There comes a time in every fan’s life when he or she must choose the lesser of two evils: Real Madrid-Barcelona, Lakers-Celtics, you know the drill. But what do we do when each evil is vast to the point of incomprehensibility? What do we do when Manchester United plays Chelsea?

Because the Champions League final is in Moscow, some of you may have already hit upon the optimal solution. Sadly, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, such things only happen to opposition journalists, and neither Wayne Rooney nor Frank Lampard actually knows how to write,. No, poisoning is not the answer. We, the neutrals, must make a choice.

But how? How do we choose between death by guillotine and death by axe? Between life as a Y-Wing pilot in Star Wars or a extra in Star Trek with Kirk and Spock visiting an alien world? Between life as an Italian general or a French admiral? These choices are not easy, and require a great deal of thought (for the record, axe, Y-Wing and I like pasta), and the choice before us is no different.

I will say this about Manchester United: they have a history. ManU is more than some hipster idiot in a Rooney jersey who thinks Christiano Ronaldo was a 1^st round draft pick (more on that in a later post), it is Busby’s Babes, George Best, a full trophy case and yes, Munich. It is a history worthy of contempt, but a history nonetheless.

Chelsea, on the other hand, is an abomination. It is a small fish in a big pond that lucked into a rendezvous with Roman Abramovich’s limitless ego and equally limitless wallet. There is no more reason for Chelsea to be in this position than there was for Kaiser Wilhelm to have a navy. Chelsea has no history, and so, like the Kaiser’s Kriegsmarine, it had to be constructed out of thin air, with disastrous consequences for the rest of the world (am I pulling this metaphor out of my ass? Of course I am! I’m a History/Poli Sci major, this is what I do.). Just as the Kaiser’s naval program sparked an arms race, Abramovich’s spending has created a soccer arms race (at the current rate, there will be no soccer players left in Portugal or Brazil by 2015…they’ll all be in Chelsea or ManU’s reserve squad).

Now starting at striker for Chelsea FC, the SMS Ostfriesland: cheaper than Shevchenko, turns faster than “Fat Frankie” Lampard.

Worse than Abramovich’s money, however are Chelsea’s “fans.” In a Chelsea supporter’s dream world, Boise St. loses to Oklahoma, the Giants can’t beat the Patriots, Jamaica has no bobsled team, East German swimmers always get the gold and Adam Banks and the flying-V aren’t enough for the Mighty Ducks to beat the Hawks. In short, a Chelsea fan is the sort of person who chooses Barcelona on FIFA ’08, not because they like Barca, but just because they’re the best team in the game.
It is a mistake, though, to think that Chelsea fans care about sports for sports’ sake. No, Chelsea fans follow Chelsea because all they care about is pure, untrammeled, power. They support the high and mighty precisely because he is high and mighty. The weak, the less fortunate? Merely stumbling blocks in their way. He roots against Bambi’s mom, for the Klan in Birth of a Nation, and wishes that Inspector Javert caught that damn bread thief when he had the chance (. All because might (and questionably-obtained petrodollars) makes right. Fortunately, we can all hope that Chelsea’s time in the sun matches the primitive outlook of their fans: nasty, brutish and (above all) short.

Ironically enough, Roman Abramovich will make exactly $24,601 in the time it takes you to read this

When a Chelsea fan needs some “alone time,” he locks the door, rolls down the window shade, gets a pile of tissues and a bottle of lotion, and then watches Triumph of the Will (anything by Ayn Rand will do in a pinch). 90 seconds later, he goes back to preparing for his career in I-banking. Yeah, they’re that evil.

And what would you expect from this gang of heartless mercenaries, the Premier League’s own Blackwater, other than soulless, joyless football? Dusting off a previous metaphor, the Chelsea menace has the Lusitania of tasteful, exciting soccer in its periscope sights, and the only thing that stands between us and anti-football is—ugh—Manchester United.

Carrying this still further, this promises to be a veritable Jutland of soccer (only without, you know, the death…unless this game has a Lazio-Roma level riot). On paper, Chelsea certainly has an impressive side, but they lack the most important factor in a battle between evenly-matched foes: a soul. Chelski might have superior players on an individual level, but they know that their club has no business in a cup final with Man U. Even if the match itself is close, in the end, Chelsea will find themselves in the same position as the High Seas Fleet: turning to Wilhelmshafen, tail between their legs, waiting to be sold off at the end of the war (I’m looking at you Drogba!). In the final reckoning, Chelsea, on the inside, is as dead as the WWI metaphor I’ve been using.

The choice is clear. Between a club with an actual soul (a small, evil soul, but a soul nonetheless) and a club that’s as spiritually empty as that girl I tried to ask out earlier this semester (trust me on this one), we must go with human-scale evil over an evil too vast for human comprehension.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light and—ugh—root for ManU when the time comes. Then take a shower. A loooooong shower.

-Ryan (if you haven’t already guessed by now)