‘What a win! Congratulations to our portfolio company, @ChelseaFC, on taking home the FIFA Club World Cup.’
A wonderful bit of tweeting there from Clearlake. Disappointingly, as rage and pi**take rained down upon them in equal measure in textbook social-media fashion, they deleted it and tried again. See if you can guess which three words they decided were no longer needed in the updated version, and also whether they left replies open second time around.
Congratulations! You win.
All essentially harmless, of course. Almost all football club owners view clubs this way, they just aren’t all daft enough to say the quiet part loud on the world’s most reliably effective pi**take-and-outrage generator.
Gets you thinking, though, doesn’t it. It’s a reminder, if reminder were needed, that Chelsea are an investment opportunity to owners who don’t really actually care about anything beyond the financial success of their ‘portfolio company’.
And because there’s not much else happening and we’re left alone with our idle, mischievous thoughts – which is always, always dangerous – we started to wonder.
What if it’s not just convenient topical bollocks and PSG actually do decide to come in with an absolutely massive offer for Cole Palmer after he so thoroughly destroyed them in the final for PortCo FC?
Whatever you think of the Club World Cup, there’s no doubt that the final constituted a massive statement from Chelsea. We can argue over the standing of the tournament in the wider scheme but it’s moot, really, with regards to that statement.
Because once it got to the final, there was none of the ‘pre-season friendly’ vibe that undeniably permeated the earlier stages. Here were two teams playing a competitive final for a meaningful prize. And one of those teams was the widely accepted best team in the world who had won their previous five knockout games by a combined margin of 18-0 against some really very handy teams.
And Chelsea absolutely paddled them daft, with Palmer absolutely front and centre. He’s already developing a reputation for being the man for these biggest occasions, the ice-coldness of his match-winning performance on the pitch matched only by what is surely the best ever “wtf you doing mate?” face ever recorded on the podium once it became apparent Captain Orange really did intend to stay and join in with Chelsea’s celebrations.
In short, it was a magnificent all-round performance from a player who has elevated himself into Ballon d’Or world-class territory with a display that didn’t contain anything we haven’t seen countless times before but at a level and concentration that was intoxicating. And yes, we are still talking about the disdain on his face when Trump simply refused point-blank to f*ck off out of it.
Now… do we think PSG are actually going to throw in some kind of world-record offer? We do not. But we wouldn’t be ruling out some pretty high-level interest from some high-level places on the back of further proof that Palmer is precisely the sort of chap you want for the very biggest occasions.
And that does bring us to a pretty significant test of where Boehlynomics actually leads. The purpose of a PortCo is really very simple: Make money. Deliver a return on investment. And the investment has been massive. Maybe that return on investment comes with a sale down the line, but along the way, how about the absurd profit potentially available on Palmer now? Will his value ever be higher? When will he next get the chance to make a scornful meme-able face at the cartoon president of the United States at a World Cup trophy lift? Well, next summer, hopefully, but never mind that for now.
Chelsea’s transfer policy, with the sheer scale of the investment involved, is one that will on the financial side deliver small wins and large losses. The hope will be that there will be enough of the former to counteract the occasional latter, while some brand-awareness-boosting on-field success is also helpful, we suppose. Especially when it comes with this kind of prize money.
But Palmer’s elevation to the status of one of the very best players in the world offers Chelsea the chance for a big transfer profit, and those are not chances that will come along all that often.
It wouldn’t really make much sense for Chelsea Football Club to sell Palmer at pretty much any price anyone else might pay. But for Chelsea the portfolio company? That might be slightly different.
