How on earth are you a Black Chelsea supporter?”

Xaymaca Awoyungbo, a 22-year-old fan of the Premier League team, claims that he was frequently asked this thought when he was a teenager. It’s an interesting question.

He tells The Athletic, “People would use it as a weapon to use against you in any argument about football.” “People at school would ask me, ‘How can you support Chelsea?'” in response to instances involving the fans’ behavior in particular nations or during specific games.

Awoyungbo, a history graduate with a love of cinema, was not satisfied with the responses he gave in the school playground. As a result, he created Blue Is The Color, a documentary that examines Chelsea’s complex relationship with from the viewpoint of its supporters. With a long list of contributors that includes current talents Reece and Lauren James as well as former Chelsea players Paul Canoville and Paul Elliott, it’s a well-polished piece of work with genuine instructional value.

The most intriguing part is that the club funded and commissioned it.

In an effort to support artists from marginalized communities, Chelsea’s humanitarian foundation partnered with Versus to launch the Blue Creator Fund earlier this year. Out of over a thоusand applications, Awoyungbo’s documentary idea and a project by jewelry designer Becky Gordon—who designed a capsule line of signet rings to honor important Chelsea community champions—were selected.

In addition to providing Awoyungbo with contacts with current and former players, Chelsea paired him with a producer and an accountant to help refine his concept in terms of length and cost (by his own admission, his initial pitch was too ambitious to be covered by the £15,000 funding limit). Awoyungbo was given complete creative control to decide how to tackle a highly sensitive topic.

The ensuing short film does not provide a thorough forensic analysis of Chelsea’s most incidents.

There is no reference to Anton Ferdinand in the picture collage that goes with Awoyungbo’s introductory monologue; only John Terry is depicted. Souleymane Sylla, a Paris commuter who was subjected to racial abuse by Chelsea supporters at a metro station in the French city in 2015, is another face that appears briefly in the same sequence.

There is absolutely no mention of Raheem Sterling’s reported racial abuse at Stamford Bridge in 2018 while he was a player for Manchester City. Nor are the prior charges of and bullying that a number of football players from Chelsea’s youth teams made against former coaches Graham Rix and Gwyn Williams in the 1990s.

Awoyungbo’s main goal is to demonstrate that, despite damage to Chelsea’s image, Black people and their culture have contributed to the club’s identity since the 1970s.

His introduction is a contextualization of Liquidator, the unique instrumental reggae song that has been a mainstay of Stamford Bridge’s matchday playlist for the past 50 years. From there, the film swiftly expands to explore how skinhead culture, the emergence of the right-wing National Front, and even the actions of Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s prime minister at the time, contributed to the horrendous treatment that Canoville endured as Chelsea’s first Black player in the 1980s.

Awoyungbo says, “I watched a lot of documentaries on punk, two-tone, and ska music before I made the documentary, and all of them were so political.” “I believed that was the best place to start because exists in society and is evident in football.” I never intended it to be limited to football. I intended for anyone to see this and be able to learn something from it.

Chelsea has made ever more аggressive efforts in recent years to overcome the stigma associated with its past.

From Elliott to James, a succession of exceptional Black football players have played a pivotal role in the team’s success and identity during the past three decades on the field. Growing up, Awoyungbo went to FA Youth Cup games at Stamford Bridge where players like James, Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, and Callum Hudson-Odoi played. He recognizes that his experience as a supporter has differed significantly from that of the generations that came before him.

“I have undoubtedly felt at home,” he remarks. The documentary portrays genuine experiences from its subjects; nevertheless, as a fan concludes, “We had players like Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, and Mikel (John Obi) who showed a different image of Chelsea.” I never had the question, “Do I belong here?” I was more uncertain because of the past.

“In that regard, I never had any trouble going to games.”

In the end, the documentary is a very personal work of art; in the final monologue, Awoyungbo uses his Nigerian ancestry and the fact that his first nаme is the original nаme for Jamaica to explain the personal resonance Liquidator has for him and to justify his support of Chelsea’s African players.

However, funding and commissioning the documentary is also an audacious and fascinating step in Chelsea’s quest to put their past behind them. Unveiled this week at a Blue Creator Fund showcase event at the Saatchi Gallery in central London, it will be disseminated on the club’s official channels. Awoyungbo believes it will inspire similar reflection among the football community.

“I believe that everyone who watches football should have a discussion about the culture of their club,” he states. “Other teams ought to follow Chelsea’s lead, as they have genuinely gone back and examined their past to enhance their reputation.”