One of the strangest, most politically charged episodes in the history of

English football is finally over – here is the story of how it all unfolded

Chelsea can finally think about the future. One of the strangest, most
unpredictable, most politically charged episodes in the history of English
football is finally over. Roman Abramovich has left the building and Todd
Boehly’s consortium has taken control of Chelsea after the UK government
granted permission for the £4.25bn takeover to go through with a week to go
before the club’s special operating licence was due to expire.

That date, 31 May, had loomed large in the diary. It felt fraught with danger
when government sources suggested the deal was in danger of collapsing
because of fears that Abramovich wanted to renege on his promise to write off
his £1.6bn loan to the club. The wildest scenarios had Chelsea going bust if
they missed the sale deadline and, given all the twists and turns over the past
three months, it was not always easy to be entirely confident that the story was
going to end with Boehly’s group promising to give Thomas Tuchel significant
funds to rebuild his squad.

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The only way to cope has been to suspend your disbelief ever since Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine on 24 February made Abramovich’s 19-year ownership of
Chelsea untenable. Events moved swiftly after the Russian oligarch was
named in parliament by the Labour MP Chris Bryant, who said that the 55-
year-old was identified by the Home Office in 2019 as having links to the
Russian state and to “corrupt activity and practices”. The writing was on the
wall. Abramovich, who had instructed the US bank Raine to begin the search
for a new owner, knew the game was up.

Hansjörg Wyss, an 86-year-old Swiss billionaire, had already said he was

interested in buying Chelsea by the time Abramovich confirmed his intention
to sell on 2 March. The process was under way. Prospective bidders began to
put plans in place, some less plausible, others more credible.

Muhsin Bayrak, a Turkish businessman, repeatedly insisted he was making an

offer. Nick Candy, the British property tycoon, made a lot of noise after
throwing his hat in the ring. A Ghanaian gold mine owner, Bernard Antwi
Boasiako, said he was a serious bidder.

It was Raine’s job to cut through the noise. It had soon emerged that Wyss had
teamed up with Todd Boehly, a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Boehly’s investors included his fellow Dodgers owner Mark Walter, the British
property developer Jonathan Goldstein, and the US investment firm Clearlake
Capital; the group looked the real deal and felt like the obvious favourites from
the start.

Yet the process was complicated when the government imposed sanctions on
Abramovich on 10 March. Chelsea were placed under a restrictive operating
licence that stopped them from selling new tickets for home games, capped
their travel costs, forced them to close the club shop and prevented them from
handing out new contracts, leaving them powerless to stop Andreas
Christensen and Antonio Rüdiger from leaving on free transfers.

Suddenly the sale had an extra layer of jeopardy. The government would not
allow a single penny to go to Abramovich. Raine, assisted by Chelsea’s
chairman, Bruce Buck, and the club’s director Marina Granovskaia, battled
against the clock to find a shortlist of four bidders by 25 March. They were
Boehly’s group, a consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton and Lord Coe, a bid
fronted by the Ricketts family, and Stephen Pagliuca’s consortium.