Chelsea Champions League exit: Stunning, punishing power of PSG riches highlights challenge facing Abramovich this summer

FootballSportChelseaPremier LeagueChampions LeagueJOHN DILLON

So now it is time for another spending spree along with another new manager at Chelsea. What else is there to do? Is there any other way?

Modern football at the elite level is an ever-escalating arms race and it was the punishing power of Qatari cash which sent Paris Saint-Germain into the Champions League’s last eight at Stamford Bridge, leaving the home supporters with an odd, lingering but resigned sense of what might have been.

This was heightened most painfully by the departure of the impressive Diego Costa with a calf injury in the 59th minute, when he looked ravenously in the mood to make this his night rather than one belonging to Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Instead then, it was Angel Di Maria who supplied the cross and the almighty 34-year-old Ibrahimovich who delivered the finish which sealed the fate of London’s fallen champions.

The winning goal the pair fashioned in the 67th minute was a pure example of the kind of stunning, clinical game-changing quality for which the game’s new mega-wealth can pay.

As an advert for the kind of effect Ibrahimovich might have wearing the colours of one of the Premier League’s big guns next season, it was emphatically striking, too.

Things, though, really have reached a stratospheric new level when even the oligarchal wealth of Roman Abramovich can be overshadowed like this.

Chelsea played well and their spirit was strong in both legs of this tie. Costa’s equaliser was brilliant. But PSG have simply bought themselves far too much attacking fire-power and creative class to be dismissed as mere arrivistes any more. And they are not even in the realms of what the old established aristocracy can do.

They won home and away against the side being temporarily commanded in his avuncular way by Guus Hiddink. They knocked Chelsea out last season, too. These are bare facts which spell out most plainly the shift of power which has taken place as PSG progress year by year - and against which Abramovich must fight back with his millions again, just when Chelsea had become so determined to balance the books more consistently.

It isn’t a criticism to point out the extravagant value of PSG’s team, by the way. This is the sport taking shape as most of the world wants it to in this age of hyper-marketing and opulent spending.

In the 81st minute, with the job done by Laurent Blanc’s team, Di Maria was substituted by Edinson Cavani, a Uruguayan rated around the £50 million bracket. Chelsea, who blazed a big-spending trail in the previous decade, suddenly looked a little less mighty than they once did in financial terms.

Spool back to last summer, when the now departed Jose Mourinho was complaining about the club’s failure to carry out his wishes in the transfer market and you wonder now if he might have had a point.

Not because we always want to condone this endless round of big spending. But because that, put simply, is the way it is and every big club has to respond every summer now if they are serious about winning the big prizes.

In the previous close-season, Mourinho had got what he wanted. Costa and Cesc Fabregas were signed early and the title duly arrived.

There is, in this new landscape, so much which has changed even since Chelsea won this competition in 2012.

But it seems there is only one way to react – and that is to accumulate a squad throbbing with the same levels of exorbitant talent and relentless might as those which exist at Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, PSG and, once Pep Guardiola has got to work in the summer, will also have been created anew at Manchester City.

The trouble for Chelsea and their prospective new boss, Antonio Conte, is that they will not be able to offer Champions League football next season as part of the package by which they might lure fresh, big-name talent to west London.

The talks which have taken place with the Italian have taken this into account. But it could be a huge problem – especially as Conte is not yet regarded as being among the very top drawer of European managers, either, and will have something to prove himself in England.

That may be the summer’s problem. What Chelsea have to do now is end the season with a flourish. The infuriating thing was that there was enough on show in their performance against PSG to suggest they still have something about them.

If all that potential hadn’t been over-shadowed by the soap opera of Mourinho’s departure, this could have been a successful season. Another case of what might have been to reflect upon now?

The FA Cup is still a target and it should be a big one. It is critical that the repair work which has been done by Hiddink is maintained until the end of the campaign. Surely, it will be.

But that, in the final analysis, that is all it has been – repair work. While Chelsea have been re-grouping, even PSG, the Qatari-funded team which for a while looked like a vanity project, have moved on immensely.

They made that plain at Stamford Bridge. On the biggest stage of all, the Champions League, Chelsea have to start all over again. And they will have to wait at least for a season just to begin catching up.

ArticlePunishing power of PSG riches have left Chelsea playing catch-upChelsea F.c.Premier LeagueParis Saint-Germain FCChampions League Chelsea Champions League exit: Stunning punishing power PSG riches challenge highlights summer challengeZlatan Ibrahimovic hails ruthless PSG after eliminating Chelsea from the Champions LeagueGuus Hiddink: Chelsea showed PSG ‘too much respect’ and their strength in depth made the differenceGalleryPublishedMedium width1Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - 22:43OnEnable video endboarddefault