Since Abu joined Chelsea in 2003, he has unconsciously reached his 20th year. When the Russian billionaire announced that he was giving up his management of Chelsea, in a way, it ended a 20-year saga.
Spending £3 billion on players and coaches is the highest in the world, and Chelsea still owes him £1.5 billion personally. Abu is a good boss in the mouths of various fans, and even the ceiling of football.
In recent years, because of the various restrictions on his identity in the UK, from not being able to enter the country to now being forced to withdraw from daily management, will Abu regret his decision to come to the Premier League in the past 20 years?
01. Abu's 20-year commitment to European first place: Manchester United missing out on him is a pain for the fans
If you go back 20 years, Abu watched a Manchester United Premier League game on the spot, which made him think of owning a Premier League team. Through Zahavi's matchmaking, Abu negotiated with the Manchester United boss, but the latter refused.
Abu then decided to set his sights on other teams, Liverpool and Tottenham hotspur had been on his radar, and even met with the tottenham president at one point, but in the end it was Chelsea.
Contact between the Russian billionaire and Chelsea boss Bates took less than 20 minutes to negotiate the price, making Abu the new owner of the Blues.
At a £150 million purchase price and the obligation to pay off Chelsea's £80 million debt, Abu embarked on his premier league boss career after spending £230 million.
It was from this moment that a new term appeared in football: "Golden Dollar Football". One big buy after another, the arrival of Mourinho, let Chelsea rise rapidly, less than 2 years, captain John Terry has raised the Premier League championship trophy.
Abu injected a lot of money into the team during his first 8 years at Chelsea. It wasn't until that earnings report, which ended on 30 June 2012, that Abu was announced to have made a profit in a single season for the first time after nine years in charge: £1.4 million (the money was just over a month's salary for Terry at the time).
This is because in 2009, Abu himself announced that he would assume Chelsea's debt of up to 340 million pounds, turning the team from the "edge of bankruptcy on the books" into a good asset, and then buying Torres, Mata and Hazard at a continuous price, so that the team's influence and income increased day by day.
So Chelsea, which lost £67.7 million in 2007-08, finally made a profit for the first time. Intriguingly, this year is also the time when the UEFA Fiscal Fairness Act came out, which is somewhat intriguing.
From the data after the window closed in the summer of 2021, it can be seen that after Abu became the blues boss in 2003, he invested a total of 2.34 billion euros in the transfer market, ranking first in the world. Manchester City, Barca, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Juve, Paris and Liverpool are in 2nd-8th place respectively.
02. Abu "burned" a Grand Slam with gold dollars: Chelsea still owe him £1.5 billion
Abu has his "willful" side when it comes to spending money. However, as a home team fan, I must dream that my boss can do whatever he wants when spending money.
The money Abu gave chelsea was not only spent more than £2 billion on players, but also nearly £90 million in firing the coach (Lampard only took £2 million, which had little impact on the list).
After spending more than £3 billion on coaches and players, Abu also got the rewards he wanted. Over the past 20 years, Chelsea have won 21 trophies, including: 5 Premier League titles, 2 Champions League titles, 1 Club World Cup, 1 UEFA Cup, 2 Europa Leagues, 5 FA Cups, 3 League Cups and a pair of Community Cups.
Abu's willfulness in spending money is not only reflected in the dismissal of coaches, but also in selling players who are not afraid to make mistakes and dare to correct themselves. The all-time goalkeeper of 80 million euros bought Kepa for the first time, and after being shown to be a mistake, the team soon spent another 25 million euros on Mendy.
The goalkeeper position alone cost more than 100 million yuan in 2 years, and in the end, Mendy won 4 championships in the past 1 year, won 3 best goalkeeper awards, and became the key force for the team to reach the top of Europe.
Such decisive dedication and decisive style have also allowed every Chelsea manager to receive enough support during his tenure. If the player can't do it, he will change it, and if he doesn't buy it well, he will buy it again. If you can't do it, you will get off the class and receive a huge compensation.
Such a good working environment has also allowed Chelsea to attract 15 good coaches in 20 years, so that the team has always maintained the motivation to improve.
Starting with 224 million pounds owed Abu in 2004, the team has only had one year of "paying back" in 20 years, and from 2016 to now, Abu has continued to lend nearly 500 million pounds to the Blues in less than 6 years, eventually bringing the total number of the team owing him to an astronomical amount of 1.514 billion pounds.
It took russia's billionaires nearly 20 years to make Chelsea change the Premier League, and even achieved a weight-taking position in world football, winning countless honors and good memories.
Although the team did not become the beautiful football he expected, the Predator Blues are still a beautiful landscape.
03. Never give a visa to plan to deprive property: Abu was forced to let Chelsea trusteeship
Because of his deep ties with Putin, Abu was listed as a target of surveillance by the British government for a long time. This time, because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he became the target of public criticism in Britain. At the British parliamentary session, lawmaker Hodge made a new proposal to Prime Minister Johnson: sanctions against Russian financial oligarchs who have invested in Britain, especially Abu.
The British Prime Minister's first knee-jerk reaction was: We have sanctioned Abu, and the British government has stopped issuing visas to Abu.
For this reason, Abu did not set foot in British territory for a long time, although he was naturalized to Israel and was allowed to live in England for half a year according to the regulations, but did not have the right to work.
Even in December last year, Abu got a Portuguese passport and became an EU citizen, and in principle, the British government did not have the easy time to find the right to "sanction" Abu.
This time, however, Labour MP Chris Bryant not only refused entry, but also demanded that the British government confiscate Abu's property in the UK.
It is for this reason that Abu announced that Chelsea would be entrusted to the Foundation. As a result, he has nominally decoupled from Chelsea and his legal team will insist that the Blues are no longer his personal property and that the British government has no right to confiscate them.
In fact, Abu has also been courting the British, after Chelsea handed over the Millennium Hotel next to Stamford Bridge Stadium to the National Health Service to provide a resting place for medical workers fighting the epidemic in London. All the costs incurred as a result, but Abu alone did it.
And after the conflict broke out between Russia and Ukraine, although Abu remained silent. But his daughter Sophia took a stark stand against Putin on social media, sparking a heated public debate.
Chelsea are now under the management of a foundation led by team president Bruce Barker, sports lawyer John Divane, women's football coach Emma Hayes, anti-racist group leader Piara Bauer, Blues financial director Paul Ramos and British Olympic Association president Hugh Robertson.
However, like Abu, they will only have the right to decide on the long-term strategy, and the day-to-day operations and management will be entrusted to Granovskaya and Cech.
epilogue:
Despite rumours that Abu may have sold Chelsea, he has, as he himself said, rejected an offer of 2.5 billion. Abu also does not intend to let Chelsea repay the £1.5 billion, because if he asks for it, the Blues may even go bankrupt.
So Abu is the ceiling of the football boss, no matter how difficult he is in the UK, I believe he will still stick to it and continue his own chapter of the blue legend.