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MARINA GRANOVSKAIA WAS ROMAN ABRAMOVICH’S TRUSTED ALLY WHO OPERATED IN THE
SHADOWS

Daniel Taylor
Jun 22, 2022

226

A version of this article was originally published on March 28, 2022.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I have been blown away, to be honest. She was amazing. Incredibly warm,
personable and straight as an arrow. But she’s a silent assassin. You sit down,
she makes you feel as though you are winning and that you are loved, but she is
draining your blood without you realising.”

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One of the Premier League’s leading executives is explaining what it is like to
do business with the woman who ran Chelsea on a day-to-day basis for nearly a
decade.

Her name is Marina Granovskaia and, if it is not a name you immediately
recognise, that is precisely because she has chosen for it to be that way.

Granovskaia has never wanted publicity. She has lived in London for so long it
is said there is barely any trace of her Russian accent, though it is difficult
to know for certain because, in all her time at Stamford Bridge, she never gave
a single interview. Granovskaia was brought in by Roman Abramovich. They are
trusted allies and, like Chelsea’s former owner, she operates by a policy of
omerta.

All that can really be said for certain is that Granovskaia has developed a
formidable reputation throughout the football industry and it will not be
straightforward to replace her.

Granovskaia has been in charge at Chelsea for almost a decade, quietly, out of
the spotlight, and was honoured last December at the annual Golden Boy awards
put on by Italy’s Tuttosport newspaper. She was named the Best Club Director in
European Football and brought the trophy back to her upstairs office behind the
fingerprint-recognition security of Chelsea’s training ground.

She is also popular enough with Thomas Tuchel that when he invited his staff for
dinner recently, to mark his first anniversary as Chelsea manager, he asked her
to join them.


Granovskaia with Thiago Silva after he signed a new contract with Chelsea in
January (Photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

One problem: David Redfearn, a magician who has performed his tricks in the
executive suites of Stamford Bridge for more than 20 years, was also invited to
the celebration at the Grappelli restaurant in Cobham, Surrey, near to Chelsea’s
training ground, and put a photograph on his Instagram account showing himself
with Tuchel and Granovskaia. Chelsea got to hear about it and — abracadabra —
the picture mysteriously vanished.

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Granovskaia, you quickly learn, prefers to operate away from the public. There
are stories about her being very particular about the images Chelsea put out.
She did not like to be filmed, even by Chelsea’s in-house television channel,
and any journalist who wants to tell her story tends to find the club are
sensitive, in the extreme, about how she is portrayed.

None of this really would have mattered greatly to Chelsea’s fans until
everything caught up with Abramovich recently and his alleged links with
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president — links he has always vehemently denied — led
to sanctions from the UK government and the oligarch selling the club to a
consortium led by Todd Boehly for £4.25 billion.

Now, Chelsea’s takeover has led to Granovskaia severing her own ties given how
closely she is aligned to Abramovich.

English football may just have said goodbye to the Russian-Canadian executive
who was once described by The Times as “the most powerful woman in football”.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jon Smith, an agent who has done prominent business with Chelsea over many
years, knows from first-hand experience how ultra-sensitive Abramovich’s closest
aides can be if anybody ever says something about him they do not like —
intentional or not.

Smith was representing Claudio Ranieri when Chelsea sacked the Italian as
manager in 2004.

After two days of haggling over the severance payment, the two sides were still
some way apart — about £250,000 — when Smith rang the Chelsea director, Eugene
Tenenbaum, and made the mistake of pointing out, in an attempt at humour, it was
only “a few tanks of petrol for Roman’s yacht”.

Tenenbaum is part of Abramovich’s inner circle and formerly the head of
corporate finance at Sibneft, the oil company that made Abramovich one of the
richest men in the world. Tenenbaum was also in the news recently when Reuters
reported that Abramovich had transferred one of the companies in which he has a
controlling stake to him on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

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“He (Tenenbaum) went berserk,” Smith writes in his book, The Deal: Inside the
World of a Super-Agent, of that day in 2004. “It hit a nerve; I don’t know why.
Probably because it was true. It was only a whimsical comment but I had to
withdraw it.

Smith’s comment went down so badly, indeed, that he and Ranieri decided it would
be better for the Italian to deal with Tenenbaum directly. Ranieri decided in
the end he would rather draw a line under the whole affair. He never got the
extra £250,000 and Smith has spent the following years wondering whether “the
same exit-payment formula” is applied every time a Chelsea manager loses his
job.

More likely, it was just a sign of the bond that exists between Abramovich and
the people he trusts, especially those who have shown they will never let him
down.

Granovskaia has been inside that circle for 25 years. Her association with
Abramovich goes back to when she graduated from Moscow State University and
became one of his personal assistants at Sibneft.

That was also her first role when she followed Abramovich to London after he had
started to reinvent Chelsea and change the landscape of English football.
Granovskaia would book Abramovich’s restaurants, arrange his diary, sometimes
even do his shopping if he had to buy a birthday present for someone.


Granovskaia at Wembley for the 2018 FA Cup final (Photo: Marc
Atkins/Offside/Getty Images)

Since then, however, Granovskaia has had such a remarkable ascent it tends to be
forgotten she was completely new to football when Abramovich started involving
her in running the business.

“A great example I know is Marina Granovskaia,” Leonid Slutsky, the head coach
of Rubin Kazan, told The Athletic last year. “She received a special award but
some years ago Marina didn’t know football. I’m not sure she knew how many
players played (in a team) but now she has worked together with Mr Abramovich
and is the best director in Europe.

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“This is absolutely deserved because she is such a top professional. It’s very
simple. If you start to work with Mr Abramovich then you are automatically
better than you were before.”

Slutsky, a three-time winner of the Russian Premier League with CSKA Moscow,
talked about Abramovich’s “revolution” of the English game and praised him for
recognising Granovskaia’s potential.

Others might argue that Granovskaia deserves the credit for having the people
skills, the ability to form working relationships and, when it comes to the art
of negotiations, the starting position that nobody, absolutely nobody, should
think of her as a pushover.

Top-level agents talk about someone who can be charming, thorough, straight to
the point and never emotional unless, perhaps, you cross her; in which case, she
might walk past you like a stranger

They talk about someone who will be difficult to replace, certainly like for
like. Granovskaia is popular. She is, in Smith’s words, a “tough, bright
individual”.

“When you get to know her, you discover someone pleasant, humorous and
cultured,” Olivier Letang, president of Lille, told L’Equipe recently for a
feature, titled “L’Enigme Marina Granovskaia”, that noted she was once a keen
dancer and came into the role at Chelsea because Abramovich wanted somebody to
be his eyes and ears behind the scenes.

She was not flawless and, in one sense, her departure has been shrouded in a
certain amount of ignominy bearing in mind it comes in the same week as Chelsea
are coming to terms with Romelu Lukaku’s return to Inter Milan. Lukaku cost
Chelsea £97.5 million last year and, having gone back to Italy for a loan fee of
around £7 million, it has legitimate credentials to be remembered as the club’s
worst piece of business in the 21st century.

Granovskaia’s fingerprints were all over that deal and nor does it reflect
particularly well on her record that Chelsea find themselves in the deeply
unsatisfactory position of losing two international centre-backs, Anthony
Rudiger and Andreas Christensen, on free transfers after both players let their
contracts run down. Granovskaia’s final season with Chelsea has not been a
successful one and nobody will be nominating her for any awards this summer.

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Overall, though, it is easy to understand why her supporters say she should be
judged for her full portfolio of work rather than how her time at Chelsea has
ended.

“I would consider her one of the top — if not the top — directors of a football
club anywhere,” Dick Law, formerly Arsenal’s transfer negotiator, tells The
Athletic. “The highest praise I could give her is that, if Marina says
something, you can trust it. ‘Trust’ is not a word I use in football very often,
but it’s a word I would apply to Marina. You could trust her word.”

Law spent 12 years at Arsenal and first encountered Granovskaia when Arsenal
were trying to persuade Chelsea to let them sign Demba Ba. Law was also involved
in Olivier Giroud’s transfer between the two clubs and dealt with Granovskaia
when Chelsea were competing with Liverpool for the signature of Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlain.

However, it was the transfer of Petr Cech that Law identifies as “probably the
most emblematic of Marina, as a representative of her club and as a person whose
word you could trust”.

Cech had an agreement with Chelsea that allowed him to leave Stamford Bridge as
long as the club received a fee of £10 million. When Arsenal came up with the
money, however, many observers assumed that Chelsea would have to add a
stipulation that it could not be a direct rival, especially another club from
London.

Instead, Granovskaia kept to her word and allowed the transfer to happen. Cech,
now Chelsea’s technical director, had been the club’s goalkeeper for 11 seasons.
She wanted to be true to him and, in the cut-throat business of football, that
helped to shape her own reputation. Not everyone in her position would have
taken such a stance.


Granovskaia next to Buck in the front row of the directors’ box for Chelsea’s
League Cup final defeat by Liverpool in February (Photo: Robin Jones/Getty
Images)

“I would characterise her as someone who clearly stated her position, did not
engage in bluffing and, once you had agreed terms, she honoured them,” says Law,
now living in Texas. “There was no last-minute — what we call in the United
States — ‘nickel-and-diming’.

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“You could trust her word. It’s professional. It’s what the industry should
aspire to. Her professionalism, her approach to business, her representation of
her club and her company — that should be the model for a lot of people within
the industry.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Attitudes have changed since Karren Brady started being characterised as “the
first lady of football” and quickly realised that not everyone in the sport was
ready for a high-powered female to call the shots.

Brady, now the vice-chairman of West Ham, took over as managing director at
Birmingham City in 1993, aged 23, and there are all manner of stories about the
sexism she had to encounter. The first time, for example, she boarded the team
bus and one of her players commented that he could see her breasts through her
shirt. “Will you see them when I sell you to Crewe?” was Brady’s rather
brilliant comeback (the player was moved on not long afterwards).

With Granovskaia, however, she has never had to justify her position in perhaps
the same way that Brady had to.

Some of the people who do business with Chelsea will say that, yes, they are
less likely to take an aggressive position with Granovskaia than, perhaps, if
they were dealing with one of her male counterparts. “If Bruce Buck (Chelsea’s
former chairman) does a player negotiation, the agent will slaughter the
contract being proposed,” says one. “They don’t say that to Marina.”

Ultimately, though, the bottom line here is that Granovskaia is highly skilled
at what she does. Maybe her links with Abramovich will mean her reputation is
indirectly tarnished to some degree. For now, however, just about everybody The
Athletic has contacted has spoken about her positively.

“She knows what she is doing more than anyone else I have met in football,” says
one Premier League executive. “Comparing how she acts to a club like Manchester
United is like comparing night with day. She is very kind and warm once you get
to know her.”

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The popular story at Chelsea is that Abramovich had his lightbulb moment in 2009
when Didier Drogba seemed on his way out of the club. Drogba had been dropped by
Luiz Felipe Scolari and, after Guus Hiddink took over as interim manager, the
striker was banned by UEFA because of his aggressive behaviour at the end of
their Champions League semi-final defeat by Barcelona.

Granovskaia, however, had started to discuss football matters with Abramovich
and increasingly had his trust. Her belief was that Drogba should be given a new
contract and she was willing to back it up by saying she would accept
responsibility if the decision backfired.

Drogba signed a new three-year contract, helped Chelsea win a Premier League and
FA Cup double and went on to score the decisive shootout penalty in the
Champions League final against Bayern Munich. Granovskaia’s position was never
the same again.

Not every deal has been a success since she was given Abramovich’s backing to
take the lead on football decisions. Chelsea have still overspent at times.
There was friction with Antonio Conte when he was manager and, later, some
issues with Frank Lampard. Chelsea would dearly wish they could turn back the
clock when it comes to the chain of events that saw them lose out to Liverpool
for the transfer of Alisson Becker and sign Kepa Arrizabalaga, for a higher fee,
instead.

But then again, who in Granovskaia’s position has an immaculate record in the
transfer department?

Persuading Real Madrid to pay an initial £89 million for Eden Hazard when he had
only 12 months on his contract at Chelsea was one notable triumph for her.
Oscar’s £60 million move to Shanghai SIPG was another. So was selling David Luiz
to Paris Saint-Germain for £50 million before re-signing him for £34 million two
years later.

Perhaps Granovskaia’s greatest achievement, though, has been to move Chelsea
away from the money-no-object era when they would sign players by simply asking
the relevant clubs, “How much?” There have been many occasions on her watch —
Alexis Sanchez, Alex Sandro, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Jules Kounde and various
others — when she has pulled down the shutters if she thought the financial cost
was too great.

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Granovskaia negotiated the long-term kit deal with Nike that is worth a reported
£60 million a season and is set to run until 2032. She has signed off hundreds
of transfers, loans and contracts for players (and managers) and, though it is
always easier when the owner is stinking rich, perhaps her work can be gauged by
the fact there are Chelsea fans on Twitter who appreciatively use her picture as
their profile image. Even in the background, she has been synonymous with the
club’s successes.


Cech, Azpilicueta and Granovskaia after Chelsea’s Club World Cup victory in Abu
Dhabi in February (Photo: Matthew Ashton/AMA/Getty Images)

The sight of her sitting on the pitch with Cesar Azpilicueta at the end of the
Club World Cup final in Abu Dhabi last month, taking in the victory with the
club captain, was another telling image. Granovskaia is, for the most part, well
regarded by Chelsea’s players. She has always made herself accessible to them
via WhatsApp. When Diego Costa went on strike and returned to Brazil, it was
Granovskaia sending him messages imploring him to come back.

And now?

Granovskaia was one of five directors at Chelsea, along with Buck, Tenenbaum,
David Barnard and chief executive Guy Laurence, who spoke every day to
Abramovich to keep him informed about what is happening. Or at least she did
until Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and it became clear Chelsea’s fans
would soon be talking about Abramovich’s ownership in the past tense.

What next for his colleague who, in 2018, was ranked fifth in Forbes’ list of
the Most Powerful Women in International Sports? Maybe the 47-year-old will have
bit more time to enjoy the sunshine at the place where she and her family
apparently holiday in Majorca?

Many people inside the industry think it would have been sensible for Chelsea’s
new owners to try to retain Granovskaia in her current role but was that ever
entirely realistic? It would have been complicated, possibly too complicated,
and instead, Abramovich’s departure was the end game for her, too — quietly,
without too much attention, just the way she likes it.

Additional contributor: Philip Buckingham

(Top photos: Chelsea FC; design: Sam Richardson)

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