful , although they had a weaker season last year despite winning the European League.
This year they are very strong again and have a good chance to win at least the Premier League, maybe even the Champions League.
The fans have new heroes now while the old ones are still around or probably would be around again like in Drogba’s case.
Hardly any other team in Europe have managed that balancing act in such an effective and successful way, although they have spent similar amounts on new players. It’s an overlooked achievement Chelsea certainly deserve credit for.
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