Yahoo Sport 
Jeers to jubilation: In the crowd when Chelsea fans knew their Super League protest had triumphed
Was it fan power that prompted Chelsea to pull out of the Super League? Was it the protests outside Stamford Bridge that changed their minds? Was it the sheer ferocity of the chants, the genuine anger on their supporters’ faces, that made them finally realise the severity of what they were doing?
In the moments following this remarkable development, in the shadows of Stamford Bridge, there was no doubt what the fans thought. To them, rightly or wrongly, this triumph was their triumph. The mood switched in an instant as the news was passed from one protesting supporter to the next. “We’ve pulled out,” they called to each other, the words snowballing through the bodies.
And just like that, the jeers turned to jubilation. “We want our Chelsea back” became “we’ve got our Chelsea back”. Cardboard signs were tossed to the skies, as were the cans of beer. It was as if Chelsea had won a trophy, and there was no doubt who the fans considered to be the key players of the success. “We’ve saved football,” they roared. “We’ve just made history.”
In that moment, away from the boardrooms and dreaded Zoom calls where these ghastly decisions were made, it was hard to argue with them. If the reaction of the footballing world had not prompted this sudden u-turn, then what had? If it was not the fury of the fans, made real here and at Elland Road on Monday, then what else could it have been?
The Chelsea fans here had gathered hours before kick-off, to sing their songs of protest and rail against the architects of this twisted scheme. “We want our cold nights in Stoke,” read one of the better banners. “You stole our club,” was one of the more blunt.
How extraordinary it was to see them mobilise, and how remarkable it was to think that hundreds of Chelsea fans, if not more than a thousand, had gathered outside their ground for a game against Brighton, which they could not attend, to chant against the president of Real Madrid. Truly, it has been quite the year.
Florentino Perez was the primary target, but he was not alone. Roman Abramovich, the American owners, Manchester City: they were all on the list. All to blame for trying to rip away the soul of the game.
It never seemed to turn violent, as far as this author could see, but there was no doubting the strength of feeling. From the fans and indeed from Petr Cech, the former goalkeeper and now a technical advisor at the club, who emerged among the scores of supporters to plead for calm. Mask pulled down beneath his mouth, surrounded by a wall of policemen, Cech urged the fans to stop blocking the road with desperation in his eyes.
As it was, the team buses had their own plans to get in the ground, using a separate gate as the protesters were moved by police. Cech’s intervention made little difference, in that sense, but his emergence and the look of his face will surely go down in history as one of the defining images of this sorry episode. A club legend, he was clearly taken aback by the emotion that had been triggered by these chaotic few days.
What a lesson this must be for those owners who sought to execute these plans. The message can hardly be clearer: you can have so much in this world, but you cannot take our football. The people’s game certainly felt like the people’s game here. They did not say it quite so directly but the statement from the fans was simple: this is still our sport, not yours.
One can only assume that Cech’s obvious horror was shared by those in the United States, or in Spain, who are so far removed from British football culture, both literally and in their thinking. They were not here to see events themselves, to hear the fury of the fans who would not accept what was happening, but those chants and screams must have echoed across the globe. They will surely reverberate for some time, and it is hard to imagine a more empowering moment for the modern supporter.
