A time welcomed with open arms to come and invest their fortune in the Premier League, the Russian oligarchs are no longer welcome there since the war in Ukraine: Roman Abramovich put Chelsea up for sale, and Alisher Usmanov was put on the job. away by Everton.
“I have always made my decisions with the interests of the club at heart. [et] in the current situation, I have made the decision to sell the club,” Abramovich said in a statement released by the Blues on Wednesday.
An announcement which confirmed the information that has been circulating in the press for a few days, the pressure having considerably increased on the 55-year-old billionaire who is not yet subject to financial sanctions from the European Union or the British authorities, but who is now paying for his closeness to Vladimir Putin.
By buying the London club in 2003 for 140 million pounds (238 million $CA), Abramovich was a pioneer among the wealthy foreign patrons of the Premier League.
He was followed by his compatriot Alisher Usmanov, who entered the capital of Arsenal in 2007 to go up to 30%, before selling everything in 2018 with a huge capital gain.
American investors, such as the Glazer family in Manchester United, from 2005, and Fenway Sport Group in Liverpool (2010), followed suit, followed a little later by the Emiratis in Manchester City, or more recently the Saudis in Newcastle.
A charity fund for Ukraine
Often criticized for its lack of zeal in its procedure for vetting new investors, the Premier League has built its European domination on hundreds of millions of pounds arriving mainly from abroad over the past 15 years.
But the war in Ukraine and the financial sanctions taken against major players in the Russian oligarchy have considerably increased the pressure on English soccer.
Abramovich had tried to save what could be saved by entrusting the daily management of the club to the six directors of his charitable foundation on Saturday, before deciding to sell.
“Please believe that it was an incredibly difficult decision to make, and it pains me to leave the club in this way,” he further explained, assuring that he would not ask for the reimbursement of the 1, £5 billion (CA$2.55 billion) in loans he has made to the club over the years, but would not sell the club out either.
He also promised that the “net proceeds” of the sale would be donated to a charitable foundation for the benefit of “all the victims of the war in Ukraine”.
On Wednesday morning, Hansjorg Wyss, one of Switzerland’s richest men, told the newspaper Blick that he had been offered to buy Chelsea.
“I still leave myself four or five days of reflection”, added Wyss, specifying that three other people had been surveyed and that if he were to launch, it would be “with a consortium of six to seven investors”.
Already suitors for Chelsea
Among the other potential buyers is, according to the daily The TimesBritain’s richest man, Jim Radcliffe, boss of Ineos, who had already considered an offer in 2019 before turning to OGC Nice, in France, and Todd Boehli, an American billionaire, co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, according to the New York Times.
Another Russian billionaire involved in the Premier League, even if he has no stake in a club, Alisher Usmanov was banned from English soccer on Wednesday, the day after his withdrawal from the International Fencing Federation, which he presided.
Everton announced on Wednesday “suspending” its sponsorship deals with USM, Megafon and Yota, three of the companies in which the Russian-Uzbek tycoon has significant stakes.
After selling his shares in Arsenal, he became one of the main backers of Everton, bought in 2016 by the Iranian Farhad Moshiri, with whom he was associated with the capital of the Gunners.
The Toffees’ training ground had been renamed USM Finch Farm, and Usmanov also had an exclusive £30 million (CA$51 million) option to name the new stadium under construction after one of his companies.
The great uncertainty about the conflict in Ukraine makes it impossible to make any credible predictions about its long-term fallout, but English football is already feeling the shock waves.