It is okay to not believe in football superstitions. But if you are a Chelsea fan,
you just cannot not believe in superstitions. Because how
else do you explain the curse of the number 9 jersey at your club?
In this video, we will be telling you how far back
the curse of this number goes at Stamford Bridge. But before that,
can you think of a successful Chelsea player who wore the number 9 shirt? Exactly!
The curse of the Chelsea number 9 shirt is so potent that it totally crippled a European giant.
When Chelsea broke the bank to sign Fernando Torres in 2011, they knew they were getting one
of the best players in the world. Arguably the best striker in the whole of Europe.
The Spaniard, only 3 years earlier, finished as the third best player
in the world, behind only Ronaldo and Messi. So, it actually wasn’t
a mistake breaking the English transfer record to acquire Torres from Liverpool.
The only mistake Chelsea made was giving him the number 9 jersey.
Don’t you pay attention to trends at your club? Don’t you want your record signing to succeed?
Mateja Kezman. Hernan Crespo. Khalid Boulahrouz. Steve Sidwell. Franco Di Santo.
All these players wore the number 9 jersey before Torres and were crippled by its curse.
And in case you are too young to remember who these players were,
we will help you out. They weren’t just random strikers Chelsea bought to patch up the squad,
almost all of them were marquee signings.
Kezman was an absolute beast for PSV. in 4 years, between 2000 and 2004, he scored 105
goals in 122 appearances for the Dutch club. But he signed with Chelsea, wore the number 9 jersey,
and just could not find his mojo anymore. He scored just 4 in 25 appearances.
But wait for it, when he left for Fenerbahce, boom! He scored 20 in 46.
Okay, you want to say the man just wasn’t able to adjust to a better league.
How about Steve Sidwell then? He spent his entire life playing in England,
but still was a victim of the number 9 curse at Chelsea.
I mean, he wasn’t the best striker in the world, to be honest, but come on, to not score a single
goal in 15 appearances wearing the number 9 shirt for Chelsea? He surely wasn’t that bad.
Especially when he was fresh out of scoring 29 for Reading. Oh,
and Reading were in the Premier League at the time. So don’t turn your nose up.
Basically, what we’re trying to prove to you here is that the number 9 curse at Chelsea
is real, and since Hasselbaink in the early 2000s, nobody has been too strong for it.
Who knows, if Messi moved to Stamford Bridge and wore the number 9 jersey,
it just may have caught up with him, too. I mean, it hugely affected 2 Argentinian greats,
we would have loved to see the curse go up against the greatest.
Hernan Crespo was a beast up front with Argentina, and he totally tore up the Italian league,
impressing with Parma, Lazio, and Inter Milan.
But he came to Chelsea, and it just didn’t click for him. He was able to manage just 20 goals in
5 years at the club. For perspective, he netted 39 in 2 years at Lazio.
Of course, you already know the number that was at the back of his shirt while at the London club.
And the curse doesn’t care if you are just there on loan either. It is going to do a
number on you regardless. And the second Argentinian victim is the perfect example.
Gonzalo Higuain made a loan move from Juventus to Chelsea in 2019,
but he made the mistake of taking the number 9 shirt.
This blazing hot striker who scored over a century of goals at Real Madrid and broke goal
scoring records at Lazio, was rendered pretty much impotent by the Chelsea number 9 shirt.
He managed only 5 goals in 14 appearances, and the fans were far from impressed by
the way he played. He had to leave The Bridge after only a matter of months.
And if you are thinking it, don’t say it, because like we said earlier,
it has nothing to do with adjustment to the new league. Torres absolutely obliterates that theory.
The Spaniard rose to stardom at Atletico Madrid, and when Liverpool snatched him up in 2007,
he continued to impress. Both in the league and in Europe.
Chelsea fans particularly will remember him tormenting them.
We’re talking about a player who was the man of the match in the Euro 2008 final. A man that, at
some point, was better than every other footballer on earth bar Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
But he came to Chelsea, and for 4 years,
was never able to find his form. Torres, who scored 65 goals in 102 appearances for Liverpool,
managed only 20 in 110 with Chelsea. Guess what number was behind his jersey.
Oh, should we also talk about Radamel Falcao? Or Alvaro Morata? Players whose signings
were hugely anticipated, but ended up being underwhelming because of the number 9 curse.
I mean, Falcao… THE Radamel Falcao, managed only 1 goal in 10 appearances for Chelsea.
Come on! At this point, you cannot deny the authenticity of this curse.
And some have argued that it has already been broken by Chelsea academy graduate, Tammy Abraham.
He managed 21 goals in 58 appearances for his boyhood club as a young, inexperienced striker.
But what is the point of all that if he was eventually iced out and forced out of the club?
Maybe the curse just took a different route with him.
And well, some may say Lukaku is here to break the curse. But hey, surely,
we all expected the Belgian giant to have scored more than 3 goals by now.
We are almost halfway through the season and Big Rom can barely get a start.
Yes, his injury factors greatly into it, but this curse works in mysterious ways, you know.
We can’t really know what route it wants to take with its next victim until it is done.
But hey, don’t get it wrong, we are actually rooting for Lukaku. We are hoping he will
perform for his boyhood club and convincingly and permanently break the number 9 curse at Chelsea.
But for the next striker Chelsea signs, here’s a little piece of advice: how about you just
borrow a leaf from the club’s greatest striker and avoid the number 9? Would that really hurt?
I mean, look at Didier Drogba, 2 Premier League Golden Boots,
1 Premier League Top Assist Provider, PFA Team of the Year,
UEFA Team of the Year, UCL final man of the match, over a century of goals for the club… All that
and more simply because he avoided the number 9 shirt like the plague that it is.
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