There is little question when it comes to Chelsea Football Club that the two main owners that a lot of people will know about are Roman Abramovich and Clearlake/Todd Bowley. Elsewhere on this site you can read about the likes of Ken Bates and the Mears family. Between them, they owned Chelsea for nearly a hundred years. In spite of how long they owned the club, however, they were not overly successful. It took the arrival of a Russian billionaire to bring long-term success to Stamford Bridge. This is the story of Roman Abramovich and his time at Chelsea Football Club.
Abramovich’s Early Life
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich was born on the 24th of October 1966 In Saratov, Russia, which was known as the Soviet Union at the time. His father, Aaron Abramovich Leibovich, worked in the Economic Council of the Komi ASSR, whilst his mother was a music teacher. He lost his mother when he was one and his father when he was three, with both of his parents being of Jewish descent. His grandparents on his mother’s side were Ukrainian Jews and fled to Russia from Ukraine in the early days of the Second World War.
His paternal grandparents were Belarusian Jews living in Belarus before moving to Lithuania after the revolution. The Soviet Union annexed Lithuania prior to the Nazi invasion of the USSR, resulting in the whole Abramovich family being sent to Siberia. Having lost both of his parents at such a young age, Roman was raised by his relatives and spent much of his youth in the Komi Republic in the northern part of Russia. As was the case with many young Russians, Abramovich had to serve in the military when he was younger, during which time he began amassing his fortune.
Becoming Rich
Roman Abramovich began his working life as a street trader before becoming a mechanic at a local factory. He attended the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas, which was based in Moscow, before trading commodities for the trading firm Runicom of Switzerland. In some ways, Abramovich was born at exactly the right time, thanks in no small part to the political reform movement of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s, known as Perestroika. In Russian, ‘Perestroika’ refers to the restructuring of the political economy in the country at the time, hoping to end the era of stagnation.
Perestroika allowed opportunities for privatisation across the Soviet Union, with Roman Abramovich gaining a chance to make his old business legitimate. Alongside his first wife Olga, he set up a company making dolls, and within a few years, his wealth had spread from oil conglomerates through to pig farms. At various times throughout his life, he has traded in the likes of timber, foodstuffs and sugar, and in 1992, he was arrested and later sent to prison, accused of theft of government property. It was, though, his friendship with Boris Berezovsky that truly led to him making his millions.
The two businessmen registered an offshore company called Runicom Limited that had five subsidiaries. Abramovich headed up the Moscow affiliate of the Swiss firm, and in the August of 1995, Boris Yeltsin decreed that Sibneft would be created, putting Abramovich and Berezovsky as its top executives. In 1995, there was a rigged auction that saw the pair take a controlling interest of the large oil company. It took place thanks to the controversial loans-for-shares programme, with each partner paying $100 million for half of the company, which was above the stake’s stock market value of $150 million at the time.
That initial outlay quickly turned into billions. The company’s fast-rising nature left many people wondering whether the real cost of the company should have been in the billions of dollars. By the year 2000, Sibneft annually produced in the region of $3 billion worth of oil. Just three years later, the Russian billionaire made his move to become the owner of Chelsea Football Club. It was in the June of 2003 when Abramovich bought the London Club from the former owner Ken Bates. Bates bought Chelsea for £1 and later sold the club for £140 million making around £17 million profit.
The Chelsea Era Begins
No sooner had Abramovich spent over £100 million to buy the companies that controlled Chelsea did he embark on an ambitious program that looked to turn it into one of the best football clubs on the planet. His aim was to compete with the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid as footballing dynasties, announcing an immediate plan to build a new state-of-the-art training complex. But the end of the June 2005, Chelsea had posted record losses of £140 million with no expectation to record a trading profit prior to 2010.
It was largely thanks to the money spent by Roman Abramovich at Chelsea that FIFA decided to introduce financial fair play regulations. Having finished fourth in the Premier League this season before, Chelsea ended the 2003-2004 season in second place, whilst this was an obvious improvement, Abramovich wasn’t happy. As a result, he sacked Claudio Ranieri and brought in José Mourinho to replace him. Mario had enjoyed success at Porto winning the Champions League the previous season. Abramovich spent hundreds of millions buying Portuguese players for Mourinho.
It was money well spent. Chelsea ended the 2004-2005 campaign not only as the winners of the League Cup but also as Premier League champions. It was the clubs first top flight title for 50 years and there was only the second time in the club’s history that Chelsea were English champions. Whilst the Russian was clearly happy to spend his money, it would be unfair to say that he was simply there as a cheque-book figure. Instead, he could be seen to be visibly emotional during matches and would often visit the players in the dressing room at the end of each game.
Although Mourinho had won the title again in his second season, things began to fall apart during his third campaign. The result was that the Portuguese manager left by mutual consent on the 20th of September 2007, with the Israeli manager Avram Grant coming to replace him. This proved to be the start of an era in which Abramovich would sack managers any time they appeared to underperform. Although the Premier League title went down to the final day, Chelsea could only draw with Bolton Wanderers whilst Manchester United defeated Wigan athletic to take the trophy. They also lost to the Red Devils in the Champions League final.
Abramovich sacked Grant in the week of that final defeat, and brought in Luiz Felipe Scolari. Other managers who would work under Abramovich included the likes of Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti and André Villas-Boas. Abramovich was never afraid to ring the changes if he felt as though a manager was under-performing. Given the fact that the Blues won multiple Premier League titles as well as two Champions Leagues and numerous domestic trophies during his time as owner it is likely that most Chelsea fans would say his approach was the correct one to take.
Controversies
It is perhaps of little surprise to learn that Roman Abramovich has been embroiled in numerous scandals over the years. In the January of 2005, for example, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or EBDR, said that it would sue Abramovich over a £9 million loan. It claimed that it was owed £12.45 million by Runicom, whilst an Abramovich spokesperson claimed that the loan had been previously repaid. Three years later and The Times reported that papers showed that Abramovich had paid billions of dollars for political favours and protection fees in Russia.
According to a Guardian report in 2015, Abramovich had a $766 million steak in Evra, a steel and mining company. That meant that he owned about a quarter of the largest coalmine in Russia. When The Conversation did an investigation into the most polluting billionaires, Roman Abramovich came out on top. They said that he was responsible for more than 30,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018 alone, with more than two-thirds of that coming from his yacht. It is, of course, unlikely that many people will be surprised that a Russian billionaire might not care too much about the planet.
In the March of 2004, Sibneft agreed to a three year sponsorship deal of the Russian football club CSKA Moscow that would cost them in the region of £50 million. Although the company attempted to explain that the decision had been made at the management level, many viewed it as an attempt by Abramovich to counter accusations that he was ‘unpatriotic’ that had been made at the time of his purchase of Chelsea. Rules put in place by UEA prevented one person from owning more than one team participating in their competitions, so it was suggested that Abramovich had no equity in the club.
Although an investigation by UEFA cleared Abramovich of having any conflict of interest, he was still named the most influential person in Russian football in a Russian magazine called pro sport at the end of the June of 2004. In May of the following year, CSKA won the UEFA up, becoming the first Russian club to ever win a major European honour. By October, Abramovich had sold his interest in Sibneft and the company was taken over by Gazprom, sponsors of Zenit Saint Petersburg, who chose to end the sponsorship agreement.
In 2021, Abramovich was criticised for attempting to enter Chelsea into the newly formed European super league. The competition was considered to be one full of greediness amongst the richest largest football clubs on the planet as well as Tottenham Hotspur, resulting in Abramovich choosing to pull the club out of the competition just two days after it had been announced. The following year, it was reported that Abramovich was owed as much as $2 billion by Chelsea. It was reported by Forbes that the money was an insurance in case of British government sanctions against him.
Abramovich’s Personal Life
Abramovich has been married and divorced three times. In the December of 1987, after a brief period of time spent in the Russian army, he married Olga Yurevna Lysova. They divorced Just three years later, then a year after that he married a former stewardess on Russian Aeroflot called Irina Malandina. The pair had five children together named Ilya, Arina, Sofia, Arkadiy and Anna. Anna is his eldest daughter and graduated from Columbia University before living in New York City. His daughter Sofia, meanwhile, lives in London and became a professional equestrian after graduating from Royal Holloway University of London.
On the 15th of October 2006 the newspaper the news of the world reported that Malandina had hired two of the top divorce lawyers in the United Kingdom after reports emerged of Abramovich’s close relationship with a 25-year-old named Dasha Zhukova. She was the daughter of a prominent Russian oligarch named Alexander Zhukov. Although the Abramovich’s denied the suggestions, they got divorced in Russia in March of the following year with Abramovich paying a settlement of around £200 million. The billionaire then married Dasha Zhukova in 2008 having two more children, a son and a daughter.
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine & the End of the Abramovich Era
In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The world reacted in shock, with numerous countries looking to find ways to put pressure on Russia to end the invasion. That included sanctions being put on any Russian billionaires living and operating in the United Kingdom. On the 26th of February 2022, Abramovich said that he would handover the stewardship of Chelsea Football Club to the Chelsea Foundation trustees. They did not immediately agree, however, citing legal concerns around the rules of the charity commission for England and Wales.
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has said in a statement he has “taken the decision to sell the club”.
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) March 2, 2022
Within a week, Abramovich had written off roughly £1.5 billion owed to him by the club and had put it up for sale. He pledged that net proceeds from any sale would be given to victims of the war in Ukraine. In the week of the sanctions placed on Abramovich, Jim Radcliffe, who would later purchase a steak in Manchester United, made a bid of £4.25 billion for Chelsea, but this was rejected. The club was eventually sold to Todd Boehly, a US businessman, who bought it alongside other members of a group who are hoping to seize upon its value.
On the 10th of March 2022 it was announced that the British government had levied sanctions against Abramovich and allowing Chelsea to operate under a special license until the end of May. The Premier League disqualified Abramovich as a club director. In the weeks that followed it emerged the Abramovich had been involved in trying to forge a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. It was claimed by an American government official that the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelenskyy, had asked the US government not to sanction Abramovich given his importance to the attempt to broker a peace deal.