How Chelsea Owner Roman Abramovich Changed Professional Football

Roman Abramovich

Almost exactly ten years ago, in 2003, a close friend and die hard Chelsea Football Club Ultra fan called ND used to keep going on and on about a Russian billionaire who had bought over his club and how they were going to dominate England and blah blah blah. Of course I and other non-fans laughed him down. As time went by I got familiar with the baby faced and humble looking money bag but wasn't convinced that Chelsea would do anything different. After all they had fantastic players over the years like Gianfranco Zola, Marcel Dessailly, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Gustavo Poyet but they had been known more for winning the then named Carling Cup and scarcely anything else.

In April 2004, "doubting thomases" like myself and ahem! Arsenal supporters got to understand that there was nothing usual about the business when Claudio Ranieri's boys  knocked Arsenal FC out of the Champions League in the quarter finals. It was significant because that Arsenal was one of the strongest ever, boasting of titans in their prime like Thierry Henry, Vieira, Edu, Reyes, Ljungberg, Kolo Toure and other players who just a season before had gone unbeaten in a whole season. It was a coup especially as Chelsea almost had a tradition of losing to them.

The impact of raw seemingly unlimited cash bought success to Chelsea and paved the way for the likes of mega buck football fans to take over teams like Manchester City, PSG and Monaco.

Here's a year by year tracking of the "Chelski" era.

April 2003: Falling in love with football

The headlines were shared by David Beckham and the Brazilian Ronaldo, who scored five goals between them, but Real Madrid’s extraordinary Champions League victory over Manchester United held a more far-reaching significance.

Among the spectators at Old Trafford that night was an unknown billionaire Russian who was sufficiently captivated to decide that a football club should be his next purchase.

Abramovich quickly settled on Chelsea as his desired club.

As well as the London location, the share structure meant Chelsea was relatively quickly attainable. A meeting was swiftly arranged at Stamford Bridge between Abramovich and then chief executive Trevor Birch.

“I wasn’t totally convinced he was the real thing,” admitted Birch. Abramovich made no attempt to haggle over money and accepted the asking price. The meeting lasted less than 20 minutes.

Birch contacted Ken Bates, then Chelsea owner, and a meeting was arranged later that day at the Dorchester Hotel.

A £140 million deal to buy Chelsea and cover their debts was soon agreed. Within two months, Abramovich had spent more than £100 million on new players.

Within two years, John Terry was lifting the Premier League trophy. English football would never be the same again.

January 2005: The Ashley Cole affair

The extravagant style of Abramovich’s ownership was soon evident, as was the impression that Chelsea thought that money could buy them just about whatever they wanted.

A succession of audacious moves quickly followed. Peter Kenyon, theManchester United chief executive, was lured away from Old Trafford.

Abramovich reportedly even tried simply to buy Cagliairi, the Italian club that Gianfranco Zola had pledged to join, in an attempt to keep the iconic striker at Stamford Bridge.

A then world record offer of £50 million was made to Arsenal for Thierry Henry. There were also costly mistakes, notably in the fee of £30 million for an ageing Andrei Shevchenko. Abramovich’s pockets, however, were always sufficiently deep to simply move on to the next target.

No deal was considered beyond Chelsea yet their brazen methods and willingness to pay extraordinary sums of money provoked frequent controversy.

This was most notoriously evident in the pursuit of Arsenal left-back Ashley Cole, with Chelsea found guilty of ‘tapping up’ after Mourinho met the England left-back in a London restaurant. Arsène Wenger famously described Chelsea’s approach under Abarmovich as “financial doping”.

Abramovich, though, did ultimately get the player he wanted. And with Cole still in the team, Chelsea have won a further eight major trophies.

July 2007: The new training ground

Abramovich’s millions have also been used to build a lasting infrastructure at Chelsea and they are now in a position where they can stand on their own two feet financially with the elite clubs in the world.

On the most recent Deloitte list of football’s biggest clubs, Chelsea stood fifth, above the likes of Arsenal, AC Milan, Liverpool and Juventus.

For the first time under Abramovich, they even registered a profit in their most recent annual accounts.

With more than £700 million worth of loans from Abramovich turned into equity, Chelsea can now claim to be debt free and self sustainable.

Abramovich’s push to build Chelsea at every level was very quickly evident with the move from Harlington to the state-of-the-art training centre at Cobham that was officially opened in 2007.

One regret has been that Abramovich’s vast investment in the academy has not been complimented by a first-team environment in which managers feel sufficiently emboldened to give young talent a prolonged opportunity.

Abramovich’s desire for Chelsea to produce players, however, should not be underestimated.

September 2007 Appointing Avram

No appreciation of Abramovich’s decade at Chelsea would be complete without reference to his ruthless and perhaps even eccentric or impulsive approach to managers.

Mourinho, after all, reportedly first lost his job after a chance meeting in a corridor with Abramovich that degenerated in him challenging the owner to sack him.

Although he has been consistently surrounded by a core of key advisers, from chairman Bruce Buck to directors Eugene Tenenbaum and Marina Granovskaia, others have entered the inner circle at different times.

This was evident with Avram Grant, who remains a good friend, but somehow persuaded Abramovich in 2007 that his work in Israel qualified him to become director of football and then an upgrade on Mourinho as manager.

That Grant then guided Chelsea to the Champions League final seemed to give Abramovich the idea that, provided you had a sufficiently good squad of players, managerial instability was not necessarily counterproductive.

As Abramovich then went through Luiz-Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, Andre Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo and finally Rafael Benítez, suspicions of excessive player power have persisted.

It is a theory that is emphatically denied, however, by one of the dressing room’s strongest voices.

“If you wanted to take that chance you would probably get sacked yourself,” said Frank Lampard.

May 2012 Munich victory speech

At various stages during the past decade, the rumour has circulated that Abramovich is falling out of love with football and may seek a buyer for Chelsea.

There have certainly been periods when he has been more frugal in the transfer market, attended less games or his focus has switched beyond Chelsea, most notably the High Court battle last year with Boris Berezovsky.

Those around Abramovich, however, consistently stress that his passion for football and vision for Chelsea remain just as strong as ever.

Even minutes after Chelsea had won the Champions League last year, those inside the dressing-room say that he was looking to the future.

“Roman gave a little thank you speech in the dressing room,” said Buck.

Using Tenenbaum as a translator, Abramovich called for calm and spoke quietly to the players of their collective triumph.

“We’ve won it — but this is just the beginning,” was the crux of Tenenbaum’s translation.

January 2013: Snubbed by Pep, embraced by Jose

After Di Matteo was sacked just six months after delivering the Champions League to Abramovich, the Wall Street Journal posed a question.

“Who would want to be a Chelsea manager?” it asked.

The answer, of course, is “plenty of people” but the headline was still prophetic in identifying an obvious flaw in Abramovich’s style.

By overseeing so much managerial change, and by demanding not just trophies but aesthetically pleasing football, Abramovich has risked limiting his options.

The best salary was clearly not the only consideration for Pep Guardiola as he opted for Bayern Munich rather than Chelsea earlier this year.

It was a significant moment and it was then instructive that Abramovich should ultimately turn full circle and come back to Mourinho, his first managerial appointment at Chelsea.

It also felt like an acceptance that mistakes have been made in his treatment of managers and perhaps also that he was wrong to ever part company with his best and most successful choice.

Although it can be argued that the all the managerial upheaval has been justified by continual silverware, how much would Chelsea have won if Mourinho had kept his job throughout this past decade?

We are told that both Abramovich and Mourinho now crave a productive period of stability.

Against that, the desire not just to win, but to win with a stylish identity, burns just as strongly as it did 10 years ago.

Culled from Daily Telegraph UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/chelsea/10149386/How-Chelsea-owner-Roman-Abramovich-changed-the-face-of-football-in-England.html