Why Abramovich is paying a high price for meddling with Mourinho's team

By Brian Reade

Published 23:02 19/03/10

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I reckon real Chelsea fans excused the nation its face-splitting grin on Wednesday night.

The plastic ones though, who, prior to 2004 thought Chopper Harris was a helicopter, and who were probably responsible for the swathes of upturned seats after Inter scored the killer goal, may not see it that way.

But the ones who went down the Bridge way before Roman Abramovich doused them in dodgy roubles, will know that this was the downside of the Faustian Pact they signed up to. You takes your money and you has no choice when the man you took the money from shoots you in the foot.

Nobody can truly blame Abramovich for Chelsea's inability to win the Champions League because without him they might never have been up there with the Barcelonas.

But if Abramovich has learned anything about football these past seven years he will blame no-one but himself for Chelsea's failure at the highest level.

Under Jose Mourinho they were progressing towards the kind of domination of the European Cup that Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Ajax, Liverpool and AC Milan enjoyed. By now they could have been a couple of years away from a third title in half-a-dozen seasons.

It wasn't Mourinho and his supposedly over-cautious style that killed that. It was an autocratic owner, with no knowledge of football, who said this is my train set, I'll drive the engine and pick the staff.

The problem was he also picked the passengers (Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack) and the train went off the rails. A single FA Cup since the Special One left is all that's come out of the wreckage.

There's little doubt if he'd just kept bank-rolling Mourinho and stayed on his yacht he'd have won the Champions League. But megalomaniacs always want more. It's their fatal flaw. That's why Shakespeare made a few bob out of tragedies.

The Russian has employed six managers in pursuit of his Holy Grail, four of whom are among the best in the world.

But there's no point in hiring the best if you don't allow them the time to build. Teams that evolve into dynasties have a manager with a vision. Men like Bob Paisley and Alex Ferguson who replace players, with younger, better ones, as soon as they peak. And oh how this old Chelsea side has been crying out for that.

Instead Abramovich prefers to trust his senior players, taking soundings about his managers from them. But most footballers see a team in terms of their own survival. When their time is up who grasses on them?

That's the dilemma Chelsea face after the emphatic lesson Mourinho has just taught his old charges. How do they re-build? And the noises coming out of Stamford Bridge don't sound promising. More cash thrown at more big names the owner covets and rumours that Carlo Ancelotti may be on his away if he fails to win this year's title.

The cynic's retort to claims that you can't buy history is that you can buy a future. But so far, in English football, that remains to be proven. Peter Kenyon's incredibly arrogant claim that come 2014 Chelsea would be the biggest club in the world, seems embarrassingly naive now.

In fact all Abramovich's Project has shown thus far is that even when you throw untold riches at a football team there is no guarantee you'll get what you desire.

Chelsea's pact with the devil is unravelling. And anyone who loves what football was and hates what it's becoming, is right to wear a grin.

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Is it safe to come out yet? I mean, is that Jose love-fest over?

Take Sky Sports before Wednesday's game. There was so much lust for the Special One I thought Richard Keys was directing a film called Brokeback Mourinho. Fair play to Graeme Souness for cutting through the panting by demanding to know if a game of football was due to take place.

I wouldn't mind, but all the swooning missed what really showed Jose as a class act at Stamford Bridge. It wasn't his coolness, charm, designer stubble, wit, tactics or humble acceptance of victory.

It was his refusal to tie his scarf into the double-loop designer noose that every brainless lemming believes makes them look sexy.

Now that's style. Roberto Mancini, take note.

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Had Inter failed to get past Chelsea Italian football's European co-efficient would have fallen so low they were in danger of losing their fourth Champions League place to Germany.

How quickly power can shift.

Throw in the French renaissance and England having only half as many teams in the last eight as they did last year and the proposed play-off for our fourth Champions League spot shows Richard Scudamore in his true light.

An arrogant, ignorant laughing-stock so consumed with greed there's pound signs were his eyes used to be.

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