When success comes before accountability

Wembley showpiece takes back seat in situation surrounding Chelsea owner

WHEN Stuart Atwell peeps his whistle for the last time at the end of this afternoon’s Carabao Cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool, a match will have been played, a team will have won, before a trophy and medals are handed out.

England’s second biggest cup competition has long since lost its lustre as a variety of rule changes have robbed it of its uniqueness while later entry points for seeded teams turned it into a predictable carve up between England’s top four. It has ensured that the buildup has often been muted but even for the Carabao Cup, this season’s lead-in feels particularly quiet.

It should be anything but. This pair have been world and European champions in two out of the last three years and, in two thrilling Premier League matches this season, have proved impossible to separate.

Part of the problem in giving any credible critique of the teams involved is pitted against the murderous events orchestrated by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine this week. Even the Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel admitted on Friday that his players had been distracted by the uncertainty surrounding his club in the aftermath of Thursday’s invasion.

Assessing the merits of the participants at Wembley would seem flippant enough when tanks are rolling through Kyiv, bombs are falling from the skies and petrified children huddle in underground train stations as the Russian army advances, but it’s another matter altogether when one of the clubs involved is owned by Roman Abramovich, a man who has long been alleged to have close links to the Putin regime.

In recent days, Chris Bryant MP has asked the Prime Minister Boris Johnson questions in the House of

Commons regarding sanctions pertaining to Abramovich, further stating that the Russian should be “no longer able to own a football club in this country” after reading an excerpt of what he claimed was a leaked 2019 document from the Home Office.

“As part of HMG’s [Her Majesty’s government] Russia strategy aimed at targeting illicit finance and malign activity, Abramovich remains of interest to HMG due to his links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices,’” Bryant told the Commons. “‘An example of this is Abramovich admitting in court proceedings that he paid for political influence. Therefore HMG is focused on ensuring individuals linked to illicit finance and malign activity are unable to base themselves in the UK, and will use the relevant tools at its disposal, including immigration powers, to prevent this.’ That’s nearly three years ago. And yet remarkably little has been done.”

Yesterday, Abramovich said he was handing over “stewardship” of the club to its charitable arm in a carefully worded statement on the club’s website. It is not just the Conservative government that has tended to look the other way where Abramovich is concerned, however.

English football has been complicit for almost two decades following the Russian’s purchase of Chelsea in 2003, a term which has coincided with the club’s most successful period ever.

Scrutiny of his past has always been scant, partly because of how secretive he is but also because the general narrative has tended to side with the manner in which Abramovich has turned Chelsea into a European superpower.

Every so often someone breaks ranks, however. Abramovich sued the award-winning journalist Catherine Belton after she alleged in her book Putin’s People that he bought Chelsea on the instruction of the Russian president. A judge subsequently ruled in Abramovich’s favour and an apology was given by publishers HarperCollins.

When Abramovich marked 10 years as Chelsea owner, Sky Sports ran a series of tributes to the Russian.

One such hagiography went awry when The Times journalist Matthew Syed appeared on an afternoon programme alongside Tony Cascarino and swiftly eviscerated Abramovich’s reputation.

“One has to look at how he amassed his wealth and his QC Jonathan Sumption admitted in open court . . . that he had secured his money in a rigged privatisation. You can’t look at this in a purely footballing context, you have to look at the wider moral context and in that sense it has had a deeply corrosive impact on English football. He was never in Chelsea to make a profit, to secure a return.

“He bought Chelsea for protection. He knew that there was a risk that Putin would come after him for his role in this very dubious practice

Even Thomas Tuchel admitted on Friday that his players had been distracted

[the rigged privatisation].”

Jim White and Kirsty Gallacher, the Sky anchors, visibly squirmed, the latter saying “he has put Chelsea on the map, he has put British football on the map, whether it is spending in excess or not”. Too often – especially where Chelsea are concerned – that is all that seems to have mattered.

Certainly they have escaped the kind of rigorous scrutiny that has recently been visited upon Newcastle United and Manchester City for their links to Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi respectively.

Yet, as the Champions League final was pivoted away from St Petersburg on Friday afternoon, the club aiming to return to that showpiece event to defend its title finds itself lost in the same moral maze that has led UEFA to act decisively by moving the final to Paris, the same conundrum that has led F1 to cancel the Russian Grand Prix, of Manchester United to cancel its sponsorship with Aeroflot and of Schalke 04 to end its association with Russian gas company Gazprom.

The English Football League discussed on Friday the prospect of making a gesture of support towards Ukraine such as illuminating Wembley’s arches in yellow and blue, the colours of the Ukrainian flag, but there were some within the EFL who were conscious of potentially aggravating a section of the Chelsea support.

But Chelsea fans have long revelled in the trappings of their association with Abramovich and while some are now embarrassed by that relationship, others have barely stopped to question his presence at their club and are still defending him. After his statement yesterday in which he vowed to take a back seat, some may continue to.

What’s absolutely clear is that a logical consequence of dining with the devil is that one day you are going to end up feeling very queasy indeed.