Xabi Alonso left ‘red-faced’ as damaging Chelsea ‘secret’ comes to light
You might think that the ongoing Manchester City fallout or even further reaction to England hammering seven goals past a team that has been to the semi-finals or beyond at two of the last three World Cups might be the biggest story in football this morning, but you’d be dead wrong.
Meanwhile, Chelsea and Manchester United’s dirty little secret is out. No wonder Xabi Alonso is so embarrassed.
The return of actual Premier League football cannot come soon enough.
Red-faced Always fascinating to Mediawatch to watch the way the Reach titles will cannibalise each other, adapting and adjusting the same content for different audiences.
Take, for instance, this football.london story about Chelsea losing a behind-closed-doors (and this was actual behind-closed-doors, not ‘stadium packed with noisy children to the dismay of Lee “Karen” Dixon’) friendly against Portsmouth.
Here, clearly writing for a predominantly Chelsea audience, Kieran Horn is very clear – and pretty reasonably so – that the actual result is largely immaterial.
Chelsea were beaten 2-0 by Portsmouth in a behind-closed-doors friendly as their preparations ramp up for the return of domestic football. Xabi Alonso’s side took on the Championship club on Saturday at Cobham, with it mainly viewed as a training exercise for the Blues.
We’d suggest pretty much entirely viewed as such.
A number of senior players are away on international duty, which saw a step up in recovery for several injured players and tactical work as the main aims from the friendly, with the result not the focus, and should therefore not be viewed in the same way as a competitive fixture.
Literally impossible to argue with any of that in good faith. It’s even less meaningful than a pre-season game. It’s literally just match-adjacent training and preparation for the stragglers and younglings and load-managing first-teamers not currently on international duty, isn’t it?
Yet in the Daily Express, Kieran Horn has a slightly different view. Or, more likely, has been stitched right up.
In the Express, this behind-closed-doors friendly where the result obviously didn’t really matter has instead become this.
Chelsea lose secret friendly against Championship side as Xabi Alonso red-faced
Harsh critics might argue that if you’re going to pretend this defeat has left Xabi Alonso red-faced you should put something to that effect in the copy itself, but come on: who reads the copy?
And we particularly love the idea that behind-closed-doors means ‘secret’. Like there’s something underhand about something so very normal.
Still, good news for Croatia that an otherwise-mortifying 7-0 defeat in fact came in a secret international.
Secret’s out This idea that ‘behind-closed-doors’ and ‘secret’ are in fact synonymous when referring to friendly matches is apparently now a new Reach policy, though, because what’s this from the Mirror over the weekend?
Michael Carrick’s son Jacey, 16, makes Man Utd first team debut in secret friendly
Alas, Mediawatch once again finds itself with no choice but to climb once more upon its Words Have Meanings hobby-horse.
As a basic rule of thumb, we’re going to say you cannot call a Man United game a ‘secret friendly’ when you can read all about it in a full report complete with nine-picture gallery on United’s own website.
Match of the Day You may have noticed the news today that Match of the Day hosts Kelly Cates and Mark Chapman are dating. Given they were both single before getting together, you may at that point simply shrug, say ‘Good for them’, and go about the rest of your day satisfied that you know absolutely all – more, if anything – that you need to know about the entirely normal fact that two single co-workers have become a couple.
But that’s just one of the many, many reasons you don’t work as a journalist for a tabloid sh*trag.
It’s the top story on the football homepage this morning for The Sun and the Daily Mail, who are by sheer coincidence the two most virulently anti-BBC newspapers and thus have motivation to suggest something improper might have occurred here and thus consider this a far bigger story than the latest Man City fallout or further reaction to England beating a relatively recent World Cup finalist 7-0 at the weekend.
There is much nudge-nudging about how Chapman ‘split suddenly’ with his previous partner earlier this year, while that old friend of the tabloids – ‘a source’ – has given The Sun all manner of juicy gossip, all of it in direct quotes, all of it in astonishingly convenient and remarkably fluent tabloidese of a type literally never, ever said out loud by a real human being ever.
But the real fun comes when the Currant Bun put on their big boy investigative reporter pants for this hard-hitting and vital piece of journalism.
KEL-TALE SIGNS: All the signs Mark Chapman and Kelly Cates were dating, from ‘acting as her PA’ to change in Gogglebox body language
Just so we’re all clear, despite the headline suggesting otherwise with its ‘All’ and ‘from’ and ‘to’, those two signs are in fact all of the signs beyond latching upon some uselessly vague and generic quotes about how happy they were to be working together on MotD, quotes that if given any kind of material importance to the situation at hand also raise entirely unfair questions about Gabby Logan.
So it’s two signs. Two ‘Kel-tale’ signs. And those signs in full are: sitting a bit closer together on the sofa on Gogglebox in 2026 than they did in 2025, and having a fun boozy night out with the cast of The Traitors where Chapman was going round asking Stephen and the gang for pictures with Cates.
Of course, our keen investigative senses mean we must consider whether there could be any other possible explanation for why Chapman and Cates looked more comfortable on the Gogglebox sofa in 2026 than they did in 2025.
And just as The Sun went no further than watching some telly and listening to some podcasts, we have gone no further than reading The Sun’s own account.
His arms were folded and her hands were clasped together down by her side as they awkwardly chuckled their way through toe-curling footage of an animal being castrated on The Yorkshire Vet.
How weird to feel slightly awkward while being filmed watching ‘toe-curling footage of an animal being castrated’.
