Sports

Chelsea are learning the hard way that co-owners rarely work in football

Published

2 months ago

September 10, 2024

Chelsea are learning the hard way that co-owners rarely work in football

The night before Liverpool’s former owners faced the media for the first time at Anfield in February 2007, a meeting was held about the running order for business.

George Gillett, a junk bond millionaire, had initially been batted away from the club because he did not have deep enough pockets. To change his possibilities, he enlisted the help of Inner Circle Sports, an investment bank from New York City. Ultimately, the conversations sent him to Tom Hicks, someone he’d worked with before after they put money into a meat-packing company.

Hicks’ interest in Liverpool came relatively late, and because of this — according to one club official present at the time but who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect their current position — it was suggested that Gillett should field the earliest questions in the press conference. Hicks was having none of it. “I’ll go first,” he said. And he got his way.

It was an early indication that this marriage was never likely to last. Within a few months, the club was unofficially in the grip of a civil war, with the co-owners no longer on speaking terms.

Their reign staggered on for three agonising years before a High Court ruling led to another sale, this time to Fenway Sports Group (FSG), with the whole exercise just serving to underline how difficult it is to make co-ownership work in the high-stakes world of Premier League football.

George Gillett (left) and Tom Hicks unveil their plans for Liverpool in 2007 (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

All of which brings us to Chelsea, and the strife between co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, of Clearlake Capital.

The London club’s fans may not appreciate the parallel, but they could do worse than look north if they wished to understand how and why things can go so wrong so quickly with joint owners.

In the Gillett role, you have Boehly. Both are American businessmen with pre-existing sporting interests (Gillett owned ice hockey’s Montreal Canadiens, Boehly part-owns baseball’s LA Dodgers) who were wealthy enough to control one of England’s biggest sporting institutions, but not quite rich enough to do that and fulfil those clubs’ vast ambitions.

The parallels don’t end there. Gillett only completed his takeover after other bidders failed. With Liverpool urgently needing money to fund a new stadium project, he returned with Hicks.

At Chelsea, it was only possible for Boehly to claim the club as his own because of money from Clearlake and Eghbali. And here, too, time was of the essence: the UK government had set a deadline of May 31, 2022 for Chelsea to be sold amid ongoing sanctions against the previous owner, Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch.

Since the takeover’s completion, Boehly has taken many of the headlines but Eghbali has played a big part in a lot of internal processes and decision-making. It was the same at Liverpool, where Hicks — despite being introduced to the club by Gillett — always tended to come first when their names were mentioned in tandem.

If anything, Liverpool’s ownership partners fell out even quicker than Chelsea’s. In Brian Reade’s book about the period, An Epic Swindle, he quotes an unnamed senior football executive and a Liverpool fan who met both owners individually.

“It was only two months into their joint ownership of the club but George was talking about his view versus his partner’s view. When I later had lunch with Tom and some of his American associates, I asked about the dynamics of their relationship. Tom shrugged and said, ‘You’d better ask him,’ pointing at a senior figure from Inner Circle Sports, who had brought the two together for the deal.”

From the beginning, there was a lack of understanding about who was really in charge at Liverpool. This stemmed from the fact each partner had an equal number of shares — a difference to Boehly and Clearlake, with the latter’s stake totalling 61.5 per cent and Boehly’s less than 13 per cent.

By December 2007, with further differences being exposed around whether to revamp Anfield or relocate from it — sound familiar, Chelsea fans? — Gillett had already started exploring an exit strategy, having realised he’d made a monumental mistake with his choice of partner.

The challenges of running a business in the meat industry were a little different to a football club the size of Liverpool: a responsibility that invites emotion, attention and criticism, with each factor testing a person’s ego. Those who dealt with Hicks — a brash Texan whose investment firm had initially made money in radio and soft drinks — suggest he had one as big as Mount Rushmore.

Personality clashes are often at the root of co-ownership implosions, although tensions are often strategic as much as personal.

Take Crystal Palace, probably the club whose current ownership issues most closely resemble Chelsea’s in the top flight.

In 2010, Palace were brought out of administration by a group of wealthy local supporters led by Steve Parish. After an unexpected promotion to the Premier League in 2013 and a couple of seasons of struggle, the ownership model changed, with Parish seeking outside investment from America in the form of private equity tycoons Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who bought stakes in 2015, and John Textor, who purchased around 40 per cent of the club six years later. His stake has since crept up to 45 per cent.

John Textor wants full control of a Premier League club (Wagner Meier/Getty Images)

Despite their vastly differing-sized stakes, Parish, Textor, Harris and Blitzer all have an equal voting share, which is a problem given the strategic differences between them.

Parish, who runs Palace day to day, wants to follow a long-term sustainable economic model, based around infrastructure improvements, while Textor is keen to attack the transfer market and take advantage of the other elements of his Eagle Football multi-club model (he also owns Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyon, Brazil’s Botafogo and Belgian side RWD Molenbeek). Blitzer and Harris seem happy, by and large, to retain the status quo.

It would be stretching it to claim Palace are in the grip of a Chelsea-style civil war, but the strategic impasse effectively means the club is stuck — hence why Textor is now trying to sell his Palace stake and buy Everton, which Farhad Moshiri has been trying to sell for a couple of years.

Officially, Moshiri has been the sole owner of Everton since 2016 when he displaced the late Bill Kenwright, who stayed on as chairman. Although Kenwright’s power was gone, he remained influential and a high-profile presence around the club, a point which created its own issues. His views did not always align with Moshiri, notably around decisions such as sacking manager Roberto Martinez in 2016 and around some transfers, and the result was barely-controlled chaos.

There was, perhaps, something similar at play with Newcastle United and the recent departures of Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi — the couple who helped secure the club’s Saudi Arabian-backed takeover in 2021.

Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi watching Newcastle United in August 2023 (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

At that point, there was no sporting director or CEO at the club, so Staveley and Ghodoussi assumed responsibility for those areas until an executive team was eventually put in place, becoming the public faces of the club’s executive team. But their influence was belied by their 10 per cent ownership stake.

Ultimately, once those pre-existing vacancies had been filled, there was a sense of too many competing voices and, in that scenario, there was only ever going to be one winner.

Will the same thing happen at Manchester United? INEOS and the Glazer family have never worked together before. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has had much influence over the club since his investment but it will be interesting to see what sort of pressure he is subjected to internally if results on the pitch continue.

Co-ownership structures can be a success, but only — it would seem — when the partnerships are not flung together simply through circumstance. Wrexham’s duo of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney seem to have found a way to work in harmony, although if their project ever reaches the Premier League, with all the attendant scrutiny and financial demands, that partnership could come under renewed scrutiny.

Who knows where Chelsea will be by then? Either way, the chances of Boehly and Egbhali still being in partnership seem minimal.

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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Sports

The rise of football’s ‘arrival fits’, putting player fashion in the spotlight

Published

5 hours ago

November 23, 2024

Press Room

The rise of football’s ‘arrival fits’, putting player fashion in the spotlight

Tom Marchitelli worked as an accountant for a hedge fund for eight years before setting up a side hustle that soon became his full-time business.

Marchitelli started a custom menswear clothing business called Gentleman’s Playbook a decade ago. Since then, he has accrued approximately 500 clients, the majority of whom are professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, and on the PGA Tour.

When The Athletic spoke with Marchitelli, he was heading to an airport in Dallas after a meeting with a baseball player.

In his role as personal designer, stylist and tailor, Marchitelli handpicks entire wardrobes for a clientele which includes Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. During the different pre-seasons across the United States’ various leagues, Marchitelli is rarely in one city for long. As well as working on a lookbook of outfits for specific events, the majority of his work centres around personalising entire collections of tunnel fits for the athletes he works with.

“Tunnel fits” is the phrase used to describe what sportsmen and women wear when they turn up at venues for games (‘fits’ being short for ‘outfits’).

Usually, athletes arrive in the tunnel beneath the arena wearing their best outfits, which is where the name derives from. Think of it as a pre-game runway, where players across sports in North America showcase their personalities through what they wear.

The most fashion-conscious athletes, such as Houston Texans’ Stefon Diggs or Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, will go big, but others prefer to keep it simple.

Stefon Diggs arrives for an NFL game in January this year (Perry Knotts/Getty Images)

Kyle Kuzma was in the former camp, and is now the latter. The Washington Wizards forward recently announced his ‘retirement’ from the tunnel walk after taking the game to heights with choices including an incredibly oversized pink Raf Simons jumper and a black Rick Owens puffer jacket.

“I don’t want to be a part of that type of community where you have to put on a ’fit. I’m really taking a backseat to all of that,” Kuzma told Vogue in October.

While Kuzma has checked out and traded in a palate of high fashion for plain-tasting sweatsuits, in Europe, footballers are only just checking into the world of tunnel fits.

“It is a sport within sports (in the U.S.),” Marchitelli says. “Social media plays a huge role, because all major sports teams have media people who are in charge of photographing the players as they enter.

“That’s only been around, I would say maybe eight years, because when I first started, that (posting images of players arriving to games on social media) wasn’t a thing. And then it started becoming so visible.

Kyle Kuzma, pictured in 2022 (left) and 2021, has ‘retired’ from deliberate tunnel fits (Getty Images)

“You’re getting a close and personal look at what athletes look like when they’re not in their uniforms (team kit), and how they are choosing to express themselves. And, over time, players have taken more pride in how they show up for work.

“Another big factor that drives it is competition among players. These guys are trying to outdress guys on their team, guys on other teams across their sport, and even crossing over into other sports.

“When they show up to the arena, they’re given the uniform that they’re forced to wear, so they don’t have any real choices of self-expression other than their shoes, cleats (boots), maybe a wristband accessory or a headband. But the outfit that they wear to show up to the game, they’re able to express how they feel and how they want to look.”

Marchitelli could field a team in each men’s major sports league with the number of clients he has, but not a single one is a professional footballer despite MLS and NWSL teams having both dabbled in this subcultural movement.

In European football, tunnel fits are almost nonexistent. France international Jules Kounde led the way for Barcelona in recent seasons with his ensembled looks which blend vintage finds with high fashion. This season though, Barca players are no longer been allowed to arrive for games in their own clothes. This has led Kounde, a face now as recognisable in fashion quarters as much as football, capturing his fits to share with his followers on social media after matches instead.

Most teams have a strict club-tracksuits-only policy applied to matchday and this is one of the main reasons why pre-game tunnel fits have not yet taken off in football.

So where is the individuality? The answer to that does not yet reside in the underbelly of stadiums but in the car parks of the sport’s training grounds. Heading into training for your club or national team has slowly evolved into a time when players across the men’s and women’s games can showcase their style in the form of arrival fits.

Showing up for international duty, in particular, has become a moment for players to demonstrate their fashion prowess.

Last month, Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konate arrived at France’s training ground wearing a neon green hood zipped over his face while his international team-mate Marcus Thuram, often bedecked in Balenciaga and Chrome Hearts, is among those also paving the way.

Konate arrives for international duty with France in October (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

Players of Argentina, Belgium and Portugal are three other standouts who consistently show up. Meanwhile, England — whose players include Louis Vuitton brand ambassador Jude Bellingham — are still strutting around in team-supplied Nike tracksuits, proving the trend has not completely caught fire everywhere.

“It was probably 2022 when that (arrival fits) wave really began,” Jordan Clarke, founder of Footballer Fits, a platform which celebrates footballer fashion, says.

Clarke noticed that Premier League team Crystal Palace had started putting pictures on Instagram of their players arriving at their south London training ground wearing their own clothes. After starting a conversation with the club, Footballer Fits and Palace have been collaborating on Instagram posts to showcase what players are wearing ever since.

“Now we’ve done it with Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, Anderlecht in Belgium, we’ve done it with Brentford a lot, we’ve done it with Crystal Palace Women, Chelsea Women — there are so many,” says Clarke, who hopes that arrival fits are a precursor to tunnel fits becoming a regular sight in football.

“I don’t want to leave anyone out, but we’ve done it with so many clubs and now you’re seeing Liverpool, Newcastle United and Manchester City maybe not doing it in collaboration with us, but they’re doing it (themselves) now, and that’s amazing to see.

“With training, there is a lot less pressure. They (clubs) can release photos midweek and whatever happens on the weekend, unless you’re a super-negative person, I don’t think people are going to link back to what the players wore to training as the reason why they lost.”

Siobhan Wilson is one of the players who has featured on Footballer Fits’ Instagram page in collaboration with her club, Birmingham City Women, and she would welcome an escape from the traditional pre-match tracksuit.

“It actually annoys me, you know — especially when you see what they are doing in the WNBA,” says the 30-year-old Jamaica international with a laugh. “I wish we did stuff like that here. They just want us to all look like clones of each other, but it’s fine.”

Wilson used to deliver mail while playing part-time for Palace. She now combines a full-time playing career at Birmingham, who are top of the second-tier Championship, with being a fitness influencer to 1.3million followers on TikTok.

“It’s nice for the fans to see players express themselves through what they’re wearing and their style,” she says. “You get to see people’s personalities by doing that, so it would be something that I would love to see more of.

“For me, I feel like if you’ve got like a nice ’fit on, and a good pair of shoes on, you just feel good. But I get the other side (players arriving in uniform tracksuits) too. It is a team game. You’re there to play as a team, so I get it from that standpoint, but wearing your own clothes and feeling comfortable in what you’re wearing: it allows you to be yourself a bit more.”

Martin Odegaard and Arsenal arriving in team gear to play Chelsea this month (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Algen Hamilton is a designer and stylist from south London.

His break in the fashion industry arrived when he started styling looks for footballer friend Reiss Nelson, the Fulham winger (on loan from Arsenal) who he met at primary school aged four. Hamilton’s client list includes Trevoh Chalobah (Crystal Palace, on loan from Chelsea), Kai Havertz (Arsenal), Joe Willock (Newcastle), Ben Chilwell (Chelsea) and Mateo Kovacic (Manchester City).

“I’ll work with them constantly throughout the season, whenever they want to — when they have an event coming up or they have an awards ceremony or they’re going to a premiere,” Hamilton, 24, explains. “When it comes to arrival fits, those looks normally come from the wardrobe I create and I’ll update it multiple times in a year.

“I speak to them first about what they want to wear and what the vibe is that we are going for, if it’s different to before, where they are travelling to et cetera. Then I’ll go off, make the outfits and send them a message. They will tell me which outfits they love.

“So, for example, I’m working with Trevoh right now. We made a whole bunch of outfits, which he picked, and then there are brands who want to gift some stuff for winter.”

Amadou Onana, left, checks in for Belgium duty in 2023 (Nico Vereecken/Photo News via Getty Images)

Having worked with Chalobah on a full-time basis since 2021, Hamilton has watched the progression of football and fashion’s relationship firsthand.

“When I first started, players weren’t really going out there dressing up like they do now, and it wasn’t just the Premier League — we are talking La Liga (its Spanish equivalent) and the Bundesliga (the top division in Germany),” he says.

“Also, brands weren’t really opening up partnerships to football players either. As time has gone by, the popularity has grown and supporters are tapping into the player outside of the training ground and off the pitch. I feel like now, those opportunities are happening more. Players are more open with their fits and want to show them off.

“We have watched the game change bit by bit and it is only a matter of time for it to get to that stage where it’s like the sports are in America. But let’s not mix a step forward with progress, because it can be a step forward seeing teams do that (post-arrival fits on social media) but it doesn’t mean it’s actual progression for the teams to change their minds.

“The Premier League is very traditional. They’ll probably be the last league that will change how things are.

“It would be nice for the progress to be meaningful; for it (wearing an arrival outfit) not to be looked at as a distraction or as a moment where players aren’t focused on what the team objectives are, but to see it as an opportunity where players are expressing themselves.”

GO DEEPER

Footballers, modelling and the power of expression

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Peterson)

Sports

Jason Kelce to host new late-night show on ESPN

Published

6 hours ago

November 23, 2024

Press Room

Jason Kelce to host new late-night show on ESPN

Jason Kelce is expanding his media resume.

The future Hall of Famer, who is a podcast host and “Monday Night Football” analyst, announced Thursday he will host a late-night show on ESPN.

Kelce made the announcement during an appearance with Jimmy Kimmel, a future rival.

Jason Kelce says being a father is one of the highlights of his life. (Andy Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“I loved late-night shows. I’ve always loved them. I remember sleepovers watching Conan O’Brien with my friends,” Kelce said on Kimmel’s show. “We’re going to have a bunch of guys up there — legends of the game, friends that I played with, coaches, celebrities.”

The first four episodes of “They Call It Late Night With Jason Kelce” will be broadcast in front of a live audience at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, where Kelce played all 13 of his NFL seasons with the Eagles.

Jason Kelce waves to fans at the 18th hole at the 2024 American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course July 14, 2024, in Stateline, Nev. (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)

The first episode will be taped the evening of Jan. 3 and will be broadcast the following morning at 1 a.m. ET. ESPN will record four more shows, and the final broadcast is scheduled for Feb. 1.

Kelce and his younger brother, Travis, launched a podcast, “New Heights,” in 2022, a few months before facing each other in the Super Bowl.

After Travis won that Super Bowl, he hosted “Saturday Night Live,” and Jason made an appearance. Travis is also the host of the show “Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity?”

Jason Kelce poses for a photo with Kylie Kelce during the “Kelce” documentary premiere at Suzanne Roberts Theatre Sept. 8, 2023, in Philadelphia. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

Kelce’s wife, Kylie, announced Friday she is pregnant with the couple’s fourth daughter. In his career, he made seven Pro Bowls and was a six-time first-team All-Pro selection.

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Sports

North Hollywood's Ananya Balaraman wins girls' cross-country title in City

Published

6 hours ago

November 23, 2024

Press Room

North Hollywood's Ananya Balaraman wins girls' cross-country title in City

On a cool Saturday morning at Pierce College, Ananya Balaraman of North Hollywood High did something she has been dreaming about for years. She won the City Section Division I girls’ cross-country title with a personal best time of 17 minutes, 38 seconds.

The straight-A student who attends North Hollywood’s Highly Gifted Magnet finished sixth in last year’s race in 19:18. She credits her improvement to increasing her mileage workouts.

Granada Hills won the Division I girls’ title.

Paul Tranquilla of Venice won the City Section DI boys’ race with a school-record time of 14:44.60.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

In the boys’ race, Paul Tranquilla of Venice raced to the Division I title with a time of 14:44.60. Last week he ran a personal best of 15:03 at the preliminaries, so he put together back-to-back weeks reaching peak form. He set a school record and was the 800 City champion in track.

Palisades won the boys’ Division I team title.

It was a big day for the Montenegro family. Jorge helped Monroe win the Division II boys’ title and his sister, Trinidad, was a member of Granada Hills’ Division I championship team.

Griffin Kushen breaks record

Griffin Kushen of Tesoro, a recent Duke signee, had a memorable Saturday morning at the Southern Section championships at Mt. San Antonio College. He set a Mt. SAC course record with a time of 14:38.5 in Division 2. Glendora won the team title.

Beckman won the Division 1 boys’ team title. Maximo Zavaleta of King took first in 15:00.8.

Trabuco Hills won the Division 1 girls’ team title behind Holly Barker, who ran 16:40.7 to take the individual title.

In Division 2 girls, Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura won in 17:31.9. El Toro captured the team title.

The top teams and individuals advance to the state championships at Woodward Park in Fresno on Nov. 30.