Manchester United fans who imagine an uncertain future and wonder where the good old days have gone might want to spare a thought this week for Chelsea fans: a club being quietly dismantled and reduced to size by a bunch of private equity cowboys from California, for whom a British football institution is merely a speculative investment for their portfolio.
Footballers are a commodity for Clearlake, the club’s owners, as Deivid Washington’s extraordinary Deadline Day story only served to demonstrate. Clearlake’s gamble on the 19-year-old Brazilian for Chelsea hasn’t exactly paid off – he’s played 25 minutes of football since arriving a year ago – so they attempted to offload him to Strasbourg, another club in their ownership group, for a fee of £17m, which would have turned their initial outlay on the utterly unproven player into a £5m profit.
In grey financial terms, this looked an awful lot like an “associated party transaction” – selling yourself stuff you already own in order to raise some cash. Clearlake has so far sold itself two Chelsea FC hotels for £75.6m, Chelsea FC’s women’s team (which it valued at £150m) and, as the New York Times put it on Friday, it is now adding “a human being in the form of Brazilian player Washington.” Chelsea called off the transfer after concerns were raised about the deal and its compliance with competition rules.
This isn’t exactly an original idea. Manchester City sold their player image rights to a company they ran themselves and charged one of their sister clubs for professional football advice when they needed to raise money for their accounts. But extreme financial engineering is required when, like Chelsea, you’ve spent over £1bn on players and are heading for a breach of UEFA and Premier League spending rules.
Clearlake have been peddling a tale all summer about recouping £200m from sales to pay for their latest player signings. And how much exactly had they raked in on Friday night? The three substantial deals, for Conor Gallagher, Ian Maatsen and Romelu Lukaku, amounted to just £100m. The rest of the players they sold on were loans or pocket change.
Chelsea is being dismantled by its owners – a bunch of private equity cowboys from California
For Clearlake, Chelsea Football Club is a new speculative bet for their investment portfolio
The deadline day saga surrounding Deivid Washington (pictured) showed that football players are a commodity for Clearlake
The Saudis proved exceptionally helpful on Monday when Al-Nassr paid Chelsea £19.1m for 19-year-old Brazilian winger Angelo Gabriel, who has not played a single minute for Chelsea, yet leaves for £6m more than they paid for him. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, PIF, which controls Newcastle United, has invested in Clearlake and is bolstering that investment by bailing Chelsea out of trouble. You can cut through the cynicism surrounding Chelsea dumping surplus players in the desert with a knife.
The Greek leagues could take more of Chelsea’s discarded points. Olympiacos and Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis was in the Chelsea boardroom on Sunday. That could see Chelsea balance the books for the summer.
We are talking about a club that starts the season without a shirt sponsor and with a stadium that dates back to the last century, with narrow, steep staircases and toilets that are ‘unhygienic’, as my colleague Alex Brummer put it in a piece here last week. Welcome to the worst-run British elite club in living memory.
The collateral damage is almost forgotten amid the total incompetence. What, you may ask, does Strasbourg – haven for Chelsea’s dropouts – think of their club paying a record fee for the unproven Washington?
You guessed it. The French side are groaning under the onslaught of Clearlake hedge bets. They were forced to buy winger Diego Moreira from Chelsea last month after they reached the maximum of three they are allowed to loan from one club, already saddled with Stamford Bridge loanees Andrey Santos, Caleb Wiley and Djordje Petrovic.
L’Equipe described a bloated roster of young Strasbourg players and the uncertainty of a second season under Clearlake ownership. “Patrick Vieira’s team have undoubtedly paid for the sporting policies of their leaders, who are obsessed with youth at all costs,” the newspaper reported. Sound familiar? Vieira and the club parted ways “by mutual consent” a few days after that piece appeared.
And then there are the discarded players themselves, who these ridiculous owners can afford to treat like dirt under their feet, because public opinion will always tend to favour new recruits. Agents describe the Chelsea owners they are now dealing with as classless and unprofessional. ‘The worst club I have ever done business with,’ one tells me. Some British clubs describe an arrogant and aggressive approach to negotiations, which makes them reluctant to get involved. Todd Boehly is now less involved, leaving more for co-investor Behdad Eghbali.
Clearlake was swimming in its larger pool on Tuesday, making headlines in the Financial Times after paying hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a “credit investment shop,” taking assets under management from $2 billion a decade ago to more than $90 billion. Against that portfolio, Chelsea is a speck of dust. A name on the fringes. A great British football club, run with care and pride for decades, now lacking even the most basic level of care, thought and operational competence.
Todd Boehly (right) is now less involved in the club, leaving more to co-investor Behdad Eghbali (left)
An agent recently described modern Chelsea as ‘the worst club I have ever dealt with’
Football of the Gods
There was a clear and unspeakable sadness watching the start of the Paralympic Blind Football Tournament against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, under an azure Parisian sky on Sunday. We were able to see so much beauty. The players were not.
The experience of watching Colombia play Japan and Argentina play Morocco was an unforgettable one; both sides gave it their all and played with such skill through their own individual darkness, acting to the sound of a bell in the ball. There were of course clashes between players who had no sight of opponents, and although there were occasional yellow cards, there were hugs, mutual forgiveness, apologies accepted before the game resumed. Brazil have started well and – as have Argentina. The final is on Saturday at 7pm UK time, with the bronze medal match preceding it.
But to be there, in that sublime arena, was a football experience that those of us who were there will remember for years to come. In its own way, football of the Gods.
The Paralympic Blind Football Tournament saw both teams give their all and play with so much skill
The US Paralympic team meanwhile hopes to outdo Team GB at their home Games in 2028
The hunt for competition
Those leading the British Paralympic team in Paris told us last week that the Americans may be ‘coming over the hill’ in a competitive sense, and will be looking to outdo the Brits at their LA Paralympics. It would do us a world of good to look over our shoulders a little more.
In some Paralympic sports, the glut of gold medals has led to complacency among some – medal fatigue – and the tougher the field, the greater the fascination.
‘Density’ is the word blade runner Jonnie Peacock used to describe the fierce competition in his own field. We need Hannah Cockroft’s own wheelchair final to be more than a cakewalk. Let’s hope the Americans come.
