Vesper

a big fuck off to Harry Redknapp btw and other xenophobic cunts like him

I am not excited. I am sceptical AF until he proves otherwise. His never-ending injuries and his lack of discipline on the pitch have been horrible.

that is from the horrific Spanish outlet Fichajes, the worst, most fraudelent major paper/site in Spain almost every report from them is a complete lie, made up out of thin air, when it comes to transfers

Manchester City target Rúben Amorim as next manager if Pep Guardiola leaves Sporting coach has been on the radar of top clubs Portuguese is close to incoming direcor of football Viana https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/oct/15/manchester-city-target-ruben-amorim-as-next-manager-if-pep-guardiola-leaves Manchester City are strongly considering the Sporting head coach, Rúben Amorim, as their next manager if Pep Guardiola leaves when his contract expires at the end of the season. Guardiola said last weekend that “anything can happen” in terms of his future. The importance of City having a succession plan is clear and the link with Amorim, regarded as one of the best young managers in Europe, is understandable. The 39-year-old is a close ally of Hugo Viana, who will take over from Txiki Begiristain as City’s director of football next summer. The desire for a smooth transition means Viana, who has been at Sporting since 2018, will collaborate with Begiristain before the 60-year-old retires at the end of the season. There is the prospect of an immediate recruitment challenge given that Guardiola is yet to make a decision on whether to extend his deal. He has not ruled out staying at City, who are keen not to lose the best manager in the world. There have been indications that Amorim will be a leading contender if a vacancy at City arises. The Portuguese has been on the radar of top clubs for a while and was in the running to replace Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool last summer. Amorim, who ended up missing out on the Liverpool job to Arne Slot, has also had discussions with Chelsea in recent years. Most recently he was in West Ham’s thoughts when they were planning to replace David Moyes. Amorim flew to London for talks, only to return to Portugal without an agreement being reached. Amorim, who won his second Portuguese title with Sporting last season, would later apologise for showing disrespect to his employers by speaking to West Ham. There was some scepticism at the time that Amorim would seriously consider moving to West Ham, who ended up appointing Julen Lopetegui. The former Braga manager has been content to stay at Sporting and wait for a top job. He has showcased his talent to Premier League sides in European competition, particularly by beating Tottenham in the Champions League in 2022 and knocking Arsenal out of the Europa League a year later.

Europeans giants Barcelona will do anything to sign Man City’s Erling Haaland in 2025 or 2026 https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/europeans-giants-anything-sign-man-085100273.html Barcelona club president Joan Laporta is said to be prepared to do anything to sign Man City striker Erling Haaland next summer or in 2026. The Catalan club have made a positive start to the 2024/25 campaign as Hansi Flick’s side sit top of La Liga three points ahead of rivals Real Madrid. Robert Lewandowski has played a huge role in this with the Polish forward producing 10 goals and two assists across Barca’s opening nine matches. The former Bayern Munich star looks back to his best under Flick’s guidance but the legendary striker turns 37 next year ahead of his contract expiring in 2026. Laporta will need to replace Lewandowski during one of the next two summer transfer windows and the Barcelona president has his eye on Man City’s Erling Haaland. According to SPORT, Laporta will do anything to bring the Norwegian superstar to Spain in 2025 or 2026 as the Barcelona president will want a big name as the face of his project after Real Madrid secured the signings of Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham over the previous two summers. This would be an incredible acquisition for the Catalan outfit but they will need to get their finances in order to make it happen. Would Man City’s Erling Haaland join Barcelona? Haaland has said in the past that he wants to experience playing in many different leagues and La Liga is likely to be the next one. Should Barcelona continue to grow the way they have been this season and with Real Madrid’s forward line already full of top talent, a move to Catalunya could be possible in 2026 for the Norway international. Pep Guardiola is also expected to leave the Etihad Stadium by then, should he sign a one-year extension at the Premier League champions, which all plays into Barcelona’s hands. This would be a major operation for Barca to pull off and a lot is uncertain, what isn’t, is that the Catalan club will become a force again in Europe should they acquire Haaland as the 24-year-old is a goalscoring machine.

Viktor Gyokeres scored again for Sweden last night and also provided an assist, meaning he’s now on an incredible run of 16 goals and 6 assists for club and country so far this season.

Inter defender Alessandro Bastoni’s agent Tinti: “There’s no point in saying he could leave Inter. No chance. He’s super Inter fan, very happy at the club. There are no issues. We extended the contract just one year and half ago, it’s all good.”

I highly doubt we will see an English manager of the calibre of Clough or Paisley again for ages and they last were at their peaks 40 to 50 years ago

no English manager has ever won the EPL here is every one who won the old First Division starting with the first of Stan Cullis's multiple titles

that is tactics, not position if Reece cannot do something as basic as tactical adaptation, then, when you combine that with his horrific injury record, he really does need to go

Reece is a fullback. What are you on about?

Behind the mask: How a soccer star became a cocaine trafficker A former star player for Ajax Amsterdam and the Netherlands became a major cocaine trafficker and has found refuge in the United Arab Emirates, where he continues to play. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/15/behind-mask-how-soccer-star-became-cocaine-trafficker/ Quincy Promes celebrates after scoring in a UEFA Europa League match for Spartak Moscow, a Russian team, in 2021. Promes was in Russia, from which he could not be extradited, when he was found guilty in absentia of drug trafficking in the Netherlands. (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images) AMSTERDAM — Quincy Promes was on his phone, again. The soccer star was constantly fielding messages: about his role on the most famous team in the Netherlands, his place on the Dutch national squad, the endorsement deals that netted him a small fortune. But this time, Promes was texting from a burner phone about his secret life off the field. It was early 2020. One of the country’s most famous athletes was finalizing the import of a shipment of cocaine arriving at a Belgian port. “My boys are on their way to Antwerp,” wrote Promes, a forward at the time for Ajax Amsterdam. His phone records were obtained by Dutch law enforcement and were used to convict him of drug trafficking in an Amsterdam court this year. Promes paid intermediaries — his “soldiers,” he called them — to secure 2,850 pounds of cocaine that had just arrived from Latin America in a shipping container packed with bags of salt. The other traffickers seemed perplexed by Promes’s role. “Is he definitely that footballer?” one asked in a separate text. Quincy Promes, shown in 2019, rose to fame as a striker for Ajax Amsterdam, a Dutch soccer power. (Koen Van Weel/AFP/Getty Images) The growing intersection of sports and organized crime has alarmed some of the world’s biggest law enforcement agencies. The FBI and Interpol now have their own specialized sports units. Often their targets are corrupt sports officials, criminal investors who have infiltrated professional sports teams to launder their money or reputations, or gamblers seeking to fix matches. But when investigators started surveilling Promes, they discovered he was an unusual target: an elite athlete who seemed obsessed with becoming a gangster. His success on the field had only intensified his appetite for a different kind of power on the streets of Amsterdam, they said. On a wiretapped line in July 2020, a friend asked Promes, “Do you make more money playing football or doing business,” apparently alluding to drug trafficking. “Doing business,” Promes responded. This account of Promes’s descent into criminality is based on hundreds of pages of court documents that include Promes’s text messages, as well as interviews with police and soccer officials. Promes did not respond to requests for comment and his lawyer and several family members declined to be interviewed. Promes had pleaded not guilty. In February, however, Promes was sentenced to six years in prison. By then, he was gone. He’d left the country to play for Spartak Moscow, a team in Russia’s premier league, where he became a top scorer, and was beyond the reach of the Dutch authorities. But a few weeks later he surfaced in Dubai, where he was briefly detained after Dutch authorities filed an extradition request. Last month, with that request still pending, Promes announced another twist to the story: While fighting extradition, he would play professional soccer for United F.C., a second-division team in Dubai. His legion of fans in the Netherlands have been left stunned by the star’s fall from grace. Why would Promes, whose annual salary at Ajax — an institution in European soccer — was more than $3 million, risk everything by getting involved with drug trafficking? But the shock was different on the second floor of the West Amsterdam police station, where two veteran officers had quietly been meeting with Promes as his star had risen in professional soccer. Those officers, Arno Van Leeuwen and Bob Schagen, have spent years investigating the connections between sports and crime in the Netherlands. Those ties appear to be increasing, the officers said, as young athletes experiencing extraordinary wealth for the first time have become targets for criminal exploitation. Players whose careers are floundering can be easy targets, too; last month, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, a once-promising British forward who had fallen to a second-division Scottish team, was arrested near Glasgow and charged with what police said was the importation of $800,000 of marijuana from Thailand. He was released by his club. Dutch police officers Bob Schagen, left, and Arno van Leeuwen have spent years investigating the connections between sports and crime in the Netherlands. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The Washington Post) People around Promes saw him as a wealthy investor, investigators said, someone infatuated with “gangsters” whose cash could help underwrite drug deals. Because of a surge in cocaine arriving in Dutch ports, groups that were once involved in low-level crime in the Netherlands now have a hand in trafficking vast quantities of drugs or are trying to force their way into the booming business. Between 2018 and 2022, the amount of cocaine arriving at the Dutch port of Rotterdam — the biggest in Europe — skyrocketed from 20.8 tons to 55.1 tons, a 164 percent increase, according to the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA). At the Belgian port of Antwerp, the increase was only slightly smaller, the surge driven in part by increasing cooperation between Latin American drug traffickers and European organized crime, police said. The Dutch police now liaise with both players and security officials at their clubs to warn of dangerous associations before they tip over into criminal behavior. But in Promes, whom they once tried to pry away from organized crime, Van Leeuwen and Schagen had their most tragic failure. The wrong kind of friends Promes rapped often about his proximity to crime and violence in his concurrent music career. (Olaf Kraak/AFP/Getty Images) For years, Promes had been cultivating an alter ego in the rap songs he recorded. He seemed to want his fans to believe that he lived a double life. He rapped about his proximity to crime and violence. He performed with men who would later be convicted of murder and kidnapping. “We do not fear bullets,” Promes wrote in one song. “We see men running for their deaths.” Over the years, the allusions to drug trafficking became more explicit. “All those containers, like a present, must be unwrapped,” he said on the recording “Wicked Man.” It was easy to dismiss Promes’s lyrics as mere posturing. On the field, he was graceful and tireless, a naturally gifted forward known for his speed and ball control — a talent who, like many of his peers in Dutch soccer, had emerged from an immigrant home. Promes was born in the Osdorp neighborhood in east Amsterdam — a grid of neat, modest homes where new arrivals to the Netherlands often settled. Promes’s parents came from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America. He grew up playing soccer on neighborhood streets. By Promes’s telling, even getting a place in a street game required ferocity. “You had to fight for your place,” he said in an Ajax promotional interview in 2020. “If you wanted to play football on the square, you had to have a certain attitude.” By the time Promes was 13, soccer already promised a better life, and he was offered places in some of the country’s top youth academies. But he struggled with disciplinary problems. At 16, he was kicked off Ajax’s youth team. One factor, he would later say in another Ajax interview was that he “made lots of the wrong kind of friends and was generally in a tornado.” His contacts allegedly included Piet Wortel, a Dutch-Surinamese man who police allege has been involved in cocaine transport for decades. Police say that Wortel and Promes teamed up to traffic cocaine. Wortel could not be reached for comment. A friendly warning Schagen, left, and Van Leeuwen repeatedly warned Promes about getting too close to crime figures. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The Washington Post) Van Leeuwen and Schagen were lifelong Ajax fans. In the late 2010s, the two officers approached a contact at Ajax, who worked as a kind of fixer for the team. The Dutch police had for years met with the country’s clubs about soccer hooligans and preventing violence at games. The officers wanted to increase their cooperation with Ajax. They suggested that they should meet with young players — particularly those who had made it onto the police’s radar — to counsel them. Those presentations became regular sessions and a formal assignment for Van Leeuwen and Schagen after the initiative was endorsed by the Dutch police. “We saw that these young players were vulnerable,” Van Leeuwen said. “These are guys who grew up in the same neighborhoods as criminals. It’s hard to distance yourself from your childhood friends.” At the same time, European soccer had become a massive business, with $35 billion in annual revenue, and the players were increasingly valuable assets to be protected. Ajax did not respond to requests for comment. But police officials said the liaison relationship is not unusual at European clubs. The detectives flagged early signs of trouble to officials at Ajax, naming players who were loaning team vehicles to childhood friends with criminal records (one such vehicle was found with a bullet hole in the driver’s seat). In other cases, Van Leeuwen and Schagen reported players who sold expensive watches for cash without realizing they were helping criminals launder money. In 2019, the two officers said they had heard from a colleague that a young Ajax player was in the passenger seat of a car during a routine traffic stop. Police suspected the driver of having ties to organized crime. The player was Promes. By then, he was a star, a prolific striker for his club and country. In June 2019, his goal against England had helped the Netherlands advance to Europe’s Nations League final. The Dutch press chronicled his rise. “Quincy Promes: from ballboy to top scorer,” read a headline in De Volkskrant. Promes at first seemed receptive to warnings not to place too much trust in his childhood friends. By then, he'd become a prolific scorer for both his club team and the Dutch national team. (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images) The traffic stop didn’t result in any charges, but Van Leeuwen and Schagen felt they should offer a friendly warning to Promes about placing too much trust in some of his friends. It was the kind of advice that could be misperceived, the officers knew. Some members of the Surinamese community accused them of racial profiling when they made routine traffic stops, like the one where officers spotted Promes. He would later articulate his own anger at law enforcement in his songs. “Cars no lease,” he rapped in a mix of Dutch and English. “F--- the police.” But the first meeting with Promes in the Ajax front office appeared to go well, the officers said. “We just told him, ‘We like you. We want to give you some awareness for your career,’ ” Van Leeuwen said. Promes struck them as innocent and perhaps naive. At one point, he volunteered somberly that he had very few friends. But a few months after they met with him, Promes was stopped with the same suspect. The officers once again requested a meeting with him in Ajax’s front office. This time, they arranged for one of the team’s coaches to join them. “We told him, ‘We warned you the first time. Is there something you don’t understand?’” Van Leeuwen said. Promes said it was difficult to cut off people he had known for a long time. “I can’t leave them. I can’t say goodbye to my friends,” the officers recalled him saying. Remaining in Moscow Promes was transferred to Spartak Moscow in 2021 for a fee of 8.5 million euros. (Epsilon/Getty Images) By the time Van Leeuwen and Schagen met with Promes in 2019, he was already trafficking cocaine, according to court documents, though the two officers were unaware of that at the time. In retrospect, the officers concluded, Promes was already alluding to his alter ego. When he scored a goal, he lifted his hand over his face to form a mask. In a rap video, he wore a diamond studded mask. He started a clothing line called Mask QP. It remains unclear how Promes became involved in the drug trade. In 2020, the Dutch police’s criminal intelligence team received information that Promes had invested at least $200,000 in a drug deal as early as April 2018, according to court filings. The police began using wiretaps and undercover surveillance to track the player. They dubbed the investigation “Porto.” Like many criminals, Promes was using Sky ECC, an encrypted messaging service. Belgian police hacked the app in 2020, opening a vulnerability for law enforcement to exploit and ultimately providing a bonanza of intelligence that police across Europe benefited from. That’s how Dutch police learned that Promes was involved in the shipment of cocaine that arrived at the port of Antwerp. The ship, the Cap Sant Nicolas, had passed through Brazil before crossing the Atlantic. But it had made several stops in Latin America, including Uruguay. After the men had finished unloading the drugs in Antwerp, Promes, in a text message, said that he wanted to remain involved in the next step of the process. “I suggest we measure tomorrow afternoon,” he said. Prosecutors would later say in court filings that Promes had a “directing and coordinating role” in the trafficking. In July 2020, Dutch police said they learned from conversations on a wiretapped phone that Promes had stabbed his cousin in the knee at a party in Amsterdam. The man was rushed to the hospital. “Next time he will get bullets,” Promes said on a wiretapped line. Promes was still on the Ajax squad that December when he was arrested for the assault. Reporters began asking team officials how they could rationalize keeping him on the team. “He told me he didn’t do anything,” Ajax manager Erik ten Hag, now at Manchester United, said at a news conference. “In this country you are innocent until proven otherwise. We stand behind him, including the entire locker room.” He was convicted of the assault in June 2023. Asked why he kept Promes on the roster despite his legal difficulties, then-Ajax Amsterdam coach Erik ten Hag said, “In this country you are innocent until proven otherwise. We stand behind him, including the entire locker room.” (Getty Images) After the stabbing, Promes represented Ajax in the 2020-2021 UEFA Champions League. It’s unclear when Ajax or the Dutch national team became aware of Promes’s drug trafficking charges. Officials for the national team also declined requests for comment. Yehudi Moszkowicz, the lawyer who represented Promes’s cousin in the stabbing case, told The Post that he asked the Dutch prosecutor when a decision would be made to prosecute Promes and was told “after the European championships.” A spokesman for the Dutch prosecutor’s office said that Promes’s arrest was delayed because of a league match. “With regard to the timing of the arrest, the Champions League group stage match was taken into account,” said the spokesman, Franklin Wattimena. “It is not uncommon to take into account the schedule of the person to be arrested. For example, if someone can be arrested at home, it is preferred over arresting them in the workplace in the presence of all their colleagues.” In February 2021, Promes was traded to Spartak Moscow for a transfer fee of 8.5 million euros. Promes was still playing for Spartak when he was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison for assaulting his cousin. But Russia has no extradition treaty with the Netherlands, so Promes remained in Moscow. To avoid prison time at home, he stayed even after Russia invaded Ukraine, when most Western players fled. He also continued releasing rap videos. In one of them, he waved a Russian flag. He posted Instagram photos at elite Moscow parties. He started posting soccer-related images with Russian captions. He showed off a new necklace, the word “Mask” filled with diamonds. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxq1ELZMt6U/?utm_source=ig_embed He was still in Russia this February when he was convicted on drug trafficking charges based largely on the 2020 cocaine importation. In its verdict, the court said it was struck by how Promes was already making millions of dollars playing soccer while he trafficked drugs. “This makes it even more objectionable that the suspect tries to increase his wealth (and possibly also prestige in certain circles) through involvement in large international drug transports,” the court wrote in its judgment. Some of Promes’s former teammates said they didn’t recognize the man described by prosecutors. “The Quincy Promes that you people read about is not the Quincy Promes that I know,” Memphis Depay, a forward on the Dutch national team, told reporters earlier this year. In March, Dutch authorities announced that Promes had been arrested in Dubai at their request, and that they would request his extradition. He was jailed briefly and then released. Emirati authorities did not explain why he was allowed to leave prison and was not placed on house arrest. Dutch authorities declined to give an update on their extradition request. Promes once again began posting photos of his life on Instagram, even though there was now an Interpol red notice in his name. There was a photo of him in front of the Dubai skyline. He posted videos of him playing soccer and tennis. Emirati authorities did not respond to requests for comment. His life in professional soccer appeared to be over. In July, Spartak released a statement saying the club was ending Promes’s contract “due to personal reasons that prevented him from returning to Russia.” And then, in early September, Dubai’s United F.C. posted a cryptic video on its Instagram. It showed a silhouetted man lacing his cleats. “Big news coming soon,” read the caption. The next day, the team followed up with a news release. The silhouetted man was Promes. The team gushed over their new addition: “His arrival adds significant firepower to United FC’s squad as we prepare for an exciting season ahead.” https://www.instagram.com/cebanu_ilie/?utm_source=ig_embed

lol, that worked out well

Chelsea Pitch Owners: The unique organisation with the power to block Stamford Bridge move https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5839724/2024/10/14/Chelsea-pitch-owners-power-stamford-bridge-move/ Chelsea are unlikely to be the first club who spring to mind when scouring English football for examples of fan power. At ownership level, they have helped the Premier League trend in the opposite direction, from Roman Abramovich’s takeover in 2003 heralding the arrival of true billionaire wealth, to the £2.5billion ($3.3bn at the current exchange rate) paid by the current owners to take over in 2022, the latest and loudest example of the growing influence of big American finance on the top division of English football. But both regimes have been forced to reckon with an arrangement unique in the sport: Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO), a supporters’ group which holds the freehold to the land on which Stamford Bridge, the club’s home stadium since they were founded in 1905, sits. The creation of CPO is part of the bigger story of how Chelsea almost lost their ground, as detailed by The Athletic in 2020. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief summary: in 1992, at the end of a long, attritional battle with property developers who wanted to evict the club from a hugely valuable plot of land in south-west London, Chelsea’s chairman at the time, Ken Bates, and his lawyer Mark Taylor set out to devise a novel plan to ensure it could never happen again. Bates’ initial idea was to divide up the freehold for the pitch into 70,000 squares and sell them to supporters for £100 each, but that ran into problems with VAT (a tax on nearly all goods bought and sold within the European Union), land registry and corporation tax. Bates and Taylor realised the same result could be achieved by establishing CPO as a company that owned the pitch and offering fans the chance to buy a share for £100; if they sold all the shares, it would finance the activation of a £5million buy option the club had negotiated to purchase the stadium freehold from West Register (Properties) Ltd, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), as part of a 20-year lease of the ground agreed in December 1992. The problem was that very few Chelsea supporters actually bought CPO shares. By 1997 — a quarter of the way into the 20-year lease agreement — only around 7,580 had been sold, leaving the company a long way short of the original freehold valuation of £5million. That freehold valuation had also more than doubled to £10.2m, owing to significant expansion to the footprint of Stamford Bridge in light of stadium changes made under Bates in the mid-1990s. “It was actually a total failure,” Taylor tells The Athletic. “If it weren’t for the fact that Chelsea did a Eurobond issue in 1997 (raising £75million, then loaning CPO the funds to purchase the freehold on soft terms), CPO would have been wound up and the money distributed back to its shareholders in 2012 (when the original 20-year lease agreement expired).” Instead, the position of CPO as a gatekeeper of Stamford Bridge’s future was secured. It acquired the freehold with the aid of a loan from Chelsea that can run for 199 years, and in return granted the club a 199-year lease to use the site at a peppercorn rent. Ken Bates in 2003 (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images) CPO is duty-bound to repay the loan, and 85 per cent of the nominal value of each new share sold is designated for this purpose. In the accounts filed with Companies House for the year ending July 31, 2023, CPO declared that it had repaid £149,069, leaving an outstanding balance of £8,066,862. Almost 27,000 shares have been issued to around 15,000 unique shareholders. The list of those who have invested their own money includes former Chelsea players and managers such as John Terry, who is also CPO president, Frank Lampard, Dennis Wise, Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel. Yet regardless of who bought in and how many shares they purchased, Taylor wrote a key safeguard into CPO’s articles of association that ensured power over the fate of Stamford Bridge could not be co-opted by a small number of wealthy individuals: each share was worth one vote, but nobody could have more than 100 votes regardless of how many shares they bought. He also included an even bigger sting in the tail to deter any future Chelsea owner possibly minded to move the club away from Stamford Bridge against the will of CPO. “They have a right to cancel the lease if the club stop playing there, and to demand the assignment of the name ‘Chelsea Football Club Limited’ to CPO,” he says. Chelsea cannot call themselves Chelsea if based anywhere other than Stamford Bridge unless CPO shareholders give the green light — a remarkable veto power for any supporter group. GO DEEPER Gannon is one of Chelsea's most important hires - and defining figure in Bridge future In 2011, when Abramovich tried to buy back the Stamford Bridge freehold from CPO to facilitate a move to a new stadium, Taylor was on the other side of the fence, advising the club on how best to deal with the organisation he had helped to create. “Right at the start, I said to (chairman) Bruce Buck, ‘You’ll never get people (onside) unless they know what’s going to happen’,” he recalls. Abramovich’s proposal included no guarantees that he would limit his search to alternative stadium sites near Stamford Bridge. He also gave CPO members just 24 days from Chelsea’s formal announcement of their desire to buy back the freehold to the formal vote held on the issue at an emergency general meeting. Those 24 days were marred by the sudden sale of £200,000 worth of shares to 20 individuals, widely interpreted as an attempt to tilt the vote in the club’s favour. Opposition mobilised under the slogan “Say No CPO”. Abramovich needed more than 75 per cent of votes cast in order to secure the freehold — a formidably high bar that Chelsea’s current ownership will also one day need to clear to ratify their chosen stadium plan. In the event, just 300 votes controlled by shareholders at the meeting were required in the ‘no’ column to ensure he fell short. The Russian billionaire ended up with only 61.6 per cent on his side. GO DEEPER How a view loved by Henry VIII could thwart new Chelsea owners' plans to redevelop Stamford Bridge This rare defeat forced Abramovich to reassess his options, eventually alighting on the grand “cathedral of football” redevelopment of the ground that he paused indefinitely in 2018. It also soured relations between Chelsea and CPO for several years, and fermented the view in the eyes of some that a relatively small number of supporters had blocked the club’s best route to a shiny new stadium. A lot has changed since then — not least CPO itself, which now has shareholders in more than 80 countries, including Kazakhstan, Guatemala, South Korea and Venezuela. Shares can be purchased through Chelsea’s official website. In 2018, new ‘B’ shares were issued at the cheaper price of £25 in an attempt to attract a younger demographic, but were withdrawn in 2021 after failing to spark an uptick in sales. Those shares afford one vote, while the traditional ‘A’ shares are now worth four votes each, and the limit of votes any single shareholder can amass has been raised from 100 to 400 accordingly. Wounds from the acrimonious 2011 vote healed considerably in the final years of the Abramovich era and, acting on behalf of new owners Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly, club president and chief operating officer Jason Gannon has made an early effort to build closer ties with CPO. Roman Abramovich in 2011, the year he took on CPO and lost (Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images) “We feel we’re in a good place with the senior management team, we feel they are being positive and it’s a good relationship,” CPO chair Chris Isitt tells The Athletic. CPO’s focus now is on building its profile online, raising awareness among Chelsea’s global fanbase that they can have a direct say on what happens to Stamford Bridge. Two new directors with knowledge of social media and digital marketing were added to the board in March this year. It helps their cause when Chelsea supporters at large feel uncertain about the club’s direction. “When the club was up for sale, we sold the equivalent of five years’ worth of shares in six months,” Isitt says. There is also the knowledge that whoever emerges from Chelsea’s ownership power struggle will soon be looking to push on with their own stadium project. Any plan that involves the team moving, temporarily or permanently, from Stamford Bridge will require CPO approval — a reality that concerns some supporters who fear the club being left behind by their domestic and European rivals if such a proposal is blocked. Nobody in Chelsea’s current ownership group enjoys anything like the goodwill Abramovich was afforded by fans in 2011, so how can they hope to succeed with CPO where he failed? Presenting a clear, specific plan and communicating it in a manner that does not come across as dismissive or adversarial would be a positive start. Beyond that, expecting more than 75 per cent of CPO shareholders to effectively vote their organisation out of existence seems fanciful; to even stand a chance of passing, any proposal would likely need to include the transferral of the CPO arrangement to the new stadium, whether it be a revamped or rebuilt Stamford Bridge or a new stadium on the former Earls Court Exhibition Centre site less than a mile away. This would allow CPO to continue to safeguard Chelsea’s home against non-football interests well into the future. It was also another condition Abramovich was unwilling to countenance 13 years ago. “The whole point of him doing what he was doing was control, and if he’d agreed to that, he would just be transferring one restriction for another,” Taylor says. “He wasn’t prepared to concede on that at all.” More than two years after Abramovich was compelled to sell Chelsea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supporters are still waiting for Clearlake or Boehly to communicate a stadium plan. When they finally do, the unique presence and nature of CPO means some of those supporters will have a significant say in whether that proposal ever comes to pass. GO DEEPER Chelsea and Stamford Bridge: Should Boehly-Clearlake stick or twist?

very happy to see the club doing its due diligence and not just splashing cash on some erstwhile Brasilian wunderkind

now:

“A gem that was hidden” – Outlet reviews surprise new Chelsea signing after latest game https://Chelsea.news/2024/10/a-gem-that-was-hidden-outlet-reviews-surprise-new-Chelsea-signing-after-latest-game/ One outlet has been raving about one of Chelsea’s new signings from the summer after he played his latest match for his national side over the weekend. Chelsea have signed a lot of players recently, some have been real hits, others not so much. But on the whole, the new signings are seemingly doing very well at the moment and there have been a few real gems picked up by the Chelsea scouts. Renato Veiga seems to be one of those, and a lot like Malo Gusto, he seems to be one of those signings that nobody really knew too much about until they came to Chelsea. They were not household names at all, but Chelsea scouted them and took a risk on them. Like Gusto, it looks like the Veiga risk might be paying off. Veiga shines for Portugal He started as a centre back for Portugal against Poland on Saturday and was on the winning side after they beat the Polish 3-1 away from home. And Spanish outlet AS, as cited on X, have been raving about Veiga. They wrote: “A gem that was hidden in the Swiss league after leaving Sporting almost through the back door. Enzo Maresca and Roberto Martínez didn’t let him get away. “He’s the new idol of Portugal and Chelsea. The €14m paid to Basel is beginning to look cheap. Veiga passed the exam with flying colours. His good touch (very close to perfection in passing) and powerful shot make him very complete for his age. And with a privileged physique.” It’s certainly some words of praise. Veiga has started well at Chelsea this season and the fact he can play well in many different positions seems to be a massive bonus as well. He will be looking to grow his game time and development over this season.

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1 nil Austria Arnautovic

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