— Vladimir Romanov, Heart of Midlothian owner, December 26, 2005
“. . . . . . . . . . . . .”
— Roman Abramovich, Chelsea owner, August 2003-January 2006
RUSSIAN football bosses, it seems, are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Romanov, Lithuanian by nationality but Soviet Russian by birth, is clearly the old- fashioned fire and brimstone sort of owner. He thinks the whole place is going to hell in a handcart and, to judge from this season, is intent on leading the way.
Abramovich is more the strong, silent type. Sits in the stand with a blank look, spends £300 million, wins the league, smiles sloppily, buys another yacht, spends another £300 million. Romanov’s manager ends up at Southampton; Abramovich’s ends up 14 points clear. So what type of guy is Alexandre Gaydamak, who is now half-in with Milan Mandaric at Portsmouth? That is the difficulty. We just don ’t know.
Could be he gives Harry Redknapp the budget to keep Portsmouth healthy in the Barclays Premiership, rebuilds Fratton Park and, almost three years later, nobody has heard him speak. Could be Portsmouth are duffed by Ipswich Town in the FA Cup on Saturday and the new guy jumps up in the directors’ box and starts quoting from the Book of Revelation. Romanov seemed a good man, too, until George Burley’s departure made plain the devil at Hearts was not just in the details.
Instantly, Gaydamak’s origin (Russian roots, even if he is French-born and living in England) earns overreaching comparisons to Abramovich, as if this is a bad thing. It neglects one simple fact. Abramovich has evolved into an absolutely wonderful owner, perhaps the best there has been. Nobody has spent as much money; nobody has kept his profile lower. He does everything a manager or supporter would want: pays up, looks big, keeps schtum. If Gaydamak treads the same path at Portsmouth, he will be more popular on the South Coast than Lady Hamilton. To speak of him in the same breath as Abramovich right now, though, is preposterous.
For a start, Abramovich bought the club top to bottom. From the bedside lamps at the hotel to the laces in Frank Lampard’s Predators, he took the lot. Gaydamak has so far purchased only 50 per cent of Portsmouth, with an option to increase. This may have more to do with Mandaric’s ego than any reluctance, but it is not the total commitment Abramovich demonstrated from the start. Also, there is the suggestion — from his father, no less — that Gaydamak sees this as a development deal with a football club attached.
This is the most worrying aspect for Portsmouth fans. If Gaydamak is more concerned with the establishment of a specious World of Pompey, they could be buying in to the worst of all deals, one in which the football club comes a poor second to a raft of commercial concerns. Tottenham Hotspur moved into a variety of trades designed to finance the football in the 1980s, yet ultimately the club almost went to the wall through propping up a number of failed business ventures.
Abramovich purchased Ken Bates’s spin-offs along with his football club, but he has always appeared utterly uninterested in Chelsea Village life. No doubt he will be aware of the worth of the site, but if he has a long-term plan to sell it as a means of recouping his spending, there appears no urgency.
No doubt, in private, he is a demanding and driven individual. Yet sitting in his box at Stamford Bridge, with a manager he trusts and a chief executive to do his dirty work, his presence seems benign, almost paternal. Outwardly, he combines the best of all breeds: the quiet understatement of Liverpool’s David Moores, the immense wealth of AC Milan’s Silvio Berlusconi.
Yes, it helps that Abramovich does not have the really difficult decisions to make. His personal wealth means he will never be forced to sell a good player or agonise over balancing the books to the last penny. Nor would anyone say Chelsea’s method of operation earns a high approval rating: the Sven-Göran Eriksson, Ashley Cole and Frank Arnesen scandals are hardly examples of honourable behaviour.
Yet Chelsea are not alone in acting this way, Abramovich is often distanced from it and the plain truth is that nobody gets to be worth £7 billion by moving through the economic and commercial jungle with the moral code of a Scout. What impresses about Abramovich is his lack of interest in self- aggrandisement.
Imagine, for instance, Mandaric with Abramovich’s success. His team were heading for relegation with a bullet and he did not flinch from lecturing on his magnificence. By contrast, Abramovich sits with his pals on the opposite side to the directors’ box and grins. Perhaps, behind closed doors, there is another man, one who struts around in a Superman vest telling everyone that Stamford Bridge would be a 24-hour Tesco were it not for his wedge; but, if so, he keeps him well hidden.
Sometimes, silence is not a virtue. Manchester United fans could certainly do with hearing more from the Glazer family. Yet Abramovich’s insistence on letting his team, and his chequebook, do the talking is admirable. Far from being bad for the game, if more chairmen demonstrated his restraint and his willingness to back his manager’s wisdom, football would be much improved. His one error was his treatment of Claudio Ranieri, a decent man in whom he clearly had little faith. Ranieri was consistently undermined, making his position untenable. While José Mourinho’s success vindicated the managerial change, the atmosphere that preceded it was unnecessarily poisonous. It is to be hoped that Abramovich has learnt.
Which is why, if Gaydamak has earmarked no small part of £100 million to be spent on players, it is also vital he considers Redknapp fit for the job. There are some who think that given £100 million, Redknapp would buy 100 players, but this is a slight on a manager whose greatest flair is for making bad chairmen look good. Mandaric and Terence Brown have benefited from this talent in the past, Portsmouth and West Ham United going into freefall after he left, and the manager that saw the cut-price potential in Yakubu Ayegbeni, Eyal Berkovic and a youthful Jermain Defoe could do well trusted with a bigger budget.
Yet if Gaydamak has doubts, better make a clean break now, whatever the soap opera comparisons. Money to be spent on the team has to be invested by a trusted, well-supported manager, not by Mandaric under the guidance of his old pal, Velimir Zajec, with Redknapp out of the loop. Chelsea started becoming a proper football club only when Mourinho, not Pini Zahavi, the agent, selected transfer targets.
Even if Gaydamak intends making substantial funds available for this transfer window, Portsmouth do not have the pedigree to be instantly attractive, as Chelsea were. Had Abramovich invested in a club among whose biggest signings is Dejan Stefanovic from Vitesse Arnhem for £1.8 million, it might have been harder to get the likes of Arjen Robben, Petr Cech and Claude Makelele on board.
Fortunately, under the harshly maligned Bates, who has performed an equally effective resuscitation on Leeds United, the purchase of players such as Gianluca Vialli, Ruud Gullit and Gianfranco Zola had established Chelsea as a club to be taken seriously. Portsmouth are not that yet and need to shake off the air of the ridiculous before competing for the top tier of talent. The trip to Chelsea on February 25 should still be a mismatch.
Abramovich is perceived to be bad for football because he has made the Premiership uncompetitive, but all that has changed is the balance of power. From 1995 to 2004, Arsenal and Manchester United were in charge, last season it was Chelsea and, in Europe, Liverpool. Nothing is for ever, not even with his wealth. Mourinho could leave, or Lampard find his head turned by Barcelona, and Chelsea would have a fight on their hands again.
Remember when United’s reign was going to last for ever? And Liverpool’s? “You might see star players and silverware, but you’ll watch your team lose its soul,” was the dire warning from a Chelsea supporter on the BBC website yesterday. This presumes that Mandaric’s chaotic stewardship was the soul of Portsmouth, while Abramovich’s quiet benevolence has imbued Chelsea with pure evil. The reality? If Gaydamak is half the man Abramovich is, Portsmouth will be lucky to have him. As would any club.
- E-mail Martin Samuel at aogy90@dial.pipex.com
