Only now is football beginning to wake up to the stench of its own money

As the old romantic saying almost goes: if you love something, let stewardship and care of it go – naturally, while retaining possession of all the relevant deeds and liquid assets. The news that Roman Abramovich is apparently giving up day-to-day control of Chelsea to the trustees of the club’s charitable foundation has been interpreted in wildly different ways which, with the benefit of a little reflection, seems to have been the entire point of the exercise.

For some it is the ultimate sacrificial act of devotion: Abramovich’s way of insulating the club he adores from the threat of sanction, censure, even seizure. Big surprise: the billionaire oligarch has feelings! For others it is a cynical sleight of hand: the act of very grandiosely doing nothing at all, a solemn legal statement with no legal import whatsoever. For some it is a sign that nothing will be the same again. For others it is a sure sign that Abramovich is intent on ultimately making everything the same again.

Certainly if Abramovich had intended to clarify the ownership situation, or whether he intended to sell Chelsea, or what “stewardship and care” actually means in practice, or any of a number of issues currently worrying Chelsea fans, one assumes he would have done so.

Be nice if we could ask him, wouldn’t it? You know: take some lateral flows, sit him down for an hour with a few journalists or an audience of Chelsea fans. Pick his brains. Shoot the breeze. But the fact that this mundane scenario feels about as plausible as a page from a fantasy novel is, in many ways, the basic problem, a problem that goes far beyond one partially shaven Russian/Israeli/Portuguese citizen and his company credit card. Why does any owner of an asset as cherished as a