Graphic: the case against Drogba

Good goal of Andres Iniesta’s, wasn’t it? Bit of space, hit it sweetly, back of the net. Once again the kettle chips ended up on the floor as I danced a nasty little jig of schadenfreude. And you could see the goal coming, too, unless you were the Chelsea defence, in which case you obviously didn’t see it coming.

That’s the problem, though; fail to score in your away leg and you are always up against it. In the Champions League, a 0-0 draw in the first leg slightly favours the home team, even though that may seem, at first sight, a counter-intuitive analysis. All it takes is a nanosecond of concentration lost in the return tie and suddenly you have to score two goals — something well beyond the reach of Chelsea last week. That cliché trotted out whenever a side is leading 1-0 that one goal is never enough is, obviously, untrue and even stupid. But it is nonetheless very often not enough, no matter how great a share of possession your team might have enjoyed. Football is a game of skill, but it is also a game of luck and of accident; you can do your best to guard a one-goal lead, but you can never be certain.

So, bearing this in mind, I suspect it wasn’t a conspiracy involving Michel Platini, Tom Henning Ovrebo, Fifa and the Zionist Occupation Government that deprived Chelsea of a chance to lose to Manchester United again in the final. It was just that familiar old thing, a close game of football that, by my reckoning, Barcelona shaded over the two legs — and the football writers howling their outrage about Chelsea being “robbed” should have known better.

The fact that the Catalans won despite being reduced to 10 men, having had Eric Abidal quite wrongly sent off, simply reinforces the notion that justice was done. Chelsea had four perfectly good penalties denied? Believe me, Millwall have four perfectly good penalties denied in every game I see them play.

Relying on the referee to see you through a semi-final is never a good idea. The ref was bent, was he? In which case, what was his cunning plan in sending off Abidal? That he thought Abidal was useless and was holding Barça back and they’d be better off without him?

I have no objection to players and fans being angry when their team loses a game of football; I even have a soft spot for menacing the opposing supporters as they victoriously depart by making that ludicrous cut-throat gesture, or by jumping up and down in impotent rage and shouting things which, these days, probably constitute a hate crime. A friend of mine was once so enraged at his team’s defeat that he tried to bite a police horse: I can even see the point of that, although it is best to find a soft spot just below the withers and make sure the copper isn’t looking.

We do these sorts of things because, subjectively, we believe our team was unlucky, did not get the rub of the green and so on — but Chelsea’s reaction came from a different mindset; it came from that thing we witness every week from the top teams in the Premier League. Monumental arrogance and the belief in their divine right to win, that nothing should stand in their way — certainly not the opposition who are de facto, objectively, inferior beings.

Nor is bad luck allowed to intrude, a rogue bounce of the ball, a gust of wind. It is not enough for these clubs merely to win every week, their passage to victory should be smooth — a sort of given. And when the opposition has the temerity to divert from the script, or there is a moment of chance in which they score a goal, all manner of the most fabulous whining petulance is unleashed. The referee is bent, or an idiot, the game’s a fix. It’s a conspiracy, the entire footballing edifice wanted us to lose.

We saw quite a lot of this when Manchester United lost to Fulham in the league a short while back. Rooney stamping his little feet up and down and punching the corner flag having been sent off for a prior act of petulance; Ronaldo spitefully taking it out on the opposition players, Sir Alex Ferguson sclerotic with rage and blaming the referee for his team’s defeat. The only thing the ref did wrong in that game was not send off Ronaldo.

The only thing the referee did wrong in the Chelsea game, definitively, was send off Abidal; I suppose I might have given one of those four “penalties” having seen the replay for the 18th time. So the wrongs of Mr Tom Henning Ovrebo just about cancel each other out and, in general, I thought he had a pretty good game.

That being said, I would not have blamed Tom for feeling extremely ill-disposed towards Chelsea as the game progressed, given the level of abuse and harassment he faced from the home side. Notable among these verbal assaults was one by Herr Michael Ballack, who followed the referee for fully fifty yards screaming guttural Teutonic abuse in his face because he hadn’t been given a throw-in, or something. Ballack reminded me of my three-year-old daughter when I tell her she can't watch Dora The Explorer any more because it might lead to lesbianism and, worse, speaking Spanish. I think, if I were Mr Ovrebo, I might have punched Ballack, much as I would have dearly liked to punch the screaming, maniacal, wild-eyed Didier Drogba. Ovrebo somehow managed to keep his calm, much to his credit.

Later the police felt obliged to switch the referee to a different hotel and then squirrel the poor bloke out of the country for his own safety. Not that he feels terribly safe because, once again following a Chelsea defeat, the death threats have been pouring in. Be in no doubt that Chelsea, the club, is directly responsible for the misery heaped upon Ovrebo; it is a consequence of the way the players, or the majority of them, reacted to having failed to win. If they had behaved as Frank Lampard behaved, by exiting the pitch with dignity and equanimity and then shaking the hand of every Barcelona player in the dressing room, there would have been no death threats at all. If a player can be sent off simply for celebrating a goal in front of opposition supporters, what is the correct punishment for a player who bellows that the referee is a “f***ing disgrace” and has to be restrained from attacking him?

It is absolutely intolerable that a referee should fear for his life simply because he does not bend to the whims of Chelsea’s footballers and it is not much use Chelsea apologising after the event in an attempt to minimise their eventual punishment.

This, Uefa will know, is the second time a referee has received death threats from Chelsea followers. It is at least the second time this fatuous notion of a conspiracy has been advanced as an excuse for their eviction from a competition.

Why should any referee have to put up with this sort of stuff? Kick them out of the competition for next year. And make sure Drogba’s ban lasts well into those gloomy October afternoons; let him seethe, at home, in the meantime.

Sooner or later the authorities will have to act, seeing that managers and clubs in general see absolutely nothing wrong with the behaviour of their players. That was as true of Sir Alex Ferguson at Craven Cottage as it was of Guus Hiddink at Stamford Bridge last week: they, one suspects, feel that their players were justified too. I suppose it is an entirely fitting way for a top Premier League club to end this season of "Respect" for officials — but then I don't suppose the FA will do anything, either.