Roman Abramovich - football revolutionist

Roman Abramovich is a man of few words. He rarely talks about money, football or himself, but London is abuzz with rumours surrounding the multimillionaire who bought Chelsea ten years ago for €165m in a deal which revolutionised football, both in England and abroad. On 1st July 2003 Abramovich took over the club and since then he has spent more than €1.5bn which has brought him 13 trophies under nine different coaches.

When the Russian went to see the stadium for the first time, he did so from a helicopter and it is said that he asked one of his staff: "What? We're going to buy that dump?" Abramovich had mistaken Stamford Bridge for the Fulham stadium, barely two kilometres away.

Abramovich came out of nowhere. Chelsea's previous owners admit to being in the dark about him. "I searched for him on Google, but found nothing. Nobody knew anything about him. I wasn't sure if we were being filmed for 'Candid Camera'," Chelsea's former chief executive, Trevor Birch recalls in a conversation with the Evening Standard newspaper.

"We reached an agreement in ten minutes. It was the biggest deal ever done in football." When Abramovich bought Chelsea at the age of 36, the team already had foreign stars in its ranks, but under his predecessor, Ken Bates, it had accumulated £80m in debts. How things have changed under the Russian.


/Marca.Com/