Some gamblers will spend their lives at the track or tables. Others will make one bet that ends up being the worst mistake they could make. Roman Abramovich has made it into a list of most famous gamblers because of his purchase of Chelsea Football Club. Roman Abramovich was known most for being a Russian billionaire. So, what would make this such a gamble? Why has it landed Roman Abramovich on the list? Well for starters it is because of the 140 million pounds spent to get the team. He paid this amount in 2003. The thing is that the price had to actually include the high debts the team had. The club had to close down or get money to pay off 80 million pounds in debts.
The previous owners did not do a great job in making enough money to pay for the highly paid players. The thing is with such expensive players they should have been gaining success in the games, but they were not. It seems unreasonable for someone to purchase a team for such a high amount with such high debts, but that is just what Roman Abramovich did. Furthermore, he decided to put 220 million pounds more into the team. He did this in order to get players like Claude Makelele and Joe Cole. This amount of money was spent in a period of 18 months. Given all of the money spent the team was in the red 88 million pounds at the end of 2004. It also meant that there was an increase in payroll which was 115 million pounds.
If you think that investment was too risky consider what happened next. Roman decided to take another risk. He decided to bet on Jose Mourinho as club manager. Jose was from Portugul. This man was young and by comparison quite inexperienced. It is not the only type of gamble that Roman has made in his past. It is one of the biggest gambles taken though, considering the amount of money that has been spent on the team.
The good news is that the risk in hiring Jose paid off. In 2004 to 2005 season Chelsea finally had the Premiership win. This was the first time in half a century. They also managed to get the win for the Carling Cup. The downside to their success was losing in a narrow battle with Liverpool for a semi final in the Champions League. These wins at least got Jose noticed as the best coach in the world. After all there are very few who could have taken a team and managed to get them wins after so many losses. Roman is still spending, but has insisted that all the major spending is now complete. It is more a matter of making certain the team continues to win. While Roman has not bet on cards or table games, he did make a significant bet on a team that was losing games and losing a great deal of money. There is evidence that he has taken a risk, but that it might pay off in the next couple of years.