By Myles Palmer
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The Professor is a 392-page paperback.
With 12 photographs.
The book describes Arsenal before and after Wenger, season by season from 1996-97.
It’s a comprehensive summary of Arsene’s ideas, his career before 1996, his genius, his quotes in context, his flaws, his buying and selling, his bold team-building, all the big matches in thrilling detail, the red cards, Wrighty in decline, Bergkamp in his pomp, nine years of the mostly magnificent Vieira, and much, much more – everything an Arsenal fan would want.
In the 2004 paperback, Roman Abramovich was only two lines.
That did not seem enough, since he bought Chelsea’s first league title since 1955.
Fine.That breaks the duopoly and three successful clubs is more interesting than two.
But Abramovich is capable of wrecking the Premiership as a competition.
So some questions had to be asked. Who is this guy? What is he? Why is he here? How malign will his influence be?
THIS IS WHAT I write in the new paperback :
“On 1 July Ken Bates had sold Chelsea to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for £59.3 million. The cantankerous Bates,71,had redeveloped Chelsea Village but had accumulated debts of £90 million, which the Russian would cover.
Who was this strange Russian? Abramovich was 35 and worth £3.8 billion, which put him nineteenth on “Europe’s richest 50” list. Why had he invested in London? Did he want to have some fun? Would he get bored after a couple of years? Or did he want to buy a western identity? Chelsea had become the richest club in the world, but what long-term impact would this takeover have on English football? What would it mean for Arsenal?
Suddenly, “Chelski” was big news and the press told us all about a man whose life story seemed to have unfolded like a fairytale. Born on 24 October 1966 in Saratov on the Volga River, Abramovich was orphaned when he was two and a half. Adopted by his father’s brother, Leib, he lived in Ukhta, 700 miles north-east of Moscow, where Leib was the head of supply at the state-owned logging company, and he enjoyed a privileged childhood. From 1974 he lived in Moscow in his grandmother’s one-room flat and was looked after by his uncle Abram. He left school at 17 and was studying highway engineering at the Industrial Institute in Ukhta when he was drafted into an artillery regiment. Demobbed in late 1986, he met Olga, a geology student and divorcee who was three years older than him and had a young daughter. They married in 1987 and moved into the Moscow flat after his grandmother died.
Private enterprise was now possible and the young entrepreneur was busy with various enterprises including used car tyres. The family made dolls, copying western toys brought back by his friend Irina, an Aeroflot stewardess. Olga and Roman divorced in 1989 and he married Irina in 1991. His big break came in 1992 when Boris Berezovsky, a powerful tycoon, brought him into President Boris Yeltsin’s inner circle and Abramovich became one of the millionaire businessmen, or oligarchs, who bankrolled Yeltsin and ensured his 1996 presidential victory.
Last year a book, Abramovich,by Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins, revealed a mindboggling fact about Vladimir Putin’s first day as prime minister under Yeltsin. The Russian constitution states that all prospective ministers must be interviewed in the Kremlin, so on that day in August 1999, while new prime minister Putin got down to business in his office on the second floor, meetings were taking place on the floor above. The candidates waited in corridors and went in one by one to be interviewed by a very young man with a sad smile. Some of the politicians did not know who the man was. No photograph of Roman Abramovich had ever been published. The Russian people were unaware that Abramovich, the youngest and least-known oligarch, had vetted Putin’s first cabinet.
By 1999 Putin was President and when Berezovsky fell out with Putin, Abramovich took over his mentor’s assets in the oil industry. Incredibly, he now controlled 80% of Sibneft, the fifth largest Russian oil company, 50% of Rusal, the Russian aluminum monopoly, and 26% of Aeroflot, the national airline. He also had a stake in TVS, one of four national TV channels. Mikhail Krutikhin, an analyst with RusEnergy, said, ‘Abramovich is the real financial genius of the bandit-capitalism epoch.’
He kept a low media profile and attributed his success to being in the right place at the right time, which was an understatement. The post-Yeltsin period had seen an astonishing redistribution of a continent’s wealth. In 1990 everything belonged to the state, but by 1997 almost 75 percent of property was held privately.
An astute businessman who thinks globally, Abramovich now travelled in his armoured Mercedes and a private jet, a mustard-coloured Boeing 767, usually stopping off in Omsk in Western Siberia to see Avangard, his ice hockey team, then flying on to Chukotka. He owned a 355ft yacht bought from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. He claimed that he made the decision to buy a club when he saw Manchester United’s thrilling 4-3 victory over Real Madrid in the Champions League in April 2003. “Truly, a beautiful game,” he recalled.
Advised by Israeli agent Pini Zahavi, Abramovich bought eleven new players for £110 million in one summer, including Blackburn’s Damien Duff (£17million), Real Madrid’s Geremi (£7m), West Ham’s Glen Johnson and Joe Cole, (£12.6m), Southampton’s Wayne Bridge (£7m), Manchester United’s Juan Sebastian Veron (£15m), Parma’s Adrian Mutu (£15.8m) and Inter Milan’s Hernan Crespo (£16.8m).
Despite the difficulties of trying to rotate such a huge squad of stars, Ranieri’s Chelsea had started well and came to Highbury on 18 October as league leaders. Edu’s free-kick deflected past Cudicini to put Arsenal ahead, but then Crespo went off the pitch, sneaked back on, and hit a stunning shot for 1-1. Cudicini made a rare blunder when he allowed a Pires cross to go through his legs and hit Henry on the knee and bobble into the net. Arsenal had played calmly, confidently, and, for once, Plan B worked. Parlour and Wiltord had lacked the craft to deliver a final ball, but the arrival of Bergkamp and Kanu transformed the game, with Bergkamp making three passes that nobody else on the field would have seen. However, Henry showed the extent of their new pragmatism by walking the ball to the corner flag to run down the clock. Wenger’s teams had never done that before, except in the FA Cup Final against Southampton.
Inter sacked Hector Cuper two months into his third season and they lost 3-0 to Lokomotiv Moscow. In the Ukraine, Arsenal were beaten 2-1 by Dynamo Kiev, but it was their best Champions League performance in a defeat. A slip by Edu and a blunder by Lehmann, miskicking outside his box, cost them two goals. “
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Time Out describe The Professor as “a lively, quirky and clever analysis of Wenger’s time at Highbury.”
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August 19th 2005