A Bridge Too Far?

On 22nd August 2011, the young Chelsea centre-back Tomáš Kalas signed a deal with Vitesse Arnhem which will keep him at the Dutch club for the whole of the 2011/12 season.

The day after, the esteemed Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Ulises Dávila, one of the stars of Mexico’s Under 20 World Cup campaign, would sign for Chelsea and would then immediately join up with Vitesse on loan in order to give him European experience and to work towards gaining a work permit to play in the Premier League. This deal was confirmed by Chelsea on 31st August. Almost exactly 12 months before, Vitesse had signed up Nemanja Matić, Slobodan Rajković and Matej Delač again on loan, again from Chelsea FC. Five players in just over a year, all from Chelsea. Can these deals just be explained away as a coincidence or a series of favours for a friend? Perhaps there is something more to it.

_{The GelreDome, the home of Vitesse Arnhem}

Arnhem is a relatively quiet city located on the Lower Rhine in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. To give a useful comparison it is roughly the size of Ipswich. It has been fought over fiercely over the years but apart from being the setting for the ill-fated Operation Market Garden during World War II and it being where Audrey Hepburn went to school; even residents there would probably admit that the city has not made much impression on the wider world. The same is true of their football team. Vitesse Arnhem, despite their history stretching back to 1892, have never been national champions and their best league finish in recent years was third place in 1997/98. 

_{Arnhem from the air.}

And yet, on 16th August 2010 Vitesse Arnhem created a little bit of history in the Netherlands. On that day the Georgian businessman Merab Jordania became the first ever foreign owner of a Dutch club. Within days he had promised to help Vitesse win the Eredivisie within three years. In order to achieve this he vowed to invest millions in the team and, crucially, promised to make use of his connections across Europe. 

_{Georgian investor Merab Jordania (R) celebrates his takeover with ex-owner Maasbert Schouten}

The whole of Dutch football immediately began debating the potential opportunities and pitfalls of foreign investment in Dutch football and, more specifically, they asked themselves who this man Merab Jordania was. The available evidence was not encouraging. Jordania is a former president of the Georgian Football Federation but was removed from office due to alleged corruption. He has served time in prison on two occasions for ‘tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement’ but on both occasions he has secured his release after paying a substantial fine (though he has stated on record that these were politically motivated arrests). A former player himself he was also the President of Dynamo Tblisi and he even managed the Georgian national football team on a temporary basis.

At the point when he took over Vitesse, it seems that Meraj Jordania’s primary business was in owning the company Mj-Georgia which operates mostly in the former-Soviet Union and earns money though the ‘transfer of players to other countries, arranging TV contracts for clubs and organizing friendly games for clubs and national teams’. Oddly though, Mj-Georgia has only existed since 2009 and is not considered a big player in this field. In fact the Georgian Chamber of Commerce officially consider it a ‘small enterprise’ (i.e. one with fewer than 50 employees). It is therefore considered somewhat of a mystery how Jordania came to find the private resources to fund the investment in Vitesse alone. The conclusion from most commentators was that, in fact, Jordania, was acting as the front man for other investors.

_{Merab Jordania outside the GelreDome.}

Many Dutch journalists immediately assumed that Roman Abramovich had further extended his empire. But, in fact, a number of names have emerged as possible alternative investors in Vitesse. One is Alexander Chigirinsky who is a camera-shy 48 year old, super rich property developer who has interests in Russia, the Ukraine and Germany. His even richer elder brother Shalva Chigirinsky has also been linked to Vitesse and, interestingly, Roman has been involved in a quite bitter legal dispute with the elder Chigirinsky over an ill-fated joint venture in the energy business and this case also involved another former ally/current enemy of Roman Abramovich, Boris Berezovsky. However, Roman’s relationship with Chigirinsky junior appears to be thriving and, in fact, Abramovich has been reported to hold a 16% stake in Chigirinsky’s successful property company Snegiri Development. Interestingly, Merab Jordania admits that Chigirinsky was the man who first introduced him to Roman Abramovich.

Someone else who was suggested as the potential source of the ‘money behind the throne’ was the colourful, sometimes controversial Serbian player advisor (though not an official agent as he does not have FIFA accreditation) Vlado Lemić. It was Vlado Lemić who was behind the deals when Chelsea first purchased Mateja Kežman from PSV and then later bought Alex, Alcides and Rajković and sent them directly on to PSV to gain experience. He was also involved in Branislav Ivanović’s transfer from CSKA Moscow to Chelsea.

_{Vlado Lemić}

Lemić reportedly became close to Roman Abramovich through his existing relationships with Piet De Visser and Frank Arnesen and eventually ended up taking a reportedly large role in the recruitment of first Luis Felipe Scolari and subsequently Carlo Ancelotti as Chelsea manager. Vlado Lemić is, for what it is worth, the nominated representative of Matić, Rajković and Delač but it is not known whether he has any interest in either Tomáš Kalas or Ulises Dávila. Whether Lemić was an investor in Vitesse or not he is clearly someone with a thick contact book and with his fingers in many pies. Almost inevitably, his name will come up again later in this article.

And what of Roman Abramovich’s involvement with Vitesse? There are a huge range of rumours about the size of Roman’s financial stake which range from him owning the whole club, holding a 42% stake (with Chigirinsky and Jordania owning the rest), owning a small 16% shareholding, to him having no financial involvement at all. Certainly Jordania denies that Roman owns any part of the club and a spokesperson from Millhouse Capital, Abramovich’s investment company, explained that the report run by Quote, the Dutch business magazine, which alleged that Roman held a stake in Vitesse was "based on anonymous sources" and was "misinformed", adding that the 44-year-old is "not involved in Vitesse at all”.

_{Roman Abramovich}

The truth of this allegation is crucial as UEFA rules prohibit “two football clubs in which a person or a company has an interest from being admitted into the same UEFA club competition”. As Vitesse, under the leadership of Merab Jordania, have ambitions of winning the Eredivisie within three years it is a realistic possibility that Vitesse and Chelsea could be paired together in the Champions League in four or five years. If we take what everyone says to be true, which I think we have to, and Roman has no financial involvement in Vitesse than there appears to be no problem. But a person or a club could even be seen to fall foul of the UEFA rules if they merely “exercise a decisive influence over the decision making of another club.” So too close a ‘brotherly relationship’ between the two clubs (underpinned by a regular flow of young players) could possibly be seen as the ‘decisive influence’ that UEFA warn about. Watch this space.

Jordania himself insists that his 12 year relationship with Roman Abramovich (notably pre-dating Roman’s relationship with Chelsea) is purely based on friendship and a mutual love of football. Apparently they talk almost every day and meet most weeks. In fact Jordania says that when Vitesse and Chelsea matches do not clash, he often goes to see the Blues himself. Those are not the only links: Albert ‘Chapi’ Ferrer was the first Vitesse coach Jordania appointed and he openly admits modelling Vitesse’s redeveloped training ground Papendal on Cobham. But he insists that there is no financial relationship between the two men with regard to Vitesse.

But even if we assume that Roman does not directly own Vitesse it is clear that a relationship in which Chelsea “supports [Vitesse] with players” does exist. It does therefore make one wonder whether the Vitesse players who end up on loan from Chelsea are the only ones in which the London club have an interest. There is a precedent here: the aforementioned Alex was bought by PSV from Santos in 2004 using Chelsea’s money. Then, when Chelsea finally decided to make use of Alex’s talents he was ‘bought back’ by Chelsea in 2007 for the princely sum of $1. It is therefore an interesting exercise to look at the player purchases of Vitesse since August 2010 and wonder which of them could have been purchased by Vitesse with Roman Abramovich’s resources using the ‘Alex’ model.

_{A selection of transfers to Vitesse Arnhem since August 2010.}

There is no shortage of possible candidates from the list above. Not all of them will have been being parked at Vitesse by Chelsea but a few are obvious possibilities. The young Georgian wingers Giorgi Chanturia and Valeri Kazaishvili look to be probable candidates as do the Brazilian twins Alex and Anderson Santos. But the most likely example of all is the young Ecuadorian forward Renato Ibarra. Who would bet against him turning out in Chelsea blue in a few years if he fulfills his promise at Vitesse? 

_{Renato Ibarra playing for Ecuador.}

Interestingly, as touched upon above, there is a previous example of Chelsea maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with a Dutch club. Chelsea began their ‘affiliation’ with PSV Eindhoven in 2004 with the acquisition and then ‘parking’ of Alex in Eindhoven. Piet de Visser, Roman’s long-time football advisor, characterized the relationship between the two clubs in an interview in Voetbal International in January 2007. He said:

"It is not an official, sealed partnership between Chelsea and PSV Eindhoven .It is not the relationship between the two clubs but a relationship between Abramovich and PSV Eindhoven.”

De Visser went on:

"That bond is very, very good. He (Abramovich) has been over to Holland a couple of times and he is totally besotted with the youth academy at PSV. He has had a good look around. He has seen what he wanted to see. This is why he is now building a massive youth academy on Chelsea’s training grounds.”

  _{Guus Hiddink with Piet de Visser.}

This affiliation developed over the years but apparently gradually began to involve the aforementioned Vlado Lemić taking an increasingly influential role at PSV through his close relationship with the club’s technical director Stan Valckx. Lemić unofficially oversaw the acquisition by PSV of, amongst others, Heurelho Gomes, Jefferson Farfan and Jonathan Reis as well as a number of official loan players from Chelsea. Lemić’s influence was wide ranging and reportedly ‘hands-on’ (a “piece of furniture with privileges” said one source within PSV at the time) and he was very close to Guus Hiddink while he was PSV coach as well as Piet de Visser and Frank Arnesen on the technical side of the club (all familiar names for Chelsea fans). However, Lemić’s relationship with PSV soured after the arrival of the new PSV general manager Jan Reker and by summer 2008 the situation had developed into open warfare. Reker eventually alleged that Lemić and Valckx had been unofficially pocketing significant sums of money from these deals and despite the allegations never being proved the two were banned from the club. As a direct result, Piet de Visser resigned from PSV, appalled at the treatment of his friends.

It is at that point the CFC-PSV partnership appears to have dissolved and, earlier this year the ubiquitous Piet de Visser appeared to rule out the possibility of a resurrection of the relationship. He stated:

“I was open to a comeback, because I always have found PSV to be a great club. This would also have restored the relationship with Chelsea. Young talents who are not ready for the Premier League would join PSV to develop, as in the past with Alex. But Chelsea now have another hosting club."

Clearly that new ‘hosting club’ is Vitesse.

 
_{Piet de Visser}

So now we have Chelsea in the throes of developing another relationship with a Dutch club but this time even closer than was ever the case with PSV. The affiliation does seem to fall short of Vitesse being run as a subsidiary of Chelsea but the two clubs are clearly bound together now not just by their official owners being close friends but by the web of ‘fixers’, club executives, technical directors and player agents who they always seem to do business with (not least the infamous Pini Zahavi who is said to be a ‘close friend’ to all the characters named above).

It was therefore far from a surprise on 7th September in Voetbal International when Jordania confirmed a close and ongoing relationship with Chelsea. He said

"Ultimately, Roman Abramovich has helped us. We are Vitesse and we decide who we want, but it is true that Chelsea is an important connection in our transfer policy."

“An important connection” – unsurprisingly, there is no direct translation of the term ‘understatement’ in either Georgian or Dutch.