A game of two halves

It wasn’t, let’s face it, a particularly successful debut weekend for Chelsea's new home kit. Defeat on Saturday for Thomas Tuchel's side in the FA Cup Final and then a thumping 4-0 win, yesterday, by Barcelona over Chelsea in the women’s Champions League Final. It would have made for uncomfortable reading this morning in SW6 and in Surrey. Unsurprisingly, however, most of the media chin-scratching is over the challenge Tuchel now faces to keep his team in contention for Europe next season, rather than recognition of just how far Emma Hayes has brought Chelsea, and women’s professional football in England.

The women’s game has transformed out of all recognition in recent years, with most of the big clubs ploughing money into their women’s squads, making competitions like the Women’s Super League in England far more exciting as a result. Rather than treating them as ancillary operations, owners like Roman Abramovich have matched ambition with resources. Chelsea coach Hayes has been the beneficiary of a recruitment programme which, proportionately, has kept pace with - and even exceeded - that of the men’s squad, complementing the dedicated training facilities at the club's all-squad Cobham training complex.

Picture: Chelsea FC

It was no coincidence, either, that Abramovich himself was in Gothenburg last night to cheer - and console - Hayes’ players. And, yet, I wonder how much newspaper attention will be afforded Hayes in taking an English women's team to the pinnacle fixture in European professional football? The sports pages may have covered the final, but the women’s game is still painfully lacking respect from many sports editors, with coverage often buried. Even worse, from male football fans, of which a cursory gaze through the comments of any attempt by the Mail Online to cover games reveals a depressing litany of misogyny (I’m not even talking about casual sexism, either) and homophobia. 

Picture: Twitter/Alex Scott

I’m not trying to be woke in raising this. I just find it hard to understand, genuinely, how in the 21st century it should even be a ‘thing’ that women play football professionally. But here we are, in a world where former Arsenal and England defender Alex Scott, who has already built up substantial experience as a TV presenter and football pundit, is chosen to replace Dan Walker (who has never played football professionally) as anchor of BBC1’s Football Focus, and all of a sudden online forums are full of “box-ticking” comments about the BBC appointing a black women to present the Saturday lunchtime institution. 

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, there are clearly a lot of people with a problem at the idea of women doing something that men can also do. It manifests itself in even darker ways, too: former England international and Chelsea winger Karen Carney contemplated taking her own life after being abused on Twitter following comments she made during Amazon Prime coverage in December about Leeds beating West Brom 5-0. Even now, Carney is a lightning rod for online abuse, often for her Midlands accent, something that rarely afflicts male commentators from the same region (with, perhaps, the exception of Alan Smith).

Chelsea’s defeat in Gothenburg last night will be of little consequence to those categorically opposed to the idea of professional women’s football, but to those of us who do take an interest (mine, admittedly, through Chelsea’s ever-increasing success), there was much to celebrate, even if the four goals Hayes’ side shipped in a devastating first 35 minutes of the fixture will sting for some time. Objectively, Barcelona exposed a gulf in quality, shockingly so, considering just how talented Chelsea are, with their usually on-point ‘Kerr-by’ forward partnership of the symbiotic Samantha Kerr and Fran Kirby, along with appearances from other dependable such as central defender Millie Bright and goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger. 

This was still the same squad that recently won the WSL, the women’s League Cup and next weekend will contest the FA Cup. Chelsea’s appearance last night also marked the first time an English team had appeared in the pinnacle European finale since Arsenal won it in 2007 (Hayes was assistant to Vic Akers that night, in a season where Arsenal won a historic quadruple). They were also playing a Barcelona that had won all 26 of their domestic league matches, scoring 128 goals and conceding only five in the process. And that, for contrast, is on a budget of just Eur 4 million, a fraction of the salaries and transfer fees the men’s game commands.

Picture: Twitter/ChelseaFCW

Hayes, though, is a breath of fresh air, in football as a whole. “I am not going to give you crappy platitudes,” she said, live on BT Sport after her side had beaten Munich to reach the Champions League Final. “I have worked my whole life for this day and I am so fucking proud of them players. They have delivered.” Yep, the F-bomb on a Sunday lunchtime (Ofcom sanction, no doubt, in the post). But it was unlike any of the pro-forma cliches you normally get from professional football managers, the Keegan meltdown notwithstanding. 

“This is thousands of hours, thousands of setbacks," Hayes continued. “I got to this level through my hard work and determination, and I am fortunate enough to be working for a football club that I adore, that give me licence to do this.” She then reflected on how her love of football began on the Islington streets of her childhood: “I entered that pitch every day as a nine-year-old, about to ‘play’ in the Champions League final. Oh my God, my dreams came true today.” While, ultimately, those dreams may have taken a dent last night, Hayes’ ambition to drive women’s football ever onwards won’t be dented. She wants to win over the naysayers and give nine-year-old girls everywhere the idea that they, too, could play in a European final one day. 

It’s this self belief that has made her one of the best coaches in the game, regardless of gender, even raising the idea of how she’d make a better manager than many of those running men’s teams. Earlier this year Hayes was linked with the vacant job at AFC Wimbledon, one she instantly rejected, partly because she was extremely happy at Chelsea (jokingly, because Wimbledon wouldn’t have been able to afford her, anyway), and partly on principle.

"The football world needs to recognise that while the game is played by a different gender, it’s the same sport,” she railed. The qualities involved in team management were exactly the same as for a men’s team. “We are talking about human beings,” she stressed. “We spend too much time talking about gender and ethnicity instead of the quality of candidates.” 

Hayes then got to the nub of the issue: “Women's football is something to celebrate, and the quality and the achievements of all the females I represent. It’s an insult to them that we talk about women’s football being a ‘step down’, with the dedication and the commitment and the quality they have. That's what I’m disappointed with, not being linked to a football job.”

Picture: Peckham Town FC

Things have come a long way, however. A couple of weeks ago BBC London reporter Chris Slegg fronted a compelling film featuring Mary Phillip, England’s first black international captain and a six-time FA Cup winner, who is now the manager of men’s side Peckham Town. She’s now used to the “she ain’t got a clue what she’s doing” barbs - even from rival managers.  “It is still perceived as a men’s game and I am in men’s football. But when you learn to play you are coached the exact same way a man is. The drills and tactics are the same.”

“I was born in the 70s, fell in love with the game in the 80s, played at elite level in the 90s, became a professional in the early 2000s and a manager in the 2010s,” Phillip told the BBC. However, her journey and the journey of millions of female players has been long. 

Women’s football first became popular during World War One, but faced cultural male hostility. In 1921 it was banned by the Football Association. In 1967 Tottenham met (and beat…) Chelsea in the men’s FA Cup Final, a game that had a profound effect on the-then 19-year-old Patricia Gregory, who wrote to a local newspaper to query why women didn’t play football, and then set up a team of her own. Within a couple of years, a league of 47 teams had been set up, and the Women's Football Association was born. The same year, finally, the FA overturned their 1921 ban.

More than half a century on, the women’s game gets TV coverage and attention, but the sense is that it’s still not regarded with any of the same blanket national obsession as the men’s game. There’s no doubt that things are moving in the right direction - Sky Sports and the BBC jointly signed a £24 million deal with the Women’s Super League that will make it the world’s most-watched women’s sports league. Coming on top of £20 million in sponsorship, the TV deal has been described as “a game changer”. UEFA also recently announced a Eur 24 million package for women’s Champions League teams, pledging that clubs in the group stage will receive a minimum payment of Eur 400,000. 

Further visibility and further investment - even if paltry by comparison to the eye-watering sums swilling about the men’s game - but momentum that brings Emma Hayes’ dream just that little bit closer to reality.

Grotesque doesn’t even cover it

The other evening I happened across an episode of Dad’s Army, 'Is There Honey For Tea?', in which the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard rally around Private Godfrey and his sisters Dolly and Cissy when their idyllic Cherry Tree Cottage comes under threat of demolition. The house is a perfect rose-decorated slice of bucolic English perfection which, Sergeant Wilson wistfully remarks is “just what we are fighting for”. Britain was a different place in 1975, when the episode first went out, beset by grey skies, strikes and British Leyland cars, an altogether different era to the somewhat confected view of tradition which, even as the set-up for comedy, that episode of Dad’s Army set out to convey. But it brought home a point. Tradition does count.

The timing of the episode going out was prescient. Tradition is under attack again from the announcement that England’s so-called ‘Big Six’ league clubs - Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City - are to join a new and exclusive European Super League along with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Internazionale and Juventus (notably, none of the likes of Bayern Munich, Ajax or PSG are involved). It’s been some time coming: the clubs are believed to have been in talks for some time about creating their own rival to the Champions League, but formal confirmation of the consortium has brought the morality of it all into acute focus.

Football supporters, commentators, the domestic leagues and politicians have all, quite rightly, condemned the plan. There have been murmurings of points deductions, international player bans and other sanctions for those clubs who take part. Overall, the move has been roasted, demonstrating the grotesque arrogance of football clubs in failing to understand the ethos of what supporting football is all about, and why fans are prepared to dip into their hard-earned to follow clubs at every level for sometimes perverse and random reasons. 

I make no secret of my patronage of Chelsea, one of the clubs who’ve signed up for this folly. And it’s not out of arriviste glory-hunting, either: I started visiting Stamford Bridge as a child, when the club was near bankrupt, flirting with the old Third Division, and crowds of just 7,000 were turning up to see warhorses like Micky Droy and Ron Harris kick lumps out of opponents. Liverpool were then the dominant English side - even Ipswich were in the ascendancy - and the sort of riches that surround Chelsea today weren’t even dancing on the wildest stages of our imagination. That’s not why went to the Bridge. It was our club, just as whichever berth you call your home club is yours. It is, of course, an added bonus if you have superstars to watch. Even better if your club gets to play the European elite - nothing gets the hackles up quite like watching a load of cynical Spaniards falling over a lot in front of you on a Wednesday evening. But to some extent, this is mere confection, fairy dust sprinkled on the more prosaic form that is the Beautiful Game.

"We have all spoken forever about the importance of the ‘pyramid’ - the dream, the aspiration of clubs developing, they fall, they get promoted,” former  Football Association and Manchester City chairman David Bernstein told Sky News this morning. “Clubs like Manchester City who, 20 years ago, were in the first division and playing Gillingham in a play-off final at Wembley, become what they are now. Leicester City now have punched above their weight. "So I think you are moving all that dream, that aspiration, and I think that's sad and very dangerous."

Football fans have expressed similar sentiment, especially supporters associations of the clubs embroiled in the breakaway. The Chelsea Supporters' Trust branded it “the ultimate betrayal" and a decision made “with no consideration for the loyal supporters, our history, our future or the future of football in this." One Liverpool group accused the club’s US-based owner, Fenway Sports Group, of appropriating a property that is "ours not theirs”, while another said it was withdrawing support to a club “which puts financial greed above integrity of the game.” The Manchester United Supporters Group posted a picture of the Grim Reaper kicking a football on its website, along with a statement opining that the new league “has no sporting merit and would seem to be motivated by greed,” adding that it had been created without any input from the grass roots of the club’s support. "These owners, irrespective of where they come from, seem to think football belongs to them; it doesn't it belongs to us - the supporters - irrespective of which team we support."

I’m not saying that Doncaster Rovers are any closer to playing Real Madrid in the Champions League, but why can’t they aspire to the Premier League and therefore a shot at a top four place? Unlikely that they would, but who is to decree that they can’t, simply because a self-appointed elite has elected to create a closed shop into which only they can play. And for those fans of clubs in this super league - do we really want to play the same 11 teams all the time, including six we meet at least twice a season in our home league? There’s no dodging the fact that competition for the Premier League title and for the Champions League itself is dominated by the same clubs season in, season out, but there’s still enough margin for variety that we can, for example, see West Ham challenging for a Top Four league finish this season, and thus a shot at the European elite next season at the expense of one of the so-called big six.

Tradition, of course, doesn’t even enter the equation. It’s all about cold hard cash. Larceny, actually. The big clubs and their owners have shown their true colours and a patent absence of any understanding of what they’re custodians of. By reducing European club competition to, essentially, an exhibition tournament, they are effectively turning the 12 teams into football’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I’m sure we’ll see all the tricks in the book, but it will soon get pretty boring watching them play the Washington Generals every time. European nights haven’t been made by predictability, but by the complete reverse. We still talk now of José Mourinho leading Porto to the Champions League title in 2004, or even further back, Brian Clough doing the same with Nottingham Forest, twice. 

What I bridle with the most is that these clubs believe, to begin with, themselves to be a self-appointed elite. Even thinking about my own club, Chelsea are where they are today thanks to Roman Abramovich's largesse. Do Arsenal or Tottenham have any right to see themselves as elite on their form this season? No, and frankly that statement extends back even further. Elsewhere, neither Liverpool or Manchester United have been exactly polished this term, ditto Barcelona and Real Madrid. The only thing that distinguishes these clubs is the wealth behind them.

What the proprietors have declared, in forming the super league, is their disdain for everyone else, and that frankly is the ugliest aspect of all this. I’m not going to pretend that football is a purely altruistic sport, where hard work and endeavour is the only measure of progress. Because clearly when you’re able to spend £70 million on a single player, whereas other clubs in your same domain struggle to spend that on a squad refresh, you’ve got a performance advantage (even if the litany of expensive flops proves that all that glitters isn’t always gold). Essentially, the breakaway clubs have given a massive ‘up yours’ to the rest of football. They have even doubled down on this by taking pre-emptive “protective steps” to legally prevent football authorities from taking sanctions out against the clubs, with measures talked of including players being banned from playing for their countries, one of the ultimate objectives they strive for.

Let me return to this thing about tradition. It’s a thorny subject. A procession of interviewees today have referred constantly to the role all football clubs, even the big ‘corporate’ behemoths, historically play in their communities, and that the big six are showing this contempt. They will all dispute that, going to great lengths to demonstrate their community programmes, from grass roots support to dispatching their first team to children’s wards at Christmas. But you can’t ignore that even the most historic clubs now looking to join the super league are living a world away from the traditions they come from. 

“He’s more machine than man,” Obi-Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker about his former protege, Anakin in the 'first' Star Wars film. You could say that about the clubs involved in this venture.  “They pretend ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the people’s club, the fans’ club,” railed Gary Neville yesterday about Liverpool. And he had this for the club he played for: “Manchester United, 100 years, born out of workers. And they are breaking away into a league without competition, that they can’t be relegated from? It is an absolute disgrace. We have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.” His former manager Sir Alex Ferguson - who remains a director at the club - told Reuters: “Talk of a Super League is a move away from 70 years of European club football.”

You could take a step back, breathe, and conclude that football is in constant flux. That progress should be embraced. Even Private Godfrey concluded that if his cottage had to be destroyed for the war effort, so be it. We can easily descend into romanticism, but I think that risks missing the point. We support the clubs we follow - regardless of their status - because of something else, something intangible. Even we Chelsea fans, contrary to the jibes, are not glory hunters. We’ve endured bad times and frustrations. We even appreciate the good fortune we find ourselves in, to follow extravagantly financed teams staffed by exciting talent. But that doesn’t entitle the custodians of our clubs’ histories to ride roughshod over them and our patronage. 

You could even take the harder view that football has been a divided kingdom for a long time, of an elite and all the rest. In the grand scheme of things, does anything fundamentally change with this super league? Yes, pretty much the same clubs who vie each season for the knockout stages of the Champions League are involved in it, but there’s a fundamental here: there’s no reason why other clubs can’t also be in the mix, working their way up the pyramid. And that’s what we scream and shout for. Not some glorified showcase, a friendly tournament in all but name, and one designed purely to line the pockets of the proprietors, and do nothing for the humble supporter, many of whom will be now questioning where they put their disposable income when it comes to football.

I'd love to be in Barcelona...but is it worth it?

It's more than possible that until the brouhaha surrounding the Chinese telecoms vendor Huawei blew up a couple of weeks ago, you'd never have heard of 5G. But all of a sudden, a telecommunications technology that had previously been discussed only in the trade press was front page news, albeit for political reasons rather than industrial. In the days leading up to and including the UK's controversial decision to allow Huawei to potentially supply equipment to the likes of Vodafone, Telefónica/O2, Three and EE, I'd been seething. With the news being reported in the mainstream media by mostly political correspondents, each weighing up the pros and cons from within the British body politic, as well as objections from the White House (which, we are told, led to a furious row between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump), I was constantly reading about the "UK's 5G network" [singular], despite the fact that anyone with a basic knowledge of the situation would say they should be reading about "networks", given that the 'Big Four' commercial mobile services, plus providers of private networks, would be the main actors in any ruling on who they could or couldn't buy 5G kit from.

Then there was the assumption that 5G could only be referred to in terms of conventional mobile functionality. Many in the telecoms industry agree that downloading Game Of Thrones in a fraction of the time you can on a 4G phone is not going to drive 5G. The bigger opportunity will be applications you'll probably never be aware of, like enabling surgeons to carry out operations remotely or making freight ports significantly more efficient. And, yes, there's always the possibility of driverless cars, although I wouldn't hold your breath for that appearing any time soon. But it's this point of what 5G will be able to do, beyond just making your mobile whizzier, that makes the whole row over Huawei more serious. And not just because of  'trust' concerns. 5G will, potentially, become an all-pervasive communications technology, one which, via a number of varieties (in other words, frequencies and wavelengths), will offer different means of access for different types of access need, including 'machine-to-machine' communications and the so-called 'Internet of Things', where devices and sensors talk to each other, speeding up everything from urban traffic to managing factories remotely from the other side of the world.

While the Huawei row rumbles on even further this weekend, a new twist to China's involvement in the development of 5G has occurred, inadvertently. Later this month Barcelona is to host an event that can actually be measured in terms of the city's annual revenue: Mobile World Congress, a gargantuan trade show for the telecoms industry, and an event on the same scale as CES, the monster techfest in Las Vegas each January. Over the last ten years, MWC has become increasingly about 5G, to such extent that the last one I attended, in 2018, was only about the fifth generation technology. Trade shows like MWC are sometimes seen by attendees and observers alike as bloated beanfeasts, wherein tens of thousands of sales people descend to schmooze. In most companies, the sales process is year-round, though contracts are still signed on stands at MWC, an arcane throwback to the days when account managers would attend their company's booths holding clipboards with blank paperwork at the ready. It's an expensive business for exhibitors - for most major vendors, MWC is their single biggest annual marketing expenditure. At Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia, employee attendance was always rigorously controlled, wisely when you consider that a major stand, plus 500 employees taking part, all staying for four or five days in hotels that clearly up their room rates for the week, adding more expense in Barcelona's tapas bars and restaurants, would run to millions.

Which brings me to yesterday's news that Ericsson, the Swedish vendor and nominally one of the three anchors of MWC (along with Huawei and Nokia), has decided to pull out of the show over concerns for the welfare of its employees and customers caused by the spread of the coronavirus. Other companies, including Korea's LG, the chip company Nvidia and China's other telecom technology vendor, ZTE, have also either pulled out of MWC altogether or announced a reduced presence, again due to concerns about the increasing coronavirus spread. These may only be a few of the 2500 exhibitors each year at MWC, but there are genuine fears that Ericsson's departure will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and that others will pullout in the coming days. Nokia could be one of them, with a spokesperson yesterday saying, somewhat inappropriately given the nature of disease, that "the situation is fluid". Like many MWC exhibitors, Nokia also has a substantial footprint in China, with that country being the supply chain base for much of the technology industry. Many Chinese nationals and expats will be travelling from China to Barcelona.

In all seriousness, however, can the major brands really afford to be absent from what is, arguably, the most important industry event this year for the telecoms industry, in the year that 5G is nominally supposed to arrive? I'm sure, too, that some companies' marketing executives are viewing a pullout, even this late in the day, as an opportunity to save money for other projects, again tapping into some of the cynicism that exists over whether these shows are worth it at all. My personal view is somewhat conflicted: MWC is an unbeatable platform for the sharing of news, views and ideas, for networking and for engaging customers and other 'stakeholders', like journalists and industry analysts. Annually, MWC gives everyone a boost. But it comes at a price. By the time everyone gets to Barcelona, they will have experienced the most intense few weeks of the new year, with many companies also having to report their annual financial results in the run up to the show. I, regularly when I attended, would get to the penultimate show day, the Wednesday, and then succumb to terminal man flu. Getting run down and then sick from all those germs travelling in to Barcelona from across the world was a constant hazard for those working at the show, and often compounded by the late nights and early starts (not complaining, but these shows are punishing). Companies are right to question whether the health risks - weighing above financial concerns by a high margin - really are worth it this year, given how the coronavirus spread seems to be getting worse, with cases now being a long way away from Wuhan where the outbreak began. The next few days could prove crucial, both for an event you've never heard of, and for a technology you probably hadn't heard of, either, until a few weeks ago.

Take your seats please, you're here by royal appointment

© Simon Poulter 2018

I may have mentioned on this blog once or twice that I lived abroad for 17 years, and in that time I managed to maintain a season ticket at Stamford Bridge, albeit an arrangement which meant that Chelsea home games were restricted to weekend fixtures and the occasional bank holiday. In fact, over the course of those 17 years I chalked up just a single midweek match - a crucial fixture with Tottenham (well, usually, they are) that my boss at the time - who also happened to be a Chelsea season ticket holder - and I contrived we had to be at. Somehow “an urgent meeting in London” was convened.

Returning to London, I’ve been reacquainted with the rituals of the midweek fixture: leaving the office at just the right time, sans briefcase; shoving the Evening Standard into the exterior pocket of a coat; making do with a poor quality burger and a pint of Guinness for an evening meal; and at the actual stadium, adopting a wry smile at the site of young herberts wearing their best workplace suits and ties, instead of the yobwear they’d normally be in on a Saturday afternoon.

Most midweek games I’ve attended since being back in the UK have been for sundry cup ties, plus the occasional league game, but the visit by Atlético Madrid in the Champions League in December (I had to miss the October home time with Roma) whet the appetite for a brand new experience: European football. This may sound naive, given that, save for last season, Chelsea have played in Europe consistently over the last decade or so. But when I moved abroad in 1999 Chelsea had yet to commence the Abramovich-funded ascendancy that put them into the so-called European elite. 19 years ago, though, things were certainly on the up: FA Cup victory in 1997 and the arrival of European superstars like Ruud Gullitt, Gianfranco Zola and Gianluca Vialli were some indication of improvements, which is why I’d taken the plunge and bought a season ticket to begin with. But apart from a breathless foray into the Cup Winners' Cup (and a memorable away trip to Bruges) the idea of Chelsea playing the true royalty of Europe seemed beyond reality. The idea of Chelsea actually winning something seemed even more remote.

In my lifetime Chelsea had only won one major European title, the Cup Winners' Cup in 1971 (beating Real Madrid), before a period of financial instability and near bankruptcy in the late 70s and 80s, pinballing around the old First and Second Divisions. It’s why, when away fans sing "Where were you when you were shit?!" at Stamford Bridge, I always reply, "Here." The Cup Winners' Cup victory in 1998 - in which Zola came off the bench to score against VfB Stuttgart - still felt like an aberration. The Premier League victory in 2004 - 50 years since the club’s previous league title - felt overdue. Arrogant as it sounds, we've not looked back, domestically. But the European adventure has - and still - feels like something different.

The ‘Cup with the big ears’ has always had a special appeal. When Chelsea qualified for the Champions League for the first time in 1999, progressing to the quarter-finals to meet Barcelona (beating them 3–1 at Stamford Bridge only to be demolished 5-1 two weeks later) the notion of Chelsea playing the European elite was still somewhat unreal. It was only four years later, with the arrival of Roman Abramovich’s roubles, that it started to feel like the new normal. Over the first decade of Abramovich’s patronage, Chelsea were consistent qualifiers, even coming close to winning the thing. Who can forget the heartache of John Terry’s penalty slip against Manchester United in the Final held in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium in 2008. And the next season they were back, going as far as the semi-final where they met Barcelona again, drawing 0-0 in the first leg at Camp Nou, and then controversially conceding an equaliser at Stamford Bridge in the 94th minute of the second leg. Barça figured again in the unlikely run-in to Chelsea winning the Champions League in 2012, with another nervy semi-final in which, in the second leg, John Terry was sent off and the much-maligned Fernando Torres scored in injury time in the Catalan capital. By that stage, Chelsea were unbeaten in their previous four matches at Camp Nou, having drawn all of them, and Lionel Messi had failed to score against Chelsea in eight matches, the most games he had played against a single opponent without a goal - a record that still stands.

Which, then, brings me to tonight’s Round Of 16 first leg encounter at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea haven’t had a bad record against Barça, and some of it has been more overshadowed by refereeing controversy than football. But, like handling wild animals, nothing but the utmost respect must be applied. Not for nothing is Luis Valverde’s side where they are in La Liga, with - ominously - Messi on 27 goals in all competitions this season, 20 of which in the Spanish league where Barça currently have a seven-point league. Chelsea, on the other hand are…well…”recovering” from a disastrous January beset by defeats, injuries, suspensions and a manager in open conflict with his board over squad depth and the lack of transfer window signings. Psychologically, Conte has correctly played the underdog card ahead of tonight for his team - what else can you do against this opposition? - but there is still a concern that against a powerful and resurgent Barcelona, Chelsea’s noted defensive weaknesses and profligacy in front of goal will hurt them, regardless of how stable they are again after a well-earned break and something of a return to form.

Whatever the outcome (and I know I’m steeling myself for disappointment here), tonight’s experience will be like little else in football. To be seeing FC Barcelona in the flesh will be something to revere. I just hope it won’t be something to regret.

Decompression

© Simon Poulter 2017

What is it about being beside the Mediterranean in March, enjoying a shot of early spring sunshine while nibbling away at an agreeable glass of local vino tinto, that feels simultaneously decadent and undeniably relaxing? Whatever it is, it was a significant part of my Friday, and just what the doctor ordered. For the first time in what seemed weeks, there were no meetings or conference calls, no e-mails marked 'Important' with "URGENT" stamped in the subject line, just in case the red exclamation mark didn't work.

Like Punxsutawney Phil I emerged yesterday morning from my burrow, after weeks of preparing for and then attending Mobile World Congress, to suck in some sea air and soak up the Catalan vibe. It was a decompression day, one when I could sleep in and then, once self-levered out of my pit, saunter down to the hotel restaurant for a Barça breakfast of kings (noticeably comprised of sausages, some more sausages, several sausages and a Montserrat Caballe-sized hill of scrambled eggs. It is possible, however, that I subconsciously, but quite belligerently, missed the fresh fruit and yoghurt buffet...).

Either way, stuffed on a large quantity of artery clogging porcine goodness, and before I'd had the chance to ask what "cardiologist" was in Spanish (cardiólogo, Google later advises me), I set off to blow away cobwebs accrued over the last few weeks slaving over a steaming laptop and the last few days spent in a large metal shed with a corporate lanyard around my neck.

The not-so guilty pleasure of coming to Barcelona at the end of each February for a trade show is that, if you're lucky, you can catch your first reviving blast of Vitamin D. It's not always easy, as you find yourself sucked into a cycle of airport → taxi → hotel → taxi → event → taxi → hotel → taxi → event → taxi → airport, but if you're smart, and don't have anything or anyone to rush home to, you'll stay down here in this most engaging of Mediterranean cities for an extra couple of days to unwind.

© Simon Poulter 2017

And thus so yesterday proved: what started out as a gentle stroll from my hotel next to the vast Diagonal Mar shopping mall, became an engaging walk along the three-mile beachfront down to the preposterous sail-shaped W hotel with its pretentious staff and equally pretentious restaurants (so typical of the brand), before curling back into the Barceloneta district and the marina, with its vast - and I mean aircraft carrier-sized, Russian-owned (apparently) yachts.

This all might sound like a route march, but one of the eminent joys of Barcelona is going on foot and stopping as often as you want and not feeling under any pressure to be doing anything. At all. Somewhere in the midst of all this "vigorous" exercise I managed to squeeze in a latte, a sizeable vessel of Rioja and a light selection of tapas, not that this was any kind of novelty as I seemed to have existed almost exclusively on tapas as my evening meal over the last seven days.

The idea of tapas being a bar snack has almost been abandoned in Barcelona, as restaurants have based their entire menus around the cuisine. From shaved ham and croquettes, through to octopus and salted vegetables of every hue, no single eaterie seems to offer the same dishes, with the only common denominator being the red wines and cold cervezas that, even at the wet and blustery tail end of winter, trickle down a treat.

© Simon Poulter 2017

Until evening, this particular Friday was blessed with fine weather, which meant that there was no excuse to be indoors for anything. And so, after lunch (tapas) in the Barceloneta district - the marina on one side, the beach on the other, it was back walking again, moving up into the city centre where, by mid-afternoon, the British stag and hen weekends were already luridly spilling out all over La Rambla already, a calamity-in-waiting of ill-fitting T-shirts bearing legends like "Dave's Stag Do - Barcelona Or Bust" or "Susie's Final Weekend Of Freedom". There are times when you can really be embarrassed to be a Brit abroad.But who cares, each to their own.

My Friday had begun without agenda and so continued that way. By the time I'd reached the north end of La Rambla, and the sprawling Plaça de Catalunya - heavily armed police conspicuously standing guard, a sad fixture now in European tourist spots from Paris to Milan - it was time to stop and download a cold beer and take it all in. According to an app on my phone I'd walked just over six miles since leaving my hotel mid-morning. As evening bore down, it was time to refuel again. At the suggestion of my friend Mary, meat was the recommended option. Not a great surprise, I grant you, given the amount of vegetarian-unfriendly dishes I've consumed this last week, but it was, I was promised, going to be a meat feast untold.

And so we ended up in the somewhat unassuming La Vermuterie, appropriately just off Carrer de Londres, where we were offered an 800g pile of cooked cow, preceded - natch - by the prerequisite tapas selection. I'm not a huge meat eater (note the lack of a comma there) so the idea of a Flintstones-sized plate of flesh and bone wasn't all that appealing. But - man alive! - what turned up was remarkable. For a restaurant that looked more like a local Starbucks (at the table next to us sat a man with a Macbook consuming the WiFi, as you would find most of the day in any coffee outlet), this was exquisite fare. Such was the quantity, I won't be eating anything today. Or this week. And possibly not until April.

© Simon Poulter 2017

What a carry on!

And so I find myself in Barcelona - both a perk and necessity of my job, so I'm not complaining - but getting here was another test of whether it is better to travel or to arrive.

I visit the delightful Catalan capital every year for a telecoms industry event, and each time I give serious thought to taking the train. Even if the reality of rail travel is not always so, there is something decidedly romantic and decadent about travelling by train across Europe. If it's good enough for James Bond, it's good enough for me.

However, being a work trip, spending half a day watching cows, telegraph poles and rustic charm fly past the window just isn't viable when there are things to do at the other end. So the plane wins and because it's a work trip, there's little choice of airline or comfort level. Again, not complaining, but as anyone who travels frequently will attest, taking the plane takes most of the strain. In fact, it is more of an exercise in ordeal management.

Since the beginning of December I have taken 19 flights, for business and for personal reasons. That, I recognise, might sound quite a lot of air travel, but it's nowhere near as much as those business executives who casually list "an airport somewhere" as a location in their Twitter bio. Certainly, though, it is more than people who fly just a couple of times a year, to and from a beach.

But no matter how often you fly, when you do you will encounter humanity at its most selfish and broken. You will be reminded - without any room for doubt - that travel doesn't broaden the mind at all and, in practice, appears to do the exact opposite. 

Firstly, you would have thought that in the 14 whole years since 9/11 the concept of "tighter security" would have sunk in. But, no. Some clearly didn't get the memo, a whole teenager's lifetime ago, that being "prepared to fly" means removing shoes, belts and overcoats, and taking liquids, laptops and iPads out of carry-on luggage.

Then to the next pain point: the boarding process. Here, no one airport, nationality or airline has the monopoly on stupid. It would be wholly wrong to single out queuing chaos at French and Italian boarding gates as simply cultural unfamiliarity with the concept of queuing, because American airports are just as bad, if not worse. "We will be boarding you by row number" should not be too hard to comprehend. Clearly it is, judging by those who consider this information inapplicable to them, and adopt the "Que?" expression of Manuel in Fawlty Towers when told that it's not their turn.

All that said, security queues and cretinous gate behaviour (and that perennial flying aggravation, the dickhead - because it usually is a bloke - reclining their seat for a journey of less than an hour's duration) pale into irritation-free insignificance when it comes to carry-on luggage. 

There are two aspects of this that we should consider: first, 'carry-on' should actually refer to a bag that you can, you know, carry-on, as opposed to dragging it like a Victorian rail porter handling trunks for the European tour. It shouldn't really require wheels, either, if it is to faithfully support the category it falls under. And then there is the insistence that because you can drag a wheely bag on board, everybody does it, leading to a recreation of the Ben Hur chariot race on budget flights as everybody charges forward to nab the overhead locker space.

When budget airlines first began, carry-on luggage was just that. But now, luggage has - like most other aspects of society: cars, fast food and teenagers - super-sized, requiring Airbus and Boeing to redesign their aircraft with those pop-up tent extensions that you used to get on Volkswagen Dormobiles. Because, there we all are on most flights, queing with one foot in the plane's door, while somewhere around the corner an idiot is trying to hump half their bodyweight into an open overhead locker a good foot beyond their reach.

There was a time when you checked in at the airport, usually at the crack of dawn, to be met by a slightly surly check-in person (not surprising, given the hour) clacking away at a keyboard for no obvious reason. In exchange for handing over your luggage, this person would give you a boarding pass, allowing you to skip on through security to gorge your credit card on duty free. And then, at the end of the flight, you'd assemble at the baggage carousel like an expectant parent at the school gate, feeling your blood pressure rising as everyone else's bags went past on the conveyor belt before yours eventually arrived like that last wheezing London Marathon runner dressed as Tower Bridge.

But in our instant, must-have-it-now society, checking in your bags is far too much faff. No, for the sake of saving 15 minutes at the other end, take your bags with you. And, thanks to Ryanair and others, you'll be incentivised to doing so by saving you the exorbitant cost of putting luggae in the hold. Which means people do everything they can to stuff whatever they can into their carry-on bags, which they then shove into the overhead locker without regard for anyone getting anything else in.

The airlines, however, are somewhat to blame for this. The lack of consistency in luggage limits is one issue: some airlines limit you to 20kg for hold bags, while for others its 23kg each. For those travelling in premium seats, you could enjoy up to 32kg...or two or more bags of 23kg each. Confused? For carry-on baggage, there is generally a 23kg weight limit and in principle some sort of limit on the size. Not that I've ever seen any rigid checking on either - people could have gold bars stuffed into their wheelie bag for all I could tell.

Not surprisingly, then, as passengers insist on bringing on everything and the kitchen sink, things can get dangerous. Late last year a writer from North London, Wayne Herbert, was reportedly suing British Airways after getting injured by a rucksack falling from an overhead locker as his flight waited for take off. "Passengers sitting in the row behind were trying to load too much luggage into the overhead," Herbert told the Evening Standard, "and dropped a bag on my head. It bashed me on the top of my head, and has given me a whiplash injury." A similiar thing happened on another BA flight, heading for Bangkok, when a bag fell from an overhead locker during takeoff itself, landing heavily on the head of the passenger below.

It isn't an exclusively British Airways problem, and most cabin crew I see make every effort to ensure lockers - like our seatbelts and tray tables - are secured before takeoff. But accidents do happen, and it wouldn't surprise me if the lockers themselves struggle to cope with what gets stuffed into them on a regular basis.

More must be done by airlines to make more rigourous checks for both weight and size of carry-on bags. And redesigning lockers is not the answer, either. Boeing was said to be working with the American carriers United and Delta to design luggage space to fit passengers' expectations of what they can bring on board, especially given the punitive charges US airlines charge for checked luggage. 

The problem, however, is not just baggage fees - people simply want to bring more on board with them. "For passengers, volume doesn't really matter. It's whether or not my bag fits," Boeing's cabin expert Kent Craver told the Daily Mail in 2012. They also want to stow their bag where they sit. "They don't want it 20 rows behind them or 20 rows in front of them, because that causes a lot of anxiety."

Understandable as that is, the potentially deadly fire that broke out last September on a BA Boeing 777 at Las Vegas' McCarran Airport highlighted the problem of hand luggage, as passengers were seen leaving the burning plane carrying their carry-on bags. Presumably they would have been reaching for them as the evacuation instruction was being given.

So, even if new planes like the 787 Dreamliner and A350 are designed with new storage space, until airlines get tougher on the weight and quantity of bags being taken on board, problems of the boarding process being held up - a cost to the airline and a frustration to both crew and other passengers - will never be solved.