Key events
And while I do, we’ve also go this going on for you:
Anyroad up, I’ll write these teams down, then we’ll wonder what they mean.
Headline Palace news: Eze starts, which suggests the deal with Spurs has stalled. Otherwise, Will Hughes replaces Daichi Kamada, but they are otherwise unchanged from the side which won the Community Shield.
He admits its’s been difficult with the short break but says it’s been a good break. Otherwise, he hopes to have Tosin for the next game, and in the meantime is sure Acheampong can improve. It was a difficult but nice choice to make between Pedro and Delap, but there’ll be plenty of games for both.
Though he’s spent big on strikers and won’t complain if one scores 30 goals, the team are set up to share them around, with all players given licence to get involved in the place.
Let’s start with Chelsea, for whom the headline news is the presence of the 19-year-old Josh Acheampong in the centre of their defence following the serious injury sustained by Levi Colwill and in the absence of Tosin. That’s a huge vote of confidence for him – less so for Wesley Fofana, left on the bench.
Otherwise, it’s João Pedro up front, with Liam Delap on the bench, but here’s Maresca so let’s go to him and come bac kto what he’s done.
Teams!
Chelsea (4-2-3-1): Sánchez; James, Achempong, Chalobah, Cucurella; Caicedo, Enzo; Grandson, palmer, gittens; John Peter. Subs: JORGESEN, Gusto, Fofana, Hato, Essugo, Andrey Santos, Stephen, George, Delap.
Crystal Palace (3-4-3): Henderson; Richards, Lacroix, Guehi; Munoz, Wharton, Hughes, Mitchell; Sarr, Mateta, Eze. Subs: Beautiful, Clyne, Sosa, Cardines, Sakyi, Lerma, Esse, Edward.
Preamble
Happy new season one and all – except for our teams today, the last one never really ended, and for the best possible reasons.
Chelsea finished its domestic aspect in form that was just good enough, qualifying for the Champions League and perhaps saving Enzo Maresca’s job in the process. After that, though, things really got going.
It’s easy to say that Chelsea were fitting winners of the first Club World Cup, bringing together, as it did, geopolitics posing as sport, Saudi money, US imperialism, far-right dictatorship, and ersatz, artificial prestige. But it’s unlikely the players are giving this any thought, instead captured by their growing sense of mission: an entity that once looked atomised, incoherent and disconnected has since fused into a definitive whole, the team secure in the knowledge that they can out-think, out-play and out-fight the best team in the world in a big final. They will feel invincible.
But so too will Palace, their players and manager already legends and the two greatest games in their history the last two they’ve played. It is not just that they beat Manchester City to win the FA Cup, their first trophy, then Liverpool to win the Community Shield, their second, though they did. It is also that they did both in dramatic, affirming, inspirational manner, delivering a buzz to sustain all involved for the rest of their lives. They will feel invincible.
Life being life, though, with triumphs comes pitfalls. By the time Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain in mid-July, their rivals had had a month or so off and already started pre-season, an unhealthy and borderline barbaric state of affairs that will surely exact a toll at some point. The mental and physical stress of elite-level sport is real, not something that can or should be overridden with money, glory and team-spirt. There is a debt to pleasure and in their case it will be fatigue – the only question is when it hits and how they manage it.
Palace, meanwhile, are victims of their own success. Eberechi Eze, their best player, looks likely to leave for Spurs, while Marc Guêhi, their captain, could well be off to Liverpool. With under two weeks left in the transfer window, simply replacing them will be difficult, never mind replacing them with players of equivalent ability, and even if that happens, those players will need nurturing and moulding – or, in other words, rather than build on their achievements to get better, it is more likely they are poised get worse. There is a debt to pleasure and in their case it will be pillaging – the only question is how they mitigate it.
All of which makes this an absolute banger of an opening-weekend fixture. Bring it on!
Kick-off: 2pm BST
