Chelsea wins European soccer's Champions League, four years after failing under Israel's Grant

Match hinges on penalty shoot-out, as it did in 2008, but this time Londoners are victorious; Grant, meanwhile, just quit his Belgrade club

English soccer club Chelsea won the UEFA European Champions League final on Saturday night, defeating Bayern Munich in a penalty shoot-out, four years after they had failed in the final of the same competition, also in a penalty shoot-out, under Israeli coach Avram Grant.

Saturday’s game, played in Munich, ended 1-1 at full-time and went to penalties after there were no further goals in the 30-minutes of extra during which Munich had a penalty saved.

Munich briefly took the lead in the penalty shoot-out, but ultimately lost, after its midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger hit the post with the fifth of his side’s five penalties and Chelsea’s Didier Drogba scored.

Chelsea has been coached in recent weeks by interim manager Roberto Di Matteo, a Swiss-born Italian who played for Chelsea between 1996 and 2002.

Chelsea is owned by the Russian Jewish oligarch Roman Abramovich, for whom winning the Champions League has been something of an obsession. He has spent an estimated one billion pounds since buying the club nine years ago.

Grant lost his job after the failure to defeat Manchester United in the 2008 final in Moscow. John Terry, the Chelsea captain who missed the decisive penalty in that match, was suspended for Saturday night’s match.

Avram Grant (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons CC-SA-Medija centar Beograd)

Grant subsequently managed English clubs Portsmouth and West Ham United, both of which were relegated from England’s Premier League under his management. Ironically, West Ham won promotion to the Premier League on Saturday, bouncing back a season after Grant took the team down.

In January of this year, he was named coach of Belgrade, Serbia’s FK Partizan. But he resigned from that post on Thursday, for what he said were “personal reasons.”

Partizan won a fifth successive Serbian league title under Grant’s leadership, but lost all three derby matches against arch-rival Red Star Belgrade and had appeared to slipping back from the relatively healthy position in which he inherited the side, prompting criticism from fans.

Since firing Grant, Abramovich has hired a succession of managers, including the respected Luiz Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, and Andre Villas-Boas. Villas-Boas was sacked earlier this season, and Chelsea appeared to be heading for a mediocre end of season, but it was revived under Di Matteo since March, first winning England’s FA Cup and now, for the first time in its history, Europe’s most-prized club competition.