Chelsea fans air support for Roman Abramovich as they faced club backed by a nation that executed 81 people on SaturdayThere cannot have been a better way to sum up the rotten state of English football than the moral vacuum that lay at the heart of this strange and upsetting occasion at Stamford Bridge, where a capacity crowd turned up to watch one club with a disqualified owner take on another backed by the public investment fund of a nation which executed 81 people on Saturday.This was a dark day for anyone who cares about the game’s soul. No amount of sportswashing could make the putrid air hanging over this fixture disappear. Not when some Chelsea fans were still determined...
The Premier League is often a beautiful spectacle, but its thirst for success and wealth at all costs has tainted its spiritImagine we were starting again. Imagine this was a world when professional sport was in its infancy and even the concept of a league was controversial in case it made people overprioritise winning. Imagine you had a vague sense the clubs in this new competition might represent their local areas, that they might come to fulfil some sort of community function. Who would you want running them?Would it be a fabulously rich Russian who made his fortune exploiting the economic chaos that followed a period of political turmoil to buy up his country’s oil and gas reserves and who...
Chelsea’s ownership is finally facing deserved scrutiny but there is a double standard when it comes to Newcastle’s ownersThe internet always knows what you want. This week a particular video clip has been popping up in those wormholes filled with adverts at the side of my screen, pressing its nose up against the glass for hours on end like an unhappy cat mewling at the window.Alan Shearer slams Roman Abramovich over Ukraine statement. There it is again. And here is the text of Alan’s actual slamming: “There’s still no condemnation from Roman or the club about what’s happening in Ukraine.” It is a robust and sincere statement, deserving of serious treatment. So let’s break this down. Continue reading...
The departing owner transformed them into an indisputable superclub but the game he changed may be about to shift againZilina is a pretty town of squares and churches with a population of a little more than 80,000 that sits at the confluence of three rivers in the mountains of north-west Slovakia. It was, frankly, an incongruous place for a revolution in English football to begin, but it was there in 2003 that Chelsea played their first game under Roman Abramovich, a routine 2-0 win over MSK in a Champions League qualifier. Their last may come at Norwich in a couple of weeks, or perhaps at home to Brentford a fortnight after that, depending how soon a buyer emerges and how...
Abramovich’s departure after 19 years brings uncertainty for Chelsea and prompts wider concerns for English footballStop all the clocks. Stow the faux-fur hats. Delete the Russian folk music from the pre-match playlist. Roman Abramovich is now officially looking for a buyer. Indeed, if we are to believe the reports, Chelsea Football Club could even be sold within the week.It is an impossibly narrow timeframe for such a complex transaction, made credible only by the fact that, frankly, right now anything seems possible. Continue reading...