Ah, Cesc. I felt it coming, your move; I dreaded it as one does a pending tsunami, whose force is already set in motion, and all one can do is brace and survive it. It seemed apparent to me that you would never go back to Arsenal (because a player of your magnitude moves only forward), so I hoped you would avoid the Premiership. I was thinking maybe Italy, where your darker instincts would be laughingly welcomed by friends and shrugged off by opponents well-versed in the shadowy arts of fregatura.
But back to England it is. Not in red, but in blue. The dreaded Chelsea, that cold mechanism trained to snuffle out any hint of humanity and crush it between jagged, steel jaws, ruled with the iron fist (occasionally, but only occasionally, blunted by velvet glove) of the Special One. It doesn't look like a match made in heaven. I can't imagine Jose having an interest in you (except as, say, the hamburger-chef is interested in the cow which he will grind into unhealthy food for the masses).
Let me warn you about a few things. First of all, a good half of London will begin by hating you. All those Gooners who once loved you, for a start, stripping those old Fabregas posters off the bedsit walls, watching you from beneath surly brows as if they can smell the thirty guilty silvers jangling in your newly blue pockets. There's no hatred like one which began as true love. And then the Chelsea fans will be both slow to trust you and quick to kick you to the kerb. (It is not their fault; they are so inculcated from birth as part of their training in the brumal and the love of the ruthless.) You think this will be alright, because you are so long acclimatized to the ways of fame and the fickleness of your public, but I believe it will be harder than you think, because your heart, beautifully, has not yet calcified.
And then there will be Jose.
When you first arrive, he will give you a look of such withering contempt, somehow suggesting also a depth of discernment, that it will freeze the blood in your Spanish veins and drain secret residues of joy from your spirit. This is a look he will repeat, alternated with sudden and inexplicable smiles of approval, complete with sparkling eyes. These smiles at first will be seldom and seemingly random, later to be obviously linked to specifically desired behaviours. A successful dive, for instance, or a drama-queen hissy fit which browbeats a cowed ref into submission, or a professional foul, the more thuggish the better, as long as it works. Anything, in short, that comes from the Arjen Robben playbook will inspire the good will of your new boss. This is how he will try and destroy you, for your own good, he will say, to recreate you in the image of the uber-strong, trickster-clever, utterly ruthless player which is his continuing ideal. (For a good, strong lesson in effective psychological terrorism the likes of which he will use on you, see the Brad Pitt movie the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.)
He will begin once you are disheartened to the point of despair, disheartened by the rejection from your previously loving home, by the difficulty of the move from sultry Spain to methodical, chilly England. He will whisper into your ear that the People are not to be trusted, that they will never again love you. He will imply, without coming out and saying it, that you are, in fact, unlovable, and that the only possible source of the approval you crave is himself. Let me put it another way: he will coax you into a metaphorical cage and poke you with metaphorical sharp sticks, first starving you then feeding you solely on metaphorical slabs of raw liver torn from the torsos of Spanish players like yourself until you have become the red-eyed, snarling yard-dog he's looking for in a player. In short, Arjen Robben, only in the midfield.
He will speak softly of Macchiavelli, expound on the undeniable charms of Cesare Borgia, another handsome and accomplished Spaniard like yourself. He will give you Il Principe to read, point to the page where it says it is better to rule through fear than through love. But bear in mind how Cesare ended: quickly, precipitously, from the heights of a seemingly impregnable political and military power, because it was built (albeit through his own admirable military and political skills) on the foundation of his father's power. When his father fell, suddenly, probably poisoned by his enemies, Cesare's massive fortress collapsed overnight. Barely escaping imprisonment and execution, he died fighting as a lowly mercenary for the King of Navarre, the rough equivalent of you going to play for the Seattle Sounders. Point is, Mourinho will grow bored and petulant (what is it with those Portuguese and the petulance?) and leave Chelsea and England behind him to go boss around some Germans instead, and you will be left to rebuild your career without him. If you let him recreate you in the image of his own undead fantasy, there will be no returning to a life of playing with heart, with soul, as we've watched you do so often, seen you do so recently, and expect to see again as you play amongst your fellow Rojos in Brazil.
My fear is based in this: although we all see the beauty and heart in the way you play, we can see the shadow there, too. You have your own fondness for fregatura, for diving and histrionics, for drawing the foul. I believe you secretly admire the Hand of God goal which goes undetected, the callous, Teutonic dogma of crushing the enemy by any means possible, ethics and rules be damned. Mourinho will try and draw this part of you forward, try and amplify it, until you are among those steel-hearted storm-troopers who laugh at that one noble concept which raises football above other mere sports, the concept of Beautiful Play.
Be careful. Keep your heart intact. Don't forget that the soul of the game is in its beauty, in the warm laughter and group embrace which follow a gorgeous team goal, and that the soul of the game, its anima, is more important than any single match, than any one man's career. It's more important than anything.
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