New York dispatches: Inside the Chelsea takeover, FSG/Qatar nonsense, and AC Milan stadium latest

The second instalment of the Bottom Line podcast comes from across the pond

Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly (GETTY IMAGES)

‘I COULD PROBABLY WRITE TWO BOOKS’

It's been a little over 18 months since Chelsea were acquired by a consortium featuring Todd Boehly, Clearlake Capital, Hansjorg Wyss and others.

What has happened during that period has been seismic, like nothing that has ever been seen in football before, either in England or abroad. The sheer scale of transfer spend pretty distorted the market as the West London side splashed over £1bn on new players during the course of three wild, wild transfer windows.

Not once but twice Chelsea’s new owners gave the green light to break the British transfer record. They first paid £105m for Enzo Fernandez from Benfica before going £10m better when they parted with the cash for Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Mosies Caicedo, winning a short transfer tussle with Liverpool, who had agreed a £111m deal themselves with the Sussex side before they found themselves gazumped.

No transfer strategy ever embarked on before has brought the term ‘amortisation’ to the fore like Chelsea’s has. The tactic of offering seven, eight and nine-year contracts to players to spread the annual accounted cost of the transfer fee and reduce the amortisation costs on the balance sheet forced UEFA to step in and cap the amortisation period to five years, regardless of contract length. The Premier League will follow suit.

It hasn’t worked competitively yet, with Chelsea having burned through three managers, now on their fourth in Mauricio Pochettino, and having posted a 12th-placed finish last season, with no European football to enjoy this campaign, something that is impactful to the bottom line.

There is a longer-term strategy at play for the owners, with Boehly and Clearlake of the belief that by putting in place the foundations now they can overcome the short-term failure and build some kind of footballing dynasty in London.

The way that Chelsea was acquired was unique. The Russian military invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 saw sanctions placed upon those with connections to Russian president Vladimir Putin, among those being former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.

Almost overnight the club, so reliant on their wealthy benefactor for the previous 19 years to the tune of some £1.5bn in debt to his Fordstam Limited company, was plunged into chaos, faced with the sands of time ebbing away if they were to avoid financial catastrophe.

Tasked with selling a multi-billion pound football club in the tightest of timescales were Raine Group, a global merchant bank with a reputation for closing some of the biggest deals in sport. But even through their years of experience, selling Chelsea provided the most unique of challenges, unlike anything they had ever encountered, as one of the key figures behind the deal revealed.