As the takeover of the club goes on, Chelsea exist in a curious netherworld, both Roman Abramovich’s club and not. Whatever promises the shortlist of prospective new owners may make now, nobody can be sure what sort of future Chelsea are facing – although fans can be relatively certain whoever comes in will not be pumping in the sort of money Abramovich did.
The dream of a third Champions League came to an end on Tuesday, but the lesser prize of the FA Cup remains in reach. Should Chelsea lose to Crystal Palace in Sunday’s semi-final, though, their season will in effect be over. There will be no glorious farewell to the oligarch – or, perhaps more appositely, to the good times he brought to Stamford Bridge. With nothing left to play for, there will have to be acceptance and then perhaps some idea of the future may begin to emerge. Reality will begin to bite.
The Abramovich era began in August 2003 with a 2-0 Champions League qualifying playoff win away to MSK Zilina in the mountains of northern Slovakia. A precise endpoint is harder to locate. Symbolically, perhaps, the end came with the 2-1 win over Palmeiras in the Club World Cup final in Abu Dhabi. It completed the set of possible trophies and that it was won in the United Arab Emirates, whose interest in football only became apparent in the era heralded by Abramovich, felt highly appropriate.
The last match before Abramovich offered to hand the club over to its trustees was the 2-0 home Champions League win over Lille, and the last game before sanctions were imposed a 4-0 Premier League win at Burnley. The last game before a new owner takes charge will almost certainly be a Premier League fixture against Watford at Stamford Bridge. The FA Cup final, a week earlier, would represent a more dramatic finale.
Football may already have felt hideously commercial when Abramovich arrived, but it had been only seven years since countries had been permitted more than one Champions League entrant (plus the previous season’s winners, if different). The impact of the advent of the Champions League and the Premier League a decade earlier was just beginning to be felt. Porto beat Monaco in the final that season; one team from Portugal or France have reached the final since. The process of turning the competition into a rich man’s pass-the-parcel had begun but was by no means as advanced as it is today – but still the superclubs want the additional security of places based on historical performance.
Nobody then had heard of the term “sportswashing”. Nobody had any real sense of why foreign money would want to invest in football. There may have been some notion Abramovich, by giving himself a profile outside Russia, was protecting himself, but the general feeling was that he was a rich man who had bought himself a new toy.
Rampant commercialism, of which the Champions League and Premier League were central pillars, and the growth in broadcast rights, were changing the landscape. The rich would have got richer and football would have been facing the consequences of that. But what Abramovich did was in effect decouple a club’s capacity to invest from success on the pitch and the usual rules of commerce.
Arsenal built a new stadium to try to compete with Manchester United; Abramovich just put his hand in his pocket. The £1.5bn in loans, which it seems will not be paid off, is what Arsène Wenger meant when he referred to financial doping.
Where Chelsea led, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle have followed (for all that the incredible achievements of City’s commercial department in making their club the richest by revenue in the world are to be saluted). By definition, if new owners are motivated by profit they will not be so generous.
Chelsea led football into that new age. Now they will have to face living in it without their benefactor. For the first few weeks, the crisis in ownership seemed to pull the squad together. They won 12 out of 13 games, the exception being the penalty shootout defeat to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final. But then came the defeats to Brentford and Real Madrid, seven goals conceded in 90 minutes of playing time.
To an extent that was freakish: five of those goals were the result of brilliant finishes. But, as Thomas Tuchel acknowledged, Chelsea’s pressing had collapsed; they were more open, easier to play through, than at any previous point in his reign.
He got a response away at Southampton and in the second leg in Madrid. Perhaps the defeats were just a blip. But Tuchel’s downbeat response after the first leg suggested he feared something deeper. If Chelsea lose on Sunday, there is a danger their players will glance down and suddenly realise they have run out of cliff. If there is nothing left to play for, no end goal to focus on, players can not be blamed if thoughts drift to their own futures.
There is plenty of uncertainty about. Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen are out of contract. César Azpilicueta has triggered a one-year contract extension but continues to be linked to Barcelona. Jorginho, N’Golo Kanté and Marcos Alonso, all the wrong side of 30, have deals that expire in 2023. So does Ross Barkley. How do you begin to decide on new deals or potential replacements when nobody knows who will be in charge or even when new transfers will be possible?
Of course players will wonder whether they fit the plans of a new owner, thirtysomethings will be attracted by the security of a two- or three-year deal elsewhere, most will investigate alternatives or contingencies. Once that happens, getting them to commit to demanding pressing structures could become very difficult.
The Abramovich era will have half a dozen endpoints, but a defeat to Palace would be the one that says definitively it is over, that there are no more trophies to come, just the memories of some extraordinary football and silverware. All that will remain is doubt, some great memories and a highly corrosive legacy.
