What’s the point of football?

If you’re an English club, what’s the big dream? Is it the Premier League title? The Champions League? What’s the holy grail?

If your team wins the Premier League, you bask in that glory until the next season. If you continue to do well, you retain the triumphant gratification, and excitement ensues for more silverware. If, on the other hand, the team has a comedown from the title-winning highs, you cling onto pride while feeling bitter about your side’s inability to be consistent. You win some, you lose some. Football is a fickle sport, the tide turns all the time as teams dip in and out of form. So, simply lifting a cup every now and then surely can’t be what we’re all striving for — can it?

For me, the ultimate goal must be something else, something more heartfelt, pure and righteous. If you are a football fan born before 1995, I put it to you that you yearn for success with sentimentality. You long to emulate the dominance of Fergie and United in the 90s and early 2000s. That’s the holy grail. His reign is etched in our minds. It made us feel jealous. We wanted that. He was the boss, he built the team from the youth upwards and then reinvented it when he felt necessary. There was no ‘player power’, just proven success over a long period of time led by one hero figure.

Winning a league here and there is fantastic, but it lacks the fulfilment of sustained success under the guidance of one man. That’s the legacy that I crave, and as a Chelsea supporter, it’s what I thought we were aiming for when Frank…