Not Manchester United, not Internazionale, not even Real Madrid. It has taken a Russian billionaire to show that, in football, money can get you any signature. Roman Abramovich is believed to have pledged $350 million to the restructuring of the Chelsea squad, sending European football into a tizzy.By making audacious bids for Europe’s top players, he’s not only kept rival clubs in England and across the continent on their toes but threatens to destabilise a depressed football market. Trying to second-guess him — is he serious or not, does he really want to shell out $160 million for Thierry Henry and Patrick Viera? — is probably a waste of time. Instead, rival clubs have been reduced to issuing statements saying their best players aren’t for sale.Actually, like a goalkeeper moving before the penalty-kick is taken, they may be making the Russian’s job easier. Suddenly, no one is safe. Blackburn, for example, don’t wish to sell their prodigious Irish winger Damien Duff but a clause in the player’s contract mentions a figure which, if offered, the club are bound to consider. That figure ($30m) proved to be beyond the reach of Manchester United but not Chelsea. And, though Arsenal and Liverpool have sought to fend off bids for Henry, Vieira and Steven Gerrard, money talks. Enough to get Christian Vieri to seriously consider moving to England, to get Juan Sebastian Veron off Alex Ferguson’s hands and possibly even land Patrick Kluivert.It’s not just on the field that Abramovich is playing his cards. He needs a big name to manage big names and they don’t come bigger than Sven-Goran Eriksson. The England manager’s meeting with the Russian last week generated a controversy that is yet to die down; Eriksson’s old habit of flirting with job offers — he considered joining Manchester United soon after taking on the England job — has been reactivated by recent criticism of his managing of the national team.But the Swede is more than just a big-name manager; his CV has him linked to several of the world’s best players in England, Spain and Italy and few have a bad thing to say of him. He could also be the lure for Chelsea’s biggest target, Juventus playmaker Pavel Nedved, whom he managed, along with Veron, at Lazio. The Czech is currently valued at more than $100 million.So what’s the origin of all this money? Abramovich (36), the second most wealthy person in Russia and 49th in the world, rose from humble beginnings — his father was a construction worker who died when he was four. One of many hopefuls exploiting the nascent capitalism in the early 1990s, his ticket to glory was his linking up with Boris Berezhovsky, the biggest tycoon and close friend of Boris Yeltsin.Two years ago, Berezhovsky was forced to leave Russia after a slew of criminal charges against him. His understudy became the overlord of an empire that included stakes in oil, aluminium and Aeroflot. He became political overlord too, getting himself elected in 2000 as governor of the desolate Chutotka province in Siberia and reportedly spending more than $200 million on its development. Already owner of a hockey team, he decided to diversify into British football and reportedly considered Manchester United and Arsenal before settling on Chelsea. United was a turn-off because of the money involved (approximately $1.3 billion); Arsenal because of the fact that he’d have to bankroll the new stadium.Chelsea came relatively on the cheap, at $220 million, and offered him the possibilities of rebuilding and reviving. While he does that, top clubs in the Premiership and across Europe will be looking over their shoulders. The Russian has started his revolution.
