Roman Abramovich: everywhere and nowhere as Chelsea turn toxicChelsea have had unprecedented success under the Russian but they are fast losing admirers
Owen GibsonThe Guardian, Friday 23 November 2012 18.02 EST
The Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, embraces John Terry after the club won the
Champions League in Munich. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PAAt Stamford Bridge, Roman Abramovich is everywhere and nowhere. When Rafael Benítez was unveiled in a suite named after the man who captained Chelsea to their only league title of the pre-Abramovich era, the Spaniard blinked into the flashbulbs alone apart from the club's overworked communications director.
The chief executive, Ron Gourlay, was absent, despite the FA having just announced that the referee Mark Clattenburg had no case to answer over Chelsea's claim that he had racially abused one of their players. Nor was Bruce Buck, their urbane chairman, there to face the music. And, of course, there was no sign of the man who has poured £1bn into Chelsea over the past decade, around £86m on paying up the contracts of sacked managers alone, and who last week wrote off his latest £166m loan.
Abramovich, who will next year celebrate the 10th anniversary of his dramatic arrival as Chelsea's then-unknown new owner, has always let his money do the talking. Not a great deal more is known about his intentions now than it was then.
His fortune, estimated this year at $12.1bn (£7.5bn) by Forbes, has been invested in yachts (including $250m on the world's biggest), fine art, a private jet and homes throughout the world. But, at Chelsea at least, his controversially acquired fortune does not appear to have bought him happiness.
For the first time, pressure on him to break that silence and explain his decisions is coming from the club's fans as well as the media. Where they once sang songs about being "f**king loaded" and clapped along to Russian folk ditties before kick-off, some have begun to feel ambivalent about the dysfunctional way the club is run.
Chelsea, pulled in all directions by the owner's capricious nature and the accompanying pendulum swings in investment, are at once European champions, third in the league, in a state of perpetual revolution and under fire from all sides. Abramovich is a constant presence at the Bridge on matchdays, but satisfaction remains elusive – witness his expression in May when, having won the European Cup, he awkwardly embraced the man it is now clear he never really wanted as manager.
At various points during the Russian's tenure, Chelsea have claimed progress in moving towards a sustainable model and a semblance of normality in their executive structure. Just last week, they announced they had recorded a profit for the first time under Abramovich – albeit before last summer's splurge on talent including Oscar and Eden Hazard.
At various points, the rhetoric sounded convincing. But over the past year, it has seemed ridiculous. The owner's effect on Chelsea's hierarchy resembles nothing so much as Rupert Murdoch's empire during the period when his former lieutenant Andrew Neil referred to it as "the court of the Sun King", with underlings endlessly trying to second guess his desires at several steps removed.
Thirteen months have passed between the complaint that John Terry called Anton Ferdinand a "f**king black c**t" during a match against QPR and the Football Association deciding there was no evidence to support the claim that Clattenburg racially insulted Mikel John Obi. During that time, Abramovich has employed three managers.
They took in a debilitating legal saga that ended with the FA finding their captain guilty of racially abusing an opponent, their lowest league finish of the Abramovich era, the brutal sacking of two managers, and the usual summer whirl of activity in the transfer market at a net cost of £71.5m. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Chelsea enjoyed their greatest ever triumph in lifting the European Cup on a heady night in the Allianz Arena. Six months later, it is little exaggeration to say they are back at square one.
Internally, the club's power structures are strangely opaque. Abramovich's PA, Marina Granovskaia, has assumed a pivotal role as the main conduit to the owner on many matters.
The technical director, Michael Emenalo, has risen virtually without trace – rapidly promoted from scout to assistant coach to his current post.
At Benítez's unveiling, he repeatedly referred to Emenalo's key role as the conduit to the owner on footballing matters: "The main thing is that I have spoken to Michael Emenalo, the technical director, and he's my link. I like to speak about football with him"It has reached a stage where the once-lampooned Manchester City, for all the money they too have thrown at players and agents, appear enlightened benefactors in comparison.City have invested in a systemic plan and an executive structure that should bear fruit long term and limit the potential for future embarrassment. Their Abu Dhabi owners appear to have learned from their mistakes, while Abramovich appears doomed to continue repeating his.
He might reasonably point to the trophies in the cabinet and nine years of unprecedented success, even if the most reliable-long term barometer – league position – appears on a downward tilt. And Chelsea too have invested in infrastructure – in the training ground at Cobham and a state-of-the-art academy, even if the results of the latter have been mixed at best.
But compared to their rivals for the upper berths of Deloitte's annual football finance revenue league table – both Manchester clubs, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Arsenal – there does not appear to be anything resembling a strategic plan.
How could there be when it is run according to one man's whims? The Russian's penchant for micro-management at his football club seems at odds with his hands-off attitude to the rest of his remaining business portfolio, which includes stakes in steel giant Evraz and mining firm Highland Gold.
Eight managers in six seasons, and the inevitable accompanying upheaval, is part of the story. But he has ended up not much further forward – Claudio Ranieri, the original "dead man walking", managed second in the Premier League and the semi-final of the Champions League in Abramovich's first season.
Abramovich famously fell in love with football after watching Manchester United beat Real Madrid 4-3 at Old Trafford. If his goal was to create a club that was admired from afar as well as within the confines of Stamford Bridge, he has ended up doing almost the opposite. Never have neutrals been more united in their distaste and even among a minority of season ticket holders there is suddenly talk of protests and boycotts.
On the pitch and off, many of Chelsea's current issues can be traced back to the shockwaves of Abramovich's split with the man who delivered the club's first league titles in half a century. While José Mourinho's team was expensively acquired, it was undeniably his.
That began to shift when Mourinho had Andriy Shevchenko foisted upon him and reached its logical conclusion when Roberto Di Matteo was sacked for failing to get the best out of Fernando Torres. The seven managers who have followed Mourinho have had to work largely with the expensively acquired but mismatched tools they were given. Benítez may again return to the spine of Mourinho's team to provide the steel and focus sorely lacking last week in Turin, leaving the wholesale overhaul of the squad that André Villas-Boas was brought in to initiate still on the drawing board.
Political manoeuverings and an alternative powerbase installed by Abramovich under Frank Arnesen did for Mourinho and ever since the internal machinations in the boardroom Chelsea have been Byzantine in their complexity. Insiders say Gourlay has brought a degree of stability since taking over from Peter Kenyon – but that there is only so much he can do as the ground constantly shifts beneath him. There are ongoing issues surrounding the stadium – with progress over finding a larger, more lucrative alternative to Stamford Bridge stalled – and the string of controversies is in danger of damaging the club's commercial potential around the globe.
All the biggest clubs look to exploit their brands overseas while struggling to comply with Uefa's break even rules; Manchester United are way ahead of the rest and Arsenal believe – rightly or wrongly – that their image is a major selling point. Despite the best efforts of their commercial team, it is becoming harder to see where Chelsea fit in, Kenyon's infamous boast that he would "turn the world blue" notwithstanding.
As Pep Guardiola ponders the situation from New York, it is surely inconceivable that the fallout from the past few weeks has not also registered with him, the real object of Abramovich's desire.
Chelsea would argue that with success comes jealousy.
There may be some truth in that, but it does not go nearly far enough to explaining the reasons why they have become most neutral's least favoured team. The last 13 months in particular have been marked by a string of misjudgments, compounded by the lack of structure.
The rancid stench of the Terry incident was not cleared as well as it might have been – with Chelsea refusing to apologise directly to Ferdinand and instead focusing on their "duty of care" to Terry. The same was true on Thursday, when there was no remorse for the difficulties Clattenburg had been through.
Chelsea were right to say they had a duty of care to report Ramires' complaint,
but they could have handled the fallout differently. An expression of sympathy would not have been the same as an admission of culpability. It is now understood that Chelsea will make a gesture of reconciliation of some kind towards Clattenburg in an attempt to calm troubled waters, but they are again left looking reactive rather than proactive.
Chelsea have often polarised opinion as a club but there have been times – the swinging Kings Road era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Gullit/Vialli/Zola-era, even Carlo Ancelotti's tenure – when they have been considered more warmly.
Now the brand appears toxic.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/nov/23/roman-abramovich-chelsea-toxic/print
