Imagine we were starting again. Imagine this was a world when professional sport was in its infancy and even the concept of a league was controversial in case it made people overprioritise winning. Imagine you had a vague sense the clubs in this new competition might represent their local areas, that they might come to fulfil some sort of community function. Who would you want running them?
Would it be a fabulously rich Russian who made his fortune exploiting the economic chaos that followed a period of political turmoil to buy up his country’s oil and gas reserves and who was accused – although he strenuously denied it – of having close ties to that country’s autocratic leader?
