Abramóvich's fall, bad news for City

Roman Abramovich's British empire has collapsed in just one week.

But it has not been an absolute surprise: some time ago the condescension with which British society received his irruption at Chelsea FC almost 20 years ago had begun to be questioned due to his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Abramovich made his fortune in the 1990s, when then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin privatized the country's monopolies at bargain prices in ex-Soviet Russia's wild transition to capitalism.

A good handful of lucky ones, since then called oligarchs, made gold but in exchange for keeping loyalty to the president.

When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, some tried to take their fortunes away from Russia and, above all, away from the Kremlin.

Some did very well, like the revered Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the richest man in the UK.

Others, like Boris Berezovski, fared very badly: he disowned Putin and was found dead in the bathroom of his Berkshire mansion in March 2013. He apparently committed suicide after going bankrupt following a legendary court case with Roman Abramovich.

In that lawsuit, Abramovich's lawyers used his client's excellent relations and direct access to Putin as one of the pieces of evidence questioning the veracity of Berezovski's claims.

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Roman Abramóvich, the Russian oligarch camouflaged under the skin of the British 'establishment'

That admission of his closeness to the Russian president began to dent (slightly) the respect that the British elite felt for him at the time, impressed as they were by his fortune and by the successes that Chelsea had achieved since his arrival in 2003. That distancing became radicalized in 2018, following the attempted assassination of a former Russian secret agent and his daughter in Salisbury, which London has long blamed on Putin.

The British government then decided not to renew Abramovich's businessman's visa and, to the despair of Chelsea fans, he responded by canceling the construction of a new stadium on the same site as the obsolete Stamford Bridge, a project that I already had urban permits.

Now, with the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, all the bridges have been broken and the oligarch has put Chelsea and his properties in London up for sale because he fears the British government will repossess him.

Their fall from grace bodes ill for others and most especially for Manchester City and Newcastle, owned (indirectly) by two regimes with scant respect for human rights, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Depending on how events in Ukraine unfold, pressure may increase on these two countries to abandon their current position of apparent neutrality and align with the West.

The Emirates, which are rotating members of the United Nations Security Council, abstained in a resolution condemning Russia, as did China and India.

Russia exercised its right of veto.

The Emirates, traditional allies of the United States, are repositioning themselves on the geostrategic board.

Convinced that US influence is on the decline after the presidency of Donald Trump and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan carried out by his successor, Joe Biden, they want to diversify their options and approach China and Russia.

Proof of this is his decision to force Ukrainian citizens to obtain a visa to enter the country, something that was not necessary before the Russian invasion.

All this may end up affecting City, owned since 2008 by Mansour bin Zayed, deputy prime minister of the Emirates and half brother of the country's president.

But the club has had the good sense not to impede the various displays of solidarity with Ukraine from the squad and has allowed Pep Guardiola to award the captaincy to Ukrainian left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko the other day as a show of support for that cause.

An intelligent way of trying to proclaim that the City is not subject to the Government of the Emirates.

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