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Roman Abramovich could have bought Arsenal instead of Chelsea

Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea for £140m and started injecting huge money in transfers and other football activities.

Abramovich


Bengaluru, January 7: Chelsea football club certainly can be termed as one of the best English clubs in the last two decades with the London based side winning a massive five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, the 2012 Champions League and the 2013 Europa League.

However, their journey from a midtable side to English powerhouse started to transpire 16 years back when a Russian Billionaire - Roman Abramovich bought the side for £140m and started injecting huge money in transfers and other football activities.

From Jose Mourinho to Carlo Ancelotti to Antonio Conte the Blues have had several big managers in their dugout who helped them in glory while they acquired players like Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, Eden Hazard on a repeated basis to steady the drive. All such feat came with the leadership of Abramovich who unquestionably is called as one of the most passionate and helpful owners in World football.

But apparently, all of these could have been pretty different given he decided to splash the clash at his preference at first.

According to a recent revelation, made by two writers from the Wall Street Journal in their book The Club, the Russian oligarch, worth an estimated £9.5billion could have bought Chelsea's arch-rivals Arsenal instead 16 years ago should he not have been mistakenly discouraged from making an offer by a team of ignorant Swiss bankers.

The American journalists conducted a series of interviews with executives from a number leading Premier League clubs, according to The Sun and from they have suggested that Abramovich at first was interested in taking over Arsenal and hired Swiss bank UBS to examine the economics of English top-flight football in 2003.

The Swiss economics however immediately wrongly conducted the message that 'Arsenal were categorically not for sale' which prompted the Russian personnel to splash cash on another London based side, Chelsea.

But in the revelation made by the book, as per former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein should Abramovich had then offered the side take over the owners would have happily decided to sell it to the Russian.

Arsenal was later bought by Stan Kroenke and Usmanov, but they have not tasted much of that success compared to Chelsea. They are yet to win a Premier League title since 2002 and has seen very little money spent by the owners on improving the squad properly - just opposite to their biggest rival.

Someone's loss is someone's gain.

Story first published: Monday, January 7, 2019, 17:55 [IST]
Other articles published on Jan 7, 2019