In one expletive-laden sentence, Kai Havertz let it all out.
The exasperation with constantly being talked about as a transfer fee rather than a talented footballer, the relief at emerging from a difficult first season in England on and off the pitch, and the pure, unadulterated joy of reaching the summit of the club game. “To be honest, right now, I don’t give a fuck about that, we won the fucking Champions League,” he told BT Sport, with Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta at his side.
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Havertz began Saturday evening in Porto as a controversial starter in the eyes of some and ended it as an undisputed Chelsea legend. One excellent performance on the grandest stage of all, capped by a well-timed run and composed rounding of Ederson was all it took down Manchester City and wash away months of struggle. It was a feat that will enshrine him in Stamford Bridge folklore forever.
The speed of the transformation spoke to the formidable myth-making power of the Champions League final, but also to the surreal nature of what Thomas Tuchel has led this team to achieve in the space of four months.
This is not like 2012, the only other time Chelsea were crowned champions of Europe. Munich felt like an ending but, in many ways, remarkably, this feels more like a beginning.
Key to the guiding sense of destiny felt by Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Petr Cech and Ashley Cole nine years ago was an acceptance that it was likely to be the last chance to win the one trophy that had eluded them, and a squad overhaul was looming in any case. Within weeks of Bayern Munich’s penalty shootout heartache, Drogba was gone and Eden Hazard had arrived, ushering in a fundamentally different type of Chelsea team.
Saturday night’s 1-0 victory against Manchester City was different. Yes, time had been running out for the likes of Azpilicueta, Thiago Silva, Antonio Rudiger, Jorginho and Olivier Giroud to win the biggest prize in club football, and for N’Golo Kante to add the Champions League to the illustrious list of trophies he has been instrumental in securing for club and country. But many of the other players Chelsea are building around now can reasonably hope to do this again, perhaps more than once.
Havertz, Mason Mount, Christian Pulisic, Reece James and Callum Hudson-Odoi are all 22 or younger. Andreas Christensen, Ben Chilwell and Timo Werner are in their mid-20s, presumably with their prime years still ahead of them.
Five of those eight players started against City and only Hudson-Odoi did not feature from the bench. Individually and collectively, they reached a level of tactical, technical and mental excellence at Estadio do Dragao that most footballers spend entire careers trying and failing to achieve, and now they have years to continue to benefit from everything they have learned during this Champions League run.
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“The best of me has not come,” Mount insisted afterwards. “I’m still young, I’m still learning and hungry to get better and better. That’s the way I am. Winning this trophy has made me feel even more hungry — I know what it feels like now. We need to do it next season, this can’t be a one-off — go for the Premier League, go for this again and hopefully keep winning.”
Just as pertinently, and perhaps most startling of all to consider, is that this is also a young team in terms of its development under Tuchel. What he has done since joining the club in January — transforming a group of players lacking tactical cohesion and defensive structure into a team solid and sophisticated enough to outplay Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and City to win the Champions League — has to go down as one of the most impressive top-end coaching jobs of modern times. It has also necessarily been a masterclass in pragmatism. What could he build with an actual pre-season, a transfer window and a new No 9 who scores goals?
“The level is set from us, and once the celebrations are over and when we have digested this experience, it’s the moment to grow, to evolve and to use it to become better,” Tuchel said after the match when asked where the young core of Chelsea’s team can go from here. “To learn from it, it is absolutely crucial. A lot of young players had this huge success, and now it’s a big, big challenge to stay hungry and go for the next one.
“I want the next success, the next title, and I want the next process with the same level of quality and consistency. I want to be a part of it and I demand to be a part of it. This is what comes next, make no mistake about it.”
It is always dangerous to presume that a Chelsea head coach is going to last, and Tuchel gave a wry nod to the anarchic recent history of this club when he joked that meeting owner Roman Abramovich for the first time amid the celebrations on the pitch in Porto was “the best moment or maybe the worst, because from now it can only get worse”. The Champions League triumph in 2012 did not buy Roberto Di Matteo the faith to be entrusted with managing the post-Drogba, early-Hazard transition, and even the most successful coaches tend to have a shorter shelf life at Stamford Bridge than elsewhere.
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But this does feel different, if only because Chelsea know what they have with Tuchel. Marina Granovskaia hailed him as “one of Europe’s best coaches” when announcing his appointment in January, and everything that has transpired since has delivered on that lofty billing so emphatically that there can be no credible argument of a potential upgrade. Having spent years pursuing Pep Guardiola, Abramovich has instead managed to appoint a coach capable of consistently matching or even beating him.
Provided there is no repeat of the recruitment tensions that quickly soured Antonio Conte’s relationship with the Chelsea board in the summer of 2017 or the “palpable discord” in the dressing room that doomed Jose Mourinho two years earlier, Tuchel is well-positioned to have more job security than most coaches employed by Abramovich.
He also has a group of players who, with one or two smart additions, are fully equipped to ensure there need not be another nine-year wait for the next Champions League triumph.
(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
