A question of identity

[worcester_ccfc]

For all of the success and excitement that we have enjoyed as Chelsea fans during the past decade, one of the most popular moves made by the club under Roman Abramovich came in November 2004 when it was announced that the club’s badge had been overhauled.

For all of the success and excitement that we have enjoyed as Chelsea fans during the past decade, one of the most popular moves made by the club under Roman Abramovich came in November 2004 when it was announced that the club’s badge had been overhauled.


The decision to drop the roaring lion of the Ken Bates era for a more heraldic one that resembled the one used for over 30 years until 1986 resonated well with the Chelsea fanbase, especially long-time supporters who fondly remembered the days when the lion rampant regardant had proudly adorned the kit worn by the likes of Greaves, Osgood, Cooke, Wilkins and Dixon.

But even younger fans could appreciate the fresh and bold look of a badge that gave a nod towards the past while signalling the start of a new era for the club.

I admit that I had liked the modern-looking lion when it was introduced in 1986 but felt that time was right for a change for a design that had dated badly and was so hard to replicate that the lion appeared to be little more than a blob of blue at times.

So the redesign of the club badge and the emphasis on the name ‘Chelsea Football Club’ proved a highly popular decision, which stands in sharp contrast to the one made in 2012 by our opponents this weekend, Cardiff City.

Like Chelsea, the Welsh club played in a blue kit for over a century and were so closely associated with the colour that they were not only nicknamed ‘The Bluebirds’ but had the avian creature as the centre-piece of their club badge for much of their history.

But that all changed with the arrival of new Malaysian owner Vincent Tan who pledged to invest £100 million in the club but also decreed that their colours should be changed to red and that the iconic bluebird be supplanted on the badge by a dragon.

Changing a badge design can be a pretty emotive issue for club supporters, as Everton recently discovered, but completely changing the colours that your club has worn with pride for over a century is pretty much a no-go area.

Tan Sri Vincent may be a pretty savvy businessman with a reputed fortune of over US$1 billion but along with his sartorial choice of wearing a Cardiff City kit over his long-sleeved shirt and tie while tucking it under his belt, his motives for making the switch to red have to be questioned. He argued that it would make the club more attractive to Asian fans as red is a colour of joy, festivities and celebration while blue is a colour of mourning.

Notwithstanding the fact that the decision completely ignored the wishes of their loyal supporters who had stuck with the club throughout their long exile from the top flight, I found his argument a bit hard to swallow because as far as I know, blue is not a colour of mourning for the Chinese; it’s black.

And fans in Asia aren’t going to start supporting your club just because they wear red shirts. Even if they did, they would probably opt for Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester United – teams which have a longer-track record of footballing success and exposure in this part of the world – ahead of Cardiff.

Indeed what Tan Sri Vincent should probably consider a priority is to find a proper shirt sponsor because a kit emblazoned with the word ‘Malaysia’ is not going to be popular with fans in any part of South-East Asia aside from his home country.

In any case, the whole issue, which has alienated many long-time Cardiff fans despite the club’s return to the Premier League, is a pretty good case study in what a football club should avoid doing to their supporters.

The Chelsea management could have done something similar nine years ago after pouring in so much money to make us a force in the Premier League. But instead of trying to ride roughshod over the fans and force an unpopular change in our identity, they thankfully listened to us and gave us something that we can feel justifiably proud about nine years on.

After all is said and done, we are still the Blues and we now have an iconic and sharp-looking team crest that is readily recognisable throughout the world.

http://blogs.chelseafc.com/?p=3689