Sharif Saker

CFC

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

In Dante's Inferno, people who were neutral in life are treated just as harshly as those who sinned.

These are the "uncommitted" who chose no side. They are rejected by both Heaven *and* Hell.

Lukewarm souls are made to wait forever in the "Vestibule of Hell". They're stung by wasps while they run around in pursuit of a meaningless white banner (in punishment for standing beneath no banner in life).

Even worse, their blood and tears flow from their faces onto the ground to be consumed by maggots. Why?

In Christianity, Christ's blood is shed for man's salvation, and the blood of the martyrs is considered the seed of the Church. To bleed — whether literally or metaphorically — for a worthy cause is a great act of love.

But in the case of the lukewarm, their blood merely feeds maggots. "You shall know them by their fruits," Christ says, but the only "fruit" the lukewarm produce is nourishment for worms.

Dante himself was exiled from his hometown of Florence by a rival faction after years of civil conflict. His dislike of the lukewarm stemmed from those who sat on the sidelines and did nothing while his sentence was handed down — those who let injustice slide and were more concerned with protecting their own lot in life.

Dante doesn't even give them the courtesy of mentioning them by name in his Inferno. The "uncommitted" are all nameless.

His warning to the spineless is thus:

Stand for nothing, and nothing is what you'll become.

[Ibai @IbaiLlanos]

Siento que a Turquía la eliminaron del Mundial hace 7 meses.

Qué bonitos esas semanas con 5 partidos al día.

Qué bonitos aquellos días descubriendo jugadores de Cabo Verde.

Esto se acaba. Han sido muchos insultos pero me lo he pasado muy bien. El domingo que nadie me hable.

[Cristiano Ronaldo @Cristiano]

RIP THE SCRIPT @Nike

#Ad

[Bobby F. 🍁 @bobbyfairview]

Dear @ebehdad

RE: The Conflict of Perverse Incentives

I want to be fair to you. You had less than a month to structure a complex billion pound transaction, so some mistakes were always going to happen. But the mistake I’m describing isn’t an execution error. It’s a conceptual flaw baked into the deal from day one, and it has permanently poisoned your strategic position.

You built a structure with three stakeholder groups, and you only have a fiduciary duty to one of them. That was always going to end badly. Let me explain why.

A man came to you and said he had £300m and wanted to buy a business for £4.2bn. Two of his mates would chip in £300m each. You lent him the rest. To their credit, they’ve been matching cash calls ever since. But here is what you actually agreed to: you needed Boehly’s money, which meant Boehly got something in return. What he got was influence over the sporting operation. And the first thing he did with it was sack Thomas Tuchel so he could have his dressing room access.

That decision, made to protect your financial relationship with a co-investor who couldn’t actually afford the asset, is what set everything else in motion.

Roman left you a blueprint. He won trophies, built a global brand, and maintained a fair value that always exceeded his cost basis. Central to that was Cobham. Fans across England sing “he’s one of our own” for a reason. That bond between a club and its homegrown players is not sentiment. It is enterprise value. You dismantled it. You sold the graduates and killed the pipeline, not because it made sporting sense, but because your financial model required short term asset monetisation over long term brand construction.

You have now spent more on transfers than any ownership group in the history of football. Chelsea are currently 9th. Below Brentford. Below Brighton. That is the sporting output of your model, and those fans who sang “he’s one of our own” have noticed.

Here is where your conceptual flaw becomes permanent. Boehly has £100m of interest accrued and payable to Ares. You have at least £600m sitting in the Cayman Islands, accruing and payable to COP III. Across the group the interest bill is approaching £400m this year. That means you have no choice but to run this club for one purpose: to make debt service payments. Managing a football club to pay interest has never worked in the history of this game unless you’re Manchester United. Your problem is that you don’t have their revenues. So you are flipping players to fund cash flow.

There will be no properly experienced signings. No manager with real authority. No trophies. You’re caught in a sell-to-buy death spiral and fans have worked out exactly what is happening.

If you’ve made it this far in my letter, this is the part I’d encourage you to sit up and focus on. You need the fans more than they need you. Every day more of them are learning what this structure actually means for the club they love, and they are making a rational decision: do not buy the brand of an owner who is just here to pay interest.

Your perverse incentive is to balance the books, manage the asset, and extract the best possible valuation before the debt matures. Their perverse incentive is to make sure you never get there, because the only exit that actually serves their interests is Ares foreclosing and forcing a sale to someone who can run this club properly.

Think about what that means. The fans who generate the revenue you need to service your debt are now rationally incentivised to undermine that revenue.

You created a structure where your key stakeholder group is rooting for your creditor to take the club from you. That is not a communication problem or a PR problem. It is a structural conflict with no resolution inside your current ownership model.

I’m not sure what the long term prognosis is for a business in that position. But I think you already know.

Yours truly,

bf

[Rory Jennings ⭐ ⭐ @Chelsearory]

My God, sack him now. Literally now. 5 minutes into the game, go to the dugout and sack this incompetent, talentless nobody. He is nothing more than a stain on the office of Chelsea manger.

[CFCZone @Feisaloo_22]

Love Chelsea and hate these fraud owners WIN DRAW LOOSE

#BlueCoOut

[Uber Chelsea FC @UberChelseaFC_]

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. It’s never been so gone.

[Sharif Saker @SharifSaker]

@NizaarKinsella And you think he came to Chelsea to fight every season for a top 4-5 finish? He’s more than entitled to feel frustrated, one of the very few in our squad who is actually a winner and wants to push for big titles. Top players will always demand ambition from their clubs

[Rory Jennings ⭐ ⭐ @Chelsearory]

Chelsea are a disgrace. This ridiculously-named ‘project’ has failed on every conceivable level. Run by incompetent, arrogant morons, they have eviscerated the country’s most successful football set-up this century in just a few years. They openly mock our club’s fans, history, culture and are dead set on erasing all of that. BlueCo are the worst thing to ever happen to Chelsea and anyone associated with them or supporting them should be ashamed.

[Louis Beneventi 🤌🏻 @Louis_Beneventi]

Chelsea‘s display against PSG is another example of Clearlake Capital’s failure to deliver on a project they were adamant is right. Nearly £2bn spent to see who they want to be compared to dismantle Chelsea 5-2.

Just a pathetic sales strategy under the guise of football.
-
#CFC

[VSports Team @VSportsTM]

"Ganar no es lo más importante: es lo único. Ser segundo no vale ¿Vos sabés quién pisó América después de Colón? Yo no".

✍️Carlos Salvador Bilardo.

[Sharif Saker @SharifSaker]

@NizaarKinsella Probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue if the very large amount of money we have already spent on center backs, was destined to proven players instead of “potential”/average players. And the same can be said for other positions.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

https://t.co/YadwL4o9fU

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

A goal compilation for the birthday boy. 🎈🇦🇷

[TweetChelseaUK @TweetChelseaUK]

ENZO FERNANDEZ GOAL

1-1

https://t.co/wP1DGbb7wE

[Diego Latorre @dflatorre]

Te quiero mucho Enzo Fernández

[UEFA Champions League @ChampionsLeague]

Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea 🎶

#UCL

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

WHAT A NIGHT! 🤩

#CFC | #UCL

[Samuel Vargas @SVargasOK]

🔥 ¡El golazo que acaba de marcar Estêvão! Lo liquida Chelsea en Stamford Bridge.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Estevao Willian.