Part IV — credits
This is the closing chapter in the Chelsea’s takeover saga. A lot has happened since my last article, and one will assume we now have way more clarity on the situation. However, there is a saying that goes like this: “The more I know, the less I understand”
Let me bring you on our final journey of misunderstandings, symbolism, interpretations, and whole lot of lateral moves.
On 25th May 2022, the UK government approved the sale of Chelsea FC to Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital Group. The majority stakeholder of the football club became the consortium Clearlake Capital Group with Todd Boehly being directly involved in the day-to-day operations of Chelsea FC.
The villain was defeated, and Chelsea can continue to operate as an elite sports club. The good guys defeated the bad guys. Roman Abramovich’s assets were frozen, no proceeds from the sale were made available to him nor anybody else involved with Vladimir Putin/sanctioned individuals.
It was overall fantastic news for humanity. The bad guys were exposed and humiliated in public; the Western world was rubbing their hands together at the prospect of unmeasurably positive PR. And they received everything they wanted.
And yes, you are right, there is always a “but.”
But sometimes everything we asked for is not enough. We always want more. You go to the cinema and watch a fantastic movie with a positive ending, the bad guys lose, and the good guys are the heroes and still something is not right. That is how I feel.
I feel like I watched 180 minutes of a fantastic movie, but all I wanted was a scene after the credits to explain what really happened, but I never got it. And like a typical unsatisfied customer in 21st century I am coming back with vengeance. I need to get my money’s worth.
And here is how.
For about two months we were bombarded with information about the human atrocity that is Roman Abramovich. Links with Putin, dodgy business ventures, racketeering, corruption, the whole lot. He was the worst thing that happened to Europe since Adolf Hitler. He was the villain.
While there was a war going on in Ukraine, the UK was busy with the sale of Chelsea FC. To limit the negative PR hit, the Government decided to announce that all proceedings from the sale of Chelsea FC will go to the Ukrainian War Fund.
Yes, that is the missing scene from the movie but for that a bit later. Now we jump to the end of the movie.
Now the new hero is here and already working to put Chelsea back on track. Todd Boehly has already negotiated the transfers of Raheem Sterling from Manchester City and Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli. Not only that, but the club was also actively pursuing Jules Kounde from Sevilla and Robert Lewandowski from Bayern, who both joined Barcelona instead.
In the last days reports appeared that Chelsea is negotiating to bring in Josko Gvardiol from RB Leipzig and Marc Cucurella from Brighton.
It is easy to see that the transfer business of the club does not look too bad so far and many believe that Chelsea will make a proper statement on the market in the final 30 days. The new hero is entering the scene the exact same way the previous hero entered — big splash on the transfer market.
Despite the struggles from the end of the season due to the takeover, Chelsea FC may have some hick-ups along the way but nonetheless the club is far gone from the takeover uncertainty few months ago.
Now we can go back to the vengeance of the unsatisfied customer.
First of all, forgive me if I misunderstood the script or I mismanaged my expectations.
What I thought we were led to believe is that the Government is doing the right thing. The motives for the removal of Roman Abramovich was based on the desire to do good deed. Remove some of the dirty money by freezing assets and forced sale and also help the victims of war with the proceeds of those sales.
And here is where I am conflicted. I thought the situation with Chelsea FC was created in order to show empathy and help the war victims and people of Ukraine. However, we cannot judge the situation until the absolute end. And it seems the end is here.
I find it disturbing beyond belief that we still do not know where exactly the money from the sale is going. Currently they are sitting in an UK bank account waiting for a government licence to allow them to be distributed accordingly.
We do not know when the licence will be passed by the government, nor do we know where the money will go. Are they going to Mariupol, the Donbass region, maybe Kyiv? Replenishing the wheat fields perhaps, or maybe just for more guns. What bank holds them, how are they going to be transferred, who is the person responsible for the funds and the transfer itself? Who is responsible for the passing of the licence?
On the opposite side we have £45 million going to Manchester City for Raheem Sterling, around £40 million going to Napoli for Kalidou Koulibaly and there is not any problem with that. Chelsea FC is a public company and there should not be a problem with the club continuing to operate in the transfer market as they wish.
The problem comes from the fact that we know everything about the club and its operations on a daily basis while we have radio silence on the topic of the funds towards the Ukrainian War Fund.
The problem comes from the fact that the Government was eager to get the positive PR from removing Roman Abramovich, while the more prominent issue is being brushed aside. And nobody seems to care because Chelsea is back.
The issue was never “how can we help Ukraine?” and will never be because the UK does not really have any invested interest in helping Ukraine. However, there is a lot of invested interested in helping an “asset of cultural and heritage significance” like Chelsea FC. The positive PR was there, and the news cycles had to cover the great and timely job the Government did by resolving the takeover issues.
As to the war victims and the people of Ukraine, the UK has your back. The British Isles will continue to wear blue and yellow ribbons and remove any Russian products from their hospitality businesses. Gestures of empathy that on paper show some type of humanity but in reality, the impact is as big as the impact COVID restrictions had on Downing Street — negligible.
For me, the problem will always be not what you have done, but what you could have done and chose not to. You could have helped the Ukrainian War Fund like you promised, but that is not giving you anything back.
And until those funds are allocated as promised you may get one or two unsatisfied customers like myself which makes no difference in the grand scheme of things if the whole movie theatre is screaming “blue is the colour, Chelsea is the name.”
Usually, the casual movie fan will walk out of the cinema and will acknowledge this was a good movie. And that’s what they did, no questions asked. As Freddy Mercury once said “the show must go on.”
But be careful, sometimes the real show begins after the credits…
