Roman’s right-hand lady in line to tell all
ROMAN AbRAMOvich has never spoken in public since buying chelsea, nor is there any expectation that he will. So the nearest to that happening could be a landmark event at Stamford bridge next month.
Marina Granovskaia is a chelsea director and arguably the most powerful woman in English football as the club’s transfer and contract negotiator. She is also Abramovich’s day-to-day link with his football team.
She is confirmed to speak — at least according to the organisers — for the first time publicly to an audience of 300 senior sports industry figures at a women in sport conference planned by the Leaders brand on May 21.
Granovskaia, who sold David Luiz for a remarkable £50million, is understood to regard the occasion as an appropriate platform to reveal more about her work in sport, although chelsea said last night that her appearance is ‘still under discussion’.
The club are known to be keen for a fresh voice to be heard from their hierarchy following the departure last October of cEO Ron Gourlay, whom Granovskaia has effectively replaced.
She has worked for Abramovich since graduating from Moscow State University in 1997. her hard negotiating style is such that she allegedly told captain John Terry to ‘take it or f****** leave it’ before he signed his one-year contract extension.
THE
ridiculous saga of Greg Dyke’s £16,400 Parmigiani watch was finally concluded yesterday when the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee closed fanciful proceedings against Dyke after the watch was returned to Zurich. Dyke, who received it as a gift from the Brazilian football federation at the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo 10 months ago, had wanted to donate the proceeds from its sale to the FA cancer charity. But after months of legal wrangling, Breast Cancer Care gave the watch back. No wonder the Garcia report into World Cup bid corruption is still under wraps when FIFA spend nearly a year dealing with utter irrelevancies. GRAEME SwANN ( right) has shown his upset at having his F-type Jaguar stolen in Nottingham by asking nearly 700,000 Twitter followers to call the police if it is seen. Two- Jags Swann, who also had an XKR in the garage when he was an England player, did extra promotional work with Jimmy Anderson to qualify for the F-type. however, there will not be such a clamour for cars next season with Toyota due to replace Jaguar as England’s car providers.
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4 have escaped remarkably lightly from their mighty blunder by missing the start of the 2.40 race on the all-weather championship card at Lingfield on Good Friday because they were on a commercial ad break. A forgiving spokesman for sponsors 32Red, one of racing’s biggest backers, said: ‘It is obviously very unfortunate but it is an isolated incident and should be viewed in that light.’ Plenty of other sponsors would be demanding that heads roll for such an error — and they might if C4 muck up the Grand National. C4 say IMG’s production team were short-staffed at Lingfield.