Unravelling of Roman Abramovich era leaves doubts at Chelsea and beyond

Stop all the clocks. Stow the faux-fur hats. Delete the Russian folk music from the pre-match playlist. Roman Abramovich is now officially looking for a buyer. Indeed, if we are to believe the reports, Chelsea Football Club could even be sold within the week.

It is an impossibly narrow timeframe for such a complex transaction, made credible only by the fact that, frankly, right now anything seems possible.

Perhaps even, who knows, a little honest reflection on Chelsea’s departing owner, who remains the single most lavish individual investor in the history of European football; but even now a strangely opaque and mysterious year-zero billionaire.

As Abramovich’s benevolent Chelsea dictatorship draws to an end, as even the lavish London houses – no, not the lavish London houses – are rushed to market, all against a backdrop of war, sanctions and the denial of Kremlin ties, perhaps the most extraordinary aspect right now is the memory of those early days when this bashful, oddly sullen-looking suitor emerged blinking into the Stamford Bridge light and began the process of complete and irreversible transformation.

It is 19 years since Abramovich bought Chelsea from Ken Bates for £140m. Looking back now at the late summer sunshine of 2003, it feels like an oddly gauche and guileless world.

In the stands the fans threw mock paper roubles. The newspapers goggled over £200,000 cars, the failed attempt to buy an entire ski resort, the high-end super-divorce. Chelsea spent so much money they had to invent Financial Fair Play. And three years into Vladimir Putin’s version of Russia Abramovich looked at that moment like a vanguard of some new human category, the billionaire uber-lad, with his yacht-flash, his Riviera tan, his