English football: now leased out

Over the last couple of months, the average fan of English soccer has been reminded that as much of the action can be off the field as on it. First, the worlds biggest football club sold its biggest star to some other club from Madrid. And then the fans of Chelsea football club woke up to find out that the club had a new owner, a Russian billionaire. As it happens, the fans seem pragmatically sanguine about this apparent loss of domestic influence in the homeland of Association Football -- perhaps reasoning that if foreigners are falling over themselves to pay huge sums of money for English stuff, then so much the better. In addition, they have plenty of practice of seeing their top clubs as playthings of rich guys.

Check out the cover of today's Irish Times -- it shows three fat rich guys working through a round of golf in County Kildare, one of those tournaments in which the fat rich guys get to play with the top stars. Of the three, two are the biggest individual shareholders in Manchester United, and the other is biggest shareholder in Glasgow Celtic. And if you want an illustration of the difference between "Irish" and "Oirish", these guys are it. They trade on the brogue, but their world of international wheeling and dealing (not to mention tax avoidance) has them outside the country as much they are in it. In fact, we're willing to bet that the Russian billionaire spends more nights in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea than JP Mcmanus (one of the Oirish guys) spends in Ireland.

Within the world of vanity investments, we think the Russian guy actually did a pretty good deal. The reporting of the deal seems inordinantly focused on the fact that in addition to paying 60 million quid to buy the club, he's assuming another 80 million in debt. But Dudes! It's not like the club has no assets! Leaving aside the property, Chelsea has a pretty entertaining fan base to trade on. One of the typically specific details about an early 1990s political sex scandal in the Tory government involved a minister's preference for wearing the jersey of his beloved Chelsea while er...bonking.

More seriously, Chelsea qualified for the Champions League next season. So (pending the minor matter of a play-in game in August), the new owner gets to see his team play the top teams in Europe next season. This BBC interview with him raises (and then dodges) the question of the shady provenance of Russian wealth, but compared to other club owners, can this guy be any dodgier than the owner of AC Milan, Mr Silvio Berlusconi?