Everyone knows that the biggest villains in the game are the corrupt FIFA executives headed by scoundrel president Sepp Blatter. This is exactly what the ball boys want you to think. In truth, these evil, duplicitous children have been quietly pulling the strings from just behind the advertising hoardings for decades. The frail, confused old men they’ve propped up at the top of the sport’s governing body are nothing more than elderly puppets.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has figured this out and has bravely attempted to reveal the ball boys’ iron-fisted control over everything that happens in football.

His team’s unbeaten season was ruined by a 2-1 loss at Newcastle on Saturday, but this defeat did not come because Chelsea couldn’t use a Steven Taylor red card and six minutes of added time to score as many goals as Papiss Cisse. Instead, they lost because of those dastardly ball boys.

“Things were happening that the referee cannot control,” said Mourinho after the match, blowing the doors off football’s biggest secret.

“He cannot punish the ball boy that disappears, the people in the crowd that keep the ball or somebody that throws a second ball on to the pitch.”

Mourinho’s bold revelation comes in the midst of Chelsea’s ongoing rebellion against the ball boys’ rule. It started before Mourinho returned to the club, when Eden Hazard kicked at a ball that was under a Swansea ball boy who appeared to be trying to have sex with it during a match in January 2013. Hazard was sent off and banned three matches for lashing out at one of the game’s kingpins, but was spared further punishment in the ball boys’ desire to remain in the shadows and avoid too much public scrutiny.

This show of insubordination was not something the ball boy cabal would stand for, though. During Chelsea’s visit to Selhurst Park last season, they demonstrated their power by making John Terry score an own goal, and when Cesar Azpilicueta became frustrated with their time wasting as Chelsea pursued an equalizer that wouldn’t come, Mourinho intervened, defiantly telling one of the tiny bosses that “one day somebody will punch you.”

The threat of a violent revolution by the millionaire adult players and coaches who have been toiling under the thumb of these mighty children only made them more resolute in their efforts to make an example of Mourinho and his team, though. And now they’ve ended Chelsea’s attempt at an unbeaten season just because they can.

Of course, Chelsea aren’t the only ones who have experienced the wrath of the ball boys. Even Cristiano Ronaldo has been publicly reminded to kneel before these kings of the pitch.

The 2022 World Cup being awarded to Qatar? That was the ball boys. Lionel Messi vomiting during matches? Ball boys. High ticket prices? Ball boys. Global warming? Ball. Boys.

Perhaps some day the fully grown adult people will band together to overthrown this oppressive child force. But until then, the ball boys will continue to sit atop their ball thrones and secretly run the game one refusal to quickly toss over a ball at a time.