roman abramovitch amène le danger.
désolé ,ça tombe mal,je peux pas tout traduire.
mais l'article demande comment on peut faire pour donner une amende à celui qui achète absolument tout dans le football européén.
is there anyone out there brave enough to take on Chelsea before they eat the English game?
By Martin Samuel
the times
SO WHAT do you fine the man who has everything? It is a serious problem, one that needs to be addressed if Chelsea Football Club is not to become a monster that eats the English game. Were Roman Abramovich’s henchmen brought to book over the alleged illegal courtship of Ashley Cole, what censure would be appropriate? More importantly, what would be a deterrent for a man whose personal wealth could buy and sell entire nations?
Abramovich’s fortune is estimated at £7.5 billion. Suspend rational argument and imagine that the Premier League fined him £6.5 billion; that would still leave enough for 37 Wayne Rooneys, if using the American definition of one billion, or 37,000 if using the British. Either way, Abramovich would continue to have more disposable income than any chairman in the country.
Say the matter was also referred to the FA, which decided to suspend transfer-market activity at Chelsea for a year. Apart from giving Pini Zahavi a coronary, what would this do? A combination of Abramovich’s opulence and José Mourinho’s expertise has already produced a squad with potential to win an unprecedented four trophies. So that horse has bolted, too.
There is one sanction that would have an impact, but would anyone be brave enough to impose it? Well, yes. One guy, but nobody will listen to him.
The other day, on a radio talk show, an Arsenal supporter said that Chelsea should be docked ten points. They had a good laugh about it and off he went. We get some right nutters on here, was the consensus.
Yet think on. Is there any punishment more certain of ensuring good business practice at Chelsea? I am not saying that it is right. I am not even saying that it is fair. But effective? Definitely. Do you think Peter Kenyon would be seen within a mile of another club’s player after a precedent such as that? Do you think any chief executive would, for that matter?
What are the chances of it happening, though? Zero. Right now, Arsenal’s investigation has not even got around to asking Cole whether he met representatives of Chelsea and, according to Arsène Wenger, it never will. The Premier League insists that this is a victimless crime unless Arsenal make a formal complaint, while the FA peers out from behind Premier League skirts, scared stiff that Brian Barwick, the new chief executive, might encounter controversy in his first week.
Heaven forbid it should be suggested that a supposed clandestine meeting with a player contracted to a rival team brings the game into disrepute. Indeed, one wonders what does bring the game into disrepute these days, apart from criticising referees. A typical reaction to claims that Abramovich’s little helpers had been caught shacked up with the Arsenal left back was a shrug, a shake of the head and a murmured: “That’s football.”
Apparently, because it is football, respected businessmen can display the morals of Trotter’s Independent Traders. That is why Mohamed Al Fayed, as chairman of Fulham, attempts to default on big transfer payments when the remaining six days in the week he runs Harrods very properly, without ever telling the counter assistants to take a twenty and give change from a ten.
The fashionable view is that the Cole affair is symptomatic of Chelsea’s negative influence on football, coupled with the doom-laden prophecy that Abramovich’s billions will be the most harmful thing to happen to our game.
This is wrong. Properly regulated, Chelsea will be no different from any other large, influential and financially powerful club: they will be selfish, over-bearing and will seek to crush anything in their path. Big deal. It is too late to start agonising over the good of the game now, as if Abramovich is a demon sweeping away what was previously noble and pure. That was a discussion for the last century, when football’s governors were busily forming competitions to benefit those who needed protection least, at the expense of the most vulnerable.
We now know how it is and how it will be: the Champions League screws everybody below the top four, the Premiership screws everybody below that, the second division screws the third division, and so on down the pyramid. All bar the super-rich have been steadily marginalised over the past decade, so why is Abramovich the bogeyman? Made to work within the law, his club will be no worse for football than the previous elite: exactly the same, but no worse.
So on the up side, this is nothing we have not seen before, we might win the European Cup again and at least Manchester United supporters will find out what it is like to have been the rest of us these past ten years.
It has been said that Chelsea are different because previous inhabitants of football’s first-class cabin made their money from the game. Not so. Blackburn Rovers won the title on a personal fortune rent from steel, Liverpool were backed by Littlewoods, Arsenal have roots in London financial institutions, while United are a successful plc that has brilliantly exploited a freakish moment in time with football’s expansion across a global market, just as the clever Abramovich got lucky in post-Soviet Russia. Both Reds were in the right place at the right time.
Indeed, the sound of the Stretford End groping for the moral high ground during the Carling Cup semi-final by claiming that Chelsea had sold their soul to a Russian should win a Queen’s award for irony. At least Abramovich goes to games. United are largely owned by three foreigners — two Irishmen and an American — who never set foot in the place.
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