I fail to understand your point. How is getting a loan "ruining the sport"?
Also where do you get that they get loans with hardly any interest, if any? What kind of bank or financial institution is gifting money away?
Neither me or the person I responded to mentioned loans to pay wages. Did you mean to respond to someone else?
The hate for Saudis and American's is 100% warranted
Juxtaposing those two together is completely unreasonable. Whataboutism and sports washing in action.
Boehly and Chelsea's transfers have been absurd, the Glazers are leeching money out of ManU, but the rest have been more or less the same as any other group of owners?
Arsenal is at a high point they haven't been at for a while, and Liverpool had an incredible run of success under FSG. I also think ownership at Villa, Palace, Fulham, Leeds, and West Ham has been fine? As a whole I don't think those owners are any better or worse than those at Spurs, Wolves, or Brighton.
Do people just randomly forget that some clubs used to be owned by banks and that’s how they are where they are today?
I’m not going to be an hypocrite and say Chelsea doesn’t have a role to play in the current state of football but if it wasn’t Chelsea it was going to be another club.
Current state of football was inevitable. It was going to happen regardless.
Bayer Leverkusen were founded by Bayer, the pharmaceutical company that produced chemical weapons for the Nazis during WWII. Bayern Munich used the swastika as their badge. PSG and Manchester City are oil clubs that actively cheat their books to be able to spend more. I don’t get what we’re doing here trying to paint Chelsea’s spending as some new wave ruining football.
These people who say “football is gone” frankly do not know what they’re talking about. Inflation (both within and outside the sport) has changed the landscape but there has always been stupid money and bad people within the sport.
The complainers are just nostalgic for the times before they knew and understood how bad it is. Picking any one club to vilify is foolish. It’s an arms race.
Are you really using Nazi Germany for an example as to why Chelsea aren't "the only ones ruining football"?
No, he's using Nazi Germany as an example of how football has been corrupted by less than benevolent interests for a very long time.
I don’t get what we’re doing here trying to paint Chelsea’s spending as some new wave ruining football.
Exactly!
This isn't even the first time Chelsea's spending ruined football!
I think people are nitpicking this article a bit. Saying Chelsea are poster boys for whats wrong with football today is a reasonable take. Sure, they could have said Newcastle or PSG or Man City, but the person is expressing an opinion and it's not a bad one, certainly not as bad as people in this comment section are making it out to be.
Cleaned through billions of money in Chelsea.
Did he? He lost money all throughout his ownership and last I heard still didn't have access to the sale proceeds. Plus rumor is he wasn't even allowed within the country for the last few years.
I don't think Roman "sportswashed" because I don't think he was trying to clean up his public persona, but instead wanted to have assets outside of Putin's control in case things went bad. And at least to date that plan backfired.
People don't read articles here, or anywhere on reddit tbh. One of my professors has his tests just be like from the first 3 pages of each textbook chapter, and people still don't read it. It's like 5 minutes of work lol.
Roman got a weird free pass in the press for his role in helping a dictator take power.
You left Arsenal out of that list. It's owned by an american holding company.
Once clubs went to be owned by billionaires, it was over.
It's like people not remembering Leeds. That was a disaster. Or Sunderland...
Malaga
Racing de Santander
Deportivo La Coruña
Or Southend. Or Scunthorpe. Or Bury. Or Macclesfield Town. In lower league football when things go wrong they can really go wrong. You could end up without a club at all.
Malaga
Racing de Santander
Deportivo La Coruña
How is Barcelona being in debt "where football has gone wrong", or how does it affect other clubs?
You seem to imply that cash injections from shady owners is better than the levers which are just the club selling it's own assets
He was an ex kgb agent surely they would have known he wasn't a good person yet.
There was massive public backlash when Roman took over.
I remember a certain fascist who was the owner of an Italian team in the 90s when they had huge success.
Cherry on the cake has thousands of people now like him.
And? What does that do for him? Sports-washing accusations work for Saudi clubs who are clearly trying to raise the image of their country on the world stage so that they're in the conversation for larger tourism and global events etc.
It doesn't fit with Roman's ownership of Chelsea because he didn't do anything during his time to obviously try to boost his own image, or even that of Russia, and I'd argue that the public perception of both Russia and of Abramovic is lower now than it was in 2003.
Maybe he just wanted a foreign asset, but he made a huge financial loss owning Chelsea. Maybe he was genuinely just a fan.
Chelsea were the most recent large club before the oil state clubs to use owner wealth to successfully break football apart
Other clubs have done it before (Blackburn rovers for example), Chelsea are just the most notable recent ones who took it further than it had gone before, until the oil clubs overtook them.
The oil clubs are doing the financial doping but also it’s much darker with them since they’re sportswashing as well - abramovich might have been a bastard but he’s leagues behind Saudi Arabia and the like in terms of crimes against humanity - hence those clubs are the new poster boys
So what does their state now actually have to do with the roman era? They barely have players from that era, different manager different staff.
It's more or less a different club. And the article was about him not caring about the club after the Todd era.
Blackburn's benefactor was a guy born in Blackburn, who made his money with a business based 5 miles from Ewood Park.
There's a huge difference between this and what Man City, PSG, et al are doing.
Barca literally sold their future income and merchandise rights for quick money. The gambled on short term success.
How so? It seems more stable from the players perspective, they have these nice long contracts so they know they're still a part of Chelsea despite being bounced from club to club and country to country on expiring contracts.
for players its fantastic, their future is secured for a long time and they are in a (hopefully) stable environment. For the club its a massive risk to make such long commitments
are you assuming that Roman kickstarted it despite Blackburn doing the same ‘overspending’ a decade prior.
Ties as in Saudi have money handled by Clearlake? i’m sure every team has someone tied to them that’s dodgy if that’s the thread you want to pull at.
Suppose Arsenal have one of those good billionaires that exist despite there being not a whole lot of difference between him and Todd
Thats exactly how washing money works. He will have lost some but has cleaned through legit money now. It also opens up loads of opportunities with legitimate business with the west.
Don't worry he will get his money. Even if he doesn't the intent to sportswash was still there.
Chelsea aren't close to the first to be bankrolled by an outside party.