Almost Fail Award: Chelsea

 

With the group stage of UEFA Champions League now over, it is time to give out some rewards to a few special teams because by the time the knockout stage begins, my second term of law school will be underway and I will not be able to do this. During my break from school, I will give out five awards in five days starting from today to Friday.

One of the greatest things about a law school final exam is if you put some effort in preparing and taking the exam it is a bit hard to fail it. For me that was Chelsea during the Group Stage of UEFA Champions League, which they almost fail getting through the group stage. At times during the season it seems new Chelsea manager Andre Villa-Boas (AVB for short) looked over-match as Chelsea (the Boston Red Sox of English soccer) had high expectations this season. Not just winning the Champions League, but also winning the English Premier League and countless of other trophies (Note: the way a soccer season works is there is a league season, two or three national tournaments and for some there is a continental tournament all happening within a 10 month span). And the UEFA Champions League is one of those tournaments.

How did they get the “Almost Fail” award? It came down to the last match day of the group stage, where a Chelsea lost would have sent them to the Europa League (UEFA second-tier club Tournament) and 50,000 columns, blogs, tweets and Facebook statuses on how horrible AVB is and needs to be gone. If he had manage to get out of London, let alone England; AVB's next career should be a magician if it comes to that lost to Valencia on the last match of the group stage. As a Chelsea fan, I am happy they won the match and win the group to advance to the knockout stage. Still, almost failing at anything is not fun; especially when successfully doing things are expected.