Chelsea fared well as underdogs in their most recent outing in a final. They surprised Paris Saint-Germain in last summer’s Club World Cup, racing into an unassailable 3-0 lead by half-time and disrupting the European champions thanks to a clever tactical approach from Enzo Maresca.
Perhaps there will be more of the same at Wembley. Chelsea have form when it comes to upsetting the odds in a big game, although the one problem with bringing up the PSG win before Saturday afternoon’s FA Cup final against Manchester City is that the challenge of coming up with a plan smart enough to beat Pep Guardiola is no longer Maresca’s responsibility.
The subplot is that it is quite possibly a clash between Maresca’s past and his future. For Chelsea, the moment when a season of promise began its descent into chaos is, from their perspective, when their former head coach began to act like a man who wanted to leave. The infamous comment from Maresca about his “worst 48 hours” at the club after the win over Everton in December still clouds the air at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea’s reaction will be interesting if Guardiola steps down at the end of the season and Maresca, the leading candidate to replace his former boss, joins City.
Preamble
And now for something completely different: an FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester City. These two great clubs have met in a Champions League final, a League Cup final and a classic Full Members Cup final, but never, until today, on the FA Cup’s big day.
It’s a surprising stat given the size of the two clubs and their recent FA Cup record. Since the turn of the century – what did happen to that Millennium Bug – Chelsea and City have been involved in 17 of the 26 FA Cup finals.
In recent years, it’s been harder to deal with Kipling’s impostors. Chelsea were runners-up in three consecutive seasons from 2020-22, an unwelcome record that they hope to share by sundown. That’s because City – who won the FA Cup in 2023 en route to the Treble – have lost the last two finals.
City start as strong favourites, regardless of those defeats, and have an outside chance of a second domestic treble under Pep Guardiola. Chelsea have not won a domestic trophy since they beat Manchester United 1-0 in the 2018 FA Cup final.
Yet in that period they have won all three European trophies, a Super Cup and two Club World Cups. Funny old team. They can’t be trusted – but nor should they be written off.
