Bruce Buck has described Roman Abramovich as a private person who has great passion for football and tremendous knowledge of the game.
Chelsea chairman hails knowledgeable owner
Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck has described Roman Abramovich as a private person who has great passion for football and tremendous knowledge of the game.
Russian billionaire Abramovich became Chelsea owner in 2003 and it is his financial backing that has helped establish the club as one of the most powerful in the world.
He does not attend games as often these days since the birth of his sixth child in 2009, but Buck maintains that his hunger for the game remains as strong as ever.
"I would say that his passion for Chelsea has increased not decreased. His passion for football has increased, not decreased," Buck said in an interview for upcoming book
There's a Golden Sky, extracts of which have been published in the
Daily Telegraph.
"His knowledge of football has increased exponentially. I'm not talking about what goes at the megastore, I'm talking about football. It would be pretty hard to name a current footballer that he couldn't give you statistics for.
"He doesn't miss a game in the sense that wherever he is in the world he watches the Chelsea game. He calls Eugene Tenenbaum [trusted club director and associate] or whoever after the game and they talk about it. He is very much on top of things."
Buck is one of Abramovich's closest allies and recalls the moment the Russian first considered buying a club, hiring investment bank UBS Warburg to write a feasibility study, which listed a number of possible options.
Notoriety
"It said that Manchester United would be expensive and the fans would go crazy. Aston Villa was for sale but was in Birmingham and the long-term opportunities were limited," he explained.
"Tottenham was on the list along with Chelsea. They were in London; they were in financial trouble. Roman's advisers tried to arrange meetings with Tottenham and Chelsea but for whatever reason, they couldn't set up a meeting with Tottenham, or Tottenham didn't want to meet."
Buck admits that Abramovich had not expected to be at the centre of so much media scrutiny when he first became involved in English football.
He said: "We thought, 'Yeah, it will be a decent story for a couple of weeks and then Roman will go back and have his private life.' Because he is a very private guy. He clearly didn't do things for the notoriety or publicity because that is not him."
Chelsea have been usurped in the big-spending stakes over the past few years by Manchester City and their owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, but Buck has no problem with that.
"That's why we aren't complaining about some of the things City are doing," he said. "We started it after all but, having said that, it is a free world.
"Obviously what we have done has not pleased the fans of West Ham or Manchester United, but they sure have pleased the fans at Chelsea."
