First Issue Review – Chelsea Official Magazine
The launch of Chelsea Football Club’s monthly publication at this moment in the team’s career begs the question of just what language will it be written in? ‘Fashionable’ Chelsea have endorsed expensive foreign imports more than any other Premiership football team and this is reflected in the magazine’s image. It is glossy and stylish in appearance, especially its imagery – indeed the profile pictures of Gianluca Vialli (Chelsea’s Player-Manager) look like the results of a full-on fashion shoot.
The photographs of Chelsea’s supremo form part of an interesting one-2-one interview, accompanied by a brief history of his playing career. Articles focussing on individual team members are in fact littered throughout the magazine, not surprising when you consider the amount of pre-season signings he made. In one form or another there are at least seven player profiles – surely they will run out of players to showcase before the season’s out? Not necessarily, considering the turnover of staff Chelsea seem to get through nowadays!
In the aftermath of the World Cup Zone Publishing’s Chelsea seems very proud of the fact that so many Stamford Bridge based players were involved, and furthermore developed by their club. Something perhaps illustrated by the way Romania’s Dan Petrescu skinned his club team-mate Le Saux (even their English player has a foreign name!) and scored against England to ensure that the Three Lions squad had to face Argentina in the next round. Yeah – thanks Chelsea!
Witty asides make up significant content of this title; ‘Stuck On You’ features old Panini album stickers of past Chelsea players along with a general piss take of 70’s haircuts. When assessing the fear factor posed by Tottenham Hotspur this season the writer reveals “I was trying to stop giggling.” Even new signing Pierluigi Casiraghi appears to be joining in the humour as he is quoted as saying that the player he most admired when growing up was Mark Hateley when he was at AC Milan! ’10 Chelsea Things’ lists completely irrelevant things with ‘Chelsea’ in the name: Clinton (Bill’s daughter), the Pensioners and the Flower Show are all predictably mentioned – but how will they think of ten new things for every issue?
Essentially this publication could cash in on the feel good factor currently surrounding Chelsea FC. Success on the pitch has translated to confidence in the writing; the Daily Telegraph‘s Giles Smith is described as “until recently, a long suffering Chelsea fan, but now he just basks in the glory”. Such confidence even becomes arrogance in the season’s preview of all the other Premiership clubs which asks, “who’ll come second?” The only redeeming factor for such inexcusable bragging is the generous write up of my beloved West Ham: “they could be the surprise title contenders and, aside from Arsenal, certainly the most serious London challengers”. Title contenders? Even a die-hard Hammer like myself is not that optimistic!
£2.50 maybe considered by many fans as worth the 90 minutes entertainment, as long as the high morale remains at Chelsea. Last night they lost 4-0 to Athletico Madrid…
The ad:ed ratio is 15:85. Advertisers include The Times, Watsons (clothes label), Alitalia and Sanyo Digicam.