Denis Campbell
Sunday May 8, 2005
The Observer
When Manchester United play Chelsea on Tuesday night they will form a guard of honour to applaud the new champions on to the Old Trafford pitch. Sir Alex Ferguson has insisted on the gesture of respect, saying, ´That´s what Chelsea deserve. As a club we´ve always accepted people as champions because we´ve been champions many times ourselves.´
In the directors´ box, however, the atmosphere will be much less friendly. The suspicion and mutual antipathy between senior figures at both clubs, caused by Arjen Robben choosing Stamford Bridge over Old Trafford, and Rio Ferdinand´s recent meeting with Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon, has just deepened. Chelsea are furious that United have beaten them to the signature of one of the most highly rated youngsters in world football.
The ill-feeling goes right to the top. Roman Abramovich, Chelsea´s multi-billionaire Russian owner, is extremely unhappy that 18-year-old Nigerian John Obi Mikel, described as ´a new Eric Cantona´ and valued at £5million, opted for Manchester rather than west London. Club sources say Abramovich wants to know why a player Chelsea were sure was joining them went elsewhere, especially after his club did everything they could to ensure the attacking midfielder´s arrival. Abramovich is said to feel ´cheated´ in a two-year transfer saga involving claims of intrigue, skulduggery and unkept promises.
Daniel Fletcher, a British football agent, has had a contract to represent Mikel since last year, ratified by the FA and Fifa. Bizarrely, he has not been able to track down his ´client´ for eight months and was not involved in Mikel´s transfer to United on 29 April. Fletcher is considering legal action and has already spoken to United´s lawyers. Other agents are understood to have been involved in chasing, and claiming to act for, the teenager.
United first spotted Mikel in early 2003 playing for Nigeria´s youth team at the Meridien Cup in Egypt, an international under-17 tournament for teams from Europe and Africa. They invited the entire Nigeria team to train at Carrington - on their way to the under-17 World Cup later in 2003 - as the start of a process intended to secure his signature. Mikel came back twice after that and seemed likely to join United.
But late last year he trained with Chelsea, and Mourinho boasted in a Portuguese news paper: ´If he grows the way I predict, we´ve found gold.´ Mikel would join Chelsea next season, said Mourinho. Football insiders assumed Kenyon had used his inside knowledge of Old Trafford to gazump one of their top transfer targets. Everything was in place for Mikel to join Chelsea, yet 10 days ago United signed him from Norwegian first division club Lyn Oslo.
United said last night that they had neither dealt with nor paid any agent over the transfer, and had dealt directly with Mikel and Lyn Oslo, for whom Mikel has played only a handful of first-team games. ´I never had a contract with Chelsea, I had a contract with Lyn,´ said Mikel when he signed. A Lyn director, Morgan Andersen, said, ´I know there is a history between United and Chelsea and that there are some problems with some of the directors, but that is none of our business.´
Chelsea refused to discuss the matter.
Besides ordering Tuesday´s guard of honour, Ferguson has also generously praised Mourinho´s feat in turning Chelsea into champions so soon after his arrival at Stamford Bridge. ´Jose has done terrific. It´s a very difficult league to win, so to win it in the first season is tremendous. You can´t criticise the job he has done. He´s done it perfectly. We need characters in the game and you can laugh about him rather than be angry about him.
´I think it´s good that Chelsea have won the league. It doesn´t do the game any harm. It´s 50 years since they won it [they also had a guard of honour at Old Trafford in 1955, when United away was their next fixture after winning the title], but it makes you sit up because they have raised the bar and made us take notice of the situation. We used to say that you couldn´t afford more than six defeats to win the league, but three is the maximum number now.´
While he was full of praise for the coach, Ferguson had nothing to say when asked about Abramovich´s contribution. ´I´m not getting into that,´ he said.
Mourinho lived up to his reputation as an idiosyncratic but brilliant motivator yesterday when, instead of his usual manager´s programme notes for the game against Charlton, which Chelsea won 1-0 with a last-minute penalty, he simply wrote: ´These are my champions!´ He then listed the names of 102 people who helped Chelsea win the title, from John Terry and Frank Lampard down to the youth team and back office personnel.
