Pitt Brooke sinks to ever new depths trying to associate us with Putin
Jack Pitt-Brooke 3h ago 57
Less than a month ago, Chelsea sent two men up on a crane to update the poster on Stamford Bridge’s west side, detailing all of the trophies the club had ever won. On went a new panel to mark their victory in the Club World Cup final in Abu Dhabi.
It was the 21st trophy of the Roman Abramovich era, and most likely the last. The world has changed in the last few weeks, and so has our national relationship with Abramovich, last seen grinning on the pitch of the Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium on February 12, and now a “designated person” by the UK government, subject to a travel ban and asset freeze.
Abramovich, Chelsea
These sanctions have transformed Chelsea in an instant, and the club is now speaking to the government about relaxing the terms of their licence to continue. The current rules on travel and ticketing and merchandise and player trading feel so restrictive — and this whole exercise so uncharted — that it is pointless to even speculate where Chelsea will be left if these continue for long.
What is clear is that Chelsea being owned by Abramovich is so politically untenable now that the government has made its daily functioning extremely difficult. But what was unthinkable only recently — both the war and its after-effects — are now real. And what was unsayable about Roman Abramovich only a few weeks ago was announced by the UK government on Thursday morning.
Abramovich, according to the Treasury, is a “pro-Kremlin oligarch”, who is to be sanctioned because of his “close relationship” with Vladimir Putin.
“This association has included obtaining a financial benefit or other material benefit from Putin and the Government of Russia,” the Treasury document reads. “This includes tax breaks received by companies linked to Abramovich, buying and selling shares from and to the state at favourable rates, and the contracts received in the run up to the FIFA 2018 World Cup. Therefore, Abramovich has received preferential treatment and concessions from Putin and the Government of Russia.”
Less than two weeks ago, remember, we were still being told that Abramovich had nothing to do with politics and nothing to do with Putin. Now the government is disclosing details of Abramovich’s long-standing relationship with Russia’s leader, and we are all in the dark about what is going to happen next.
But while the future of Chelsea is up in the air, to put it mildly, what about the past? What about that shiny blue banner behind the statue of Peter Osgood? Chelsea, as their fans like to sing, have “won it all” since Abramovich has taken over. Does the fact that we know more about where the money has come from invalidate those wins? Is it time for some men to get on a crane and paint asterisks next to some of those trophies?
A hawkish position on this might be that Abramovich’s millions — whose origins we now know more about — stopped Arsenal from retaining the league in 2004-05, stopped Manchester United from winning it the following year and stopped United again in 2009-10. Every club whose wealth was clean, or at least cleaner than Abramovich’s, and who was overtaken by Chelsea, might have a legitimate grievance against the “pro-Kremlin oligarch” whose spending gave Chelsea the edge. And if Abramovich’s backing is wrong now, was it right enough in 2003 that we should have allowed it to upend English football?
The moral case is one thing, the practical reality slightly different.
Whether or not you believe that Abramovich’s 21 trophies are tainted by his association with Putin, the plain fact of the matter is that they are not going anywhere. There is absolutely no suggestion Chelsea broke any rules with any of this (and, frankly, there were not many such rules for clubs to break back in 2003.) And the Premier League is certainly not planning on taking Chelsea’s five titles back and re-distributing them to its other members.
Football, at least on an official level, is very forgiving about questions of how exactly teams managed to win its biggest prizes. Think of all the chicanery that has ever been performed in elite football then think of how rare it is that a winning team gets their titles taken away: Juventus lost two over Calciopoli, Marseille one over match-fixing, Torino’s 1927 Italian title was revoked for bribery. But the bar is high precisely because the authorities do not want to have to confront it.
Aside from the question of the titles themselves, there is a connected issue of whether or not these trophies meaningfully “count”. Can it ever be authentic when an oligarch swoops in and spends his way to success? And are these wins as real as those not fuelled by huge dollops of Russian money?
Well, speak to any Chelsea fan about this and their position is clear. None of them would swap the huge moments of Chelsea history — Bolton 2005, Munich 2012, Porto 2021 — for anything. Even given the surreal retreat of the last few weeks and the almost instant crumbling of the “Roman Empire”. The songs of the Chelsea fans themselves are proof of the residual sense of gratitude to Abramovich, even amid everything we now know about him.
Abramovich before the Barclays Premiership match with Charlton Athletic when Chelsea celebrated winning the title in 2005 (Photo: Francis Glibbery/Chelsea FC )
This era can never be airbrushed from history, but nor can it be removed from the context of the time. Because whoever buys Chelsea, and whatever future historians decide about the morality or the meaning of Abramovich’s titles, this will go down as one of the most important eras in the history of sport.
You might say that Abramovich is a revolutionary who transformed the game by realising the inherent growth potential in English football’s desperate hunger for foreign money, no matter where it came from. Abramovich sensed that the same logic that applied to Russian investment into the city of London and the London housing market — roll out the red carpet, run it hot, ride the wave, ask questions later — could also work in the “ownership neutral” Premier League.
Alternatively, you might view English football’s gleeful acceptance of Abramovich as its original sin, leading to everything that has happened since: Thaksin Shinawatra and then Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, Saudi Arabia at Newcastle United, and all of the inflationary spending and sportswashing we have seen since.
If you were to strike out the Abramovich titles from the records because of the source of their funding, you may have to end up doing it elsewhere too. Just think about how quickly Abramovich’s political position in the UK has deteriorated over the last four years. And now think what might happen if, hypothetically, the UK’s alliances with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were to start to falter. If those two countries, increasingly close to Russia and China, were to pivot away from the west, then what might it mean for the Premier League clubs owned by their royal families? And would we re-write the history books again?
So even as Abramovich leaves the stage, his legacy is to have changed English football forever. All of us now face the task of trying to hack apart the dirty web of money that has entangled the English game. But what we cannot do is rewrite history to pretend that this did not take place, or that we did not all giddily wave it through. This was an era that both revealed the weaknesses and motored the transformation of English football and 21st-century British life, both symptom and cause until the end. Ignoring or minimising those 21 trophies would be an act of pretending it was not a success.
just posted this on The Athletic comments:
"Alternatively, you might view English football’s gleeful acceptance of Abramovich as its original sin, leading to everything that has happened since: Thaksin Shinawatra and then Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, Saudi Arabia at Newcastle United, and all of the inflationary spending and sportswashing we have seen since." ... and there we have it – Jack Pitt Brooke - a long time Man City devotee blogger wants to airbrush the achievements of any club whose owners he now considers less honourable than the offshore currency speculator funding his new love Spurs. Or presumably the other US moneyballers currently sucking the innards out of United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Palace, Villa , Burnley and Leeds. Not to mention the foreign majority shareholders behind Leicester, Everton, Wolves, West Ham, Southampton, Watford. Or perhaps he prefers the gambling fraternity controlling Brighton and Brentford, following as they do the proud traditions of Merseyside sponsors Littlewoods & Vernons in glorious times past. Maybe he could just transfer his delicate affections to Norwich as the only top level club with “honest” backers....well for a few more weeks anyway.
