Chelsea lifted their first-ever Club World Cup by defeating Palmeiras in the Club World Cup Final.
As the players celebrated wildly on the pitch and in the dressing room, some were not as impressed.
Notable was English pundit Craig Burley who went on a vigorous rant on ESPN as he spared no punches.
Burley commented that Chelsea won a trophy which has no value and even after spending hundreds of millions of dollars they are 16 points behind runaway league leaders Manchester City.
He went on to lambast the competition that is Club World Cup as “nonsense” and an event which can be best described as “a plastic trophy”.
"As they're off celebrating like they've won the World Cup, Manchester City are racking up a 16 point lead on Chelsea where it really matters: the Premier League. … I don't buy £100M strikers to win the bloody Club World Cup."
According to Burley, Chelsea who fell behind in the title race after leading City until November, aren’t good enough to challenge for the title, not just this season, but also the next.
Chelsea though are only the third English club to have ever won the Club World Cup, the qualification for which from Europe is only guaranteed if and only if the club wins the Champions League, which is no mean feat.
Not surprising to see that Burley’s opinion didn’t find many takers and Jan Aage Fjortoft came up with the perfect response saying that it was probably because Burley was bitter about being dropped for the FA Cup final in 1997 which Chelsea won.
Jan Aage Fjortoft ended Craig Burley here..man said he wish Roman will make a deal with Elon Musk so Chelsea could stay relevant and Burley stay bitter..#CFCpic.twitter.com/1NKzAzZekF
Irrespective of the truth of that Fjortoft’s assertion, Burnley’s take critiquing Chelsea’s celebration on winning a competition they qualified for definitely was at best, harsh and at worst, unnecessary.
