Chelsea's crossroad: win and choose or 'slump' if you lose

How often can a club choose a European competition in which it wants to participate? Rarely. Still, one of those "privileged" sides could come from the Premier League this season. To make things even more intriguing, it's one of the wealthiest clubs in the world, and the rich are always privileged, aren't they?

Anyway, to make a long story short, it's Chelsea.

Namely, in exactly two weeks, the Blues will face Real Betis in Wroclaw, Poland, in the Conference League final, and the winner of that clash and the champion of the third-tier UEFA competition will automatically qualify for the next season's edition of the Europa League.

On the other hand, Enzo Maresca's team is fighting tough Premier League battles for the Champions League. In an ideal scenario, in which they would win their seventh major European trophy and secure the UCL through the EPL, the Blues would have a rarely given opportunity to choose which UEFA competition they want to participate in, and of course, they would opt for the top-tier one.

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Still, their situation in the Premier League is pretty complicated as they are only one point above the seventh-placed Nottingham Forest, and in the ultimate two rounds, they play Man United at home and no one else but the Trees on the road.

Considering a rather challenging schedule, Chelsea could end up seventh, taking the spot that leads to the Conference League. On top of that, if they lose the ECL final to Betis, they could - theoretically - end up in the third-tier European competition for the second season in a row, despite being on the verge of an ideal situation in which they would have had the privilege to choose between two European alternatives.

The moral of the story? Football can often be deceptive. Even towards the rich.