Stephen Palgiuca – now there’s a name we wrote a lot about for a very short time, before never mentioning again.
He was the head of one of the major bids to buy the club from Roman Abramovich, and got pretty far, before being beaten out by fellow American sports team owner Todd Boehly.
Anyway, he’s back in the Chelsea related headlines again this week with some bitter comments about the sales process, blaming his failure (and Boehly’s success) on a “political” process.
In quotes picked up by Football.London, he claims to have been convinced that his group would win:
“I thought we had the strongest group — that was the impression I had and I thought we were going to win it.
“When they began this auction, the mantra was, they wanted a great steward, someone who would be involved with the team — that was the No. 1 thing; it wasn’t the price. It was when it started. Didn’t end that way.
“It was intense. It was a political process, and it was kind of like politics at its worst, because they were leaking things out. I assumed it was coming from Boehly, but then he got some bad stuff, too. There was misinformation coming out every day about the different bids.”
It’s fascinating to get some honest insight from inside the sales process. Everyone went very quiet afterwards, and we’ve certainly not had any in depth confessions like this before.
that what they like