Falling in love with The Blues.

Me, my mommy and Chelsea FC.

Current situation

Despite our struggle to stay in the top 4 this Premier League season🤞, I absolutely adore Chelsea FC perhaps even more than I ever have. Also, unpopular opinion, I love Maurizio Sarri, ‘Sarri ball’ and how much he has accomplished with the team in such a short while.

I love football. I am a passionate person and I love that it’s a passionate game with passionate players and fans. (Shout out to whoever invented the word ‘passion’ !). I have felt all the ranges of emotions thanks to football. One of my most recent memories is when Brazilian hunk David Luiz left Chelsea FC to join French Paris Saint-Germain, and in a match against Chelsea scored a goal, “disloyalty” I yelled!! I cried super hard that night, but hey, he’s back now so all is forgiven.

What my mom made me do

I started watching football thanks to my mother. We’d be in the living room staring at our little Nulec television, she on the floor and me on the couch and the entire 90 minutes she’d be hopping on her feet one moment, yelling at the TV the next. Apparently, this is unusual because, in most (Nigerian) homes, football is a men’s game but in mine, it’s the opposite. You can not pay my dad enough to sit still for the 90 minutes involved in a match and my little brother will subsequently eat grass rather than watch a match. But my mom has always, always loved football; in fact, a direct quote from her is :

If female football had been prominent in my youth, I’d have become a footballer.

However I’m grateful that female football wasn’t a thing in her time otherwise she probably wouldn’t have met my father and I’d miss out of the awesomeness of being her daughter.

Before 2005, I knew football as David Beckham, Jay Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo and the occasional Taribo West, Yakubu Aiyegbeni and Segun Odegbami (who was friends with my mom’s uncle and one of her childhood idols). In 2005 however, something big happened. Nigeria’s male U20 team, the Flying Eagles qualified for the U20 World Cup and finished as Runners up to Argentina.

This meant great joy to Nigerians everywhere, instant worldwide recognition for the entire squad and to me, intense love emotions for John Mikel Obi (JMO). He was young, athletic, beautiful and best of all, two of the biggest football clubs in the world, Manchester United and Chelsea FC were interested in (read as: “fighting for”) him. He chose Chelsea and my heart followed suit.

Prior to that time, I had been a mild Arsenal supporter thanks to my mom + Thierry Henry but if Chelsea was signing my crush then my 8-year-old self determined to fall in love with them! And boy did I fall hard! I remember countless hours spent trying and massively failing to draw the club mascot, reading tits and bits about the club and acquainting myself with my future husband’s new teammates. I remember my favourites being “Super" Frank Lampard, John Terry the rock of England, Joe Cole, Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and of course, the amazing JMO.

It has been 14 years now, more than half of the 2005 squad is retired, reality has set in and I no longer have a crush on JMO. He has moved on and is currently the captain of both the Nigerian Super Eagles and his new team, Middlesbrough, but my heart has never been bluer. My favourite players at the moment are all of them TBH (special love for N’golo Kante, obviously) as it takes a whole lot of hard work and commitment to play football excellently with millions of people around the globe watching.

There have been amazing tears inducing highs, and lows too; ranging from our love-hate relationship with the managers to a pronounced history of hooliganism amongst fans— this fact has made me the butt of many “Agbero" jokes by my family and friends so I really hope we get a new image, but my love for the team has not waned.

It might be loyalty, it might be my appreciation for diversity on and off the field (Chelsea FC has remained one of the most racially diverse PL teams; which contrasts greatly with the stupid racist behaviour of some of its fans), but whatever ‘it’ is, I am thankful for it, thankful for association football, thankful to the gods of the internet for opportunities to connect with fans and players and especially thankful to God for letting my mommy be a super intense, crazy, yelly football fan.

Ironically, I think the colour blue is ugly, except when The Blues are wearing it.