When we here at The18 think about all our self-made billionaire friends (we all have them, right?), few tolerate mediocrity. After all, you don’t accumulate enough cash to choke a blue whale through finishing middle-of-the-pack. You have to be ruthless, cutthroat and hold those around you to standards higher than Charlie Sheen hot-boxing a blimp.
Take Roman Abramovich. The Chelsea owner wasn’t born rich, he had to fight for it. The young Abramovich started dozens of companies in the post-Soviet era, selling everything from rubber tires to rubber ducks before setting his sights on the once-nationalized oil and aluminium conglomerates. Those acquisitions weren’t handed to him: the “aluminium wars”, from which Abramovich emerged the victor, led to murders of smelting plant managers, metals traders and journalists as groups battled for control of the industry.
So when you consider how Roman Abramovich accumulated his vast wealth, it’s no surprise that he’s thought to be readying Jose Mourinho’s severance papers: anything less than 100% success simply isn’t tolerated. In his 12-year ownership of the club, the Russian has brought the axe down on eight managerial careers and seen 11 different managers in the Stamford Bridge hot seat: that’s an average tenure of just 13-and-a-half months. Hell, all these crazy stories about Abramovich turning down $50 million from AS Monaco for Mourinho only further prove our point: he doesn't want to sell Jose, that would preclude him from the pleasure of sacking him in person.
But is a new manager every 43 Premier League fixtures really the pinnacle of employer ruthlessness? To truly answer that question we need to compare Abramovich to the doyen of douche-baggery, the gold-standard in gittishness, the bastard's benchmark. Yes, my friends, to determine just how ruthless Roman Abramovich is we need to view him shoulder-to-shoulder with the narcissistic, loud-mouthed, walking bad hair day that is Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
Nothing, seemingly, brings The Donald greater pleasure than spitting the words “You’re” and “Fired!” from his overactive cake hole. Hell, he used to get paid very handsomely for uttering the two syllables weekly on television, cheeks flushing heart attack crimson as he jabbed his index finger in the direction of whichever ill-tailored 20-something was in his line of sight.
So which man has more notches on his proverbial bed-post? Who can lay claim to the coveted title of Chief Firing Officer?
Abramovich has sacked eight managers to-date, but along with each man came a whole host of backroom staff. Throw in assistant managers who received the boot like Ray Wilkins, Directors of Football such as Frank Arnesen and medical professionals such as Eva Caniero, and we estimated that comfortably north of 35 managers, coaches and physios have felt the Siberian-cold steel of Abramovich’s axe.
In seven seasons of The Apprentice, however, Trump crushed the ambitions of 115 hopefuls. And loved every second of it.
So as Chelsea fans ponder whether Abramovich will bring the axe down for the second time in a decade on the most successful manager in the club’s history, they can comfort themselves with this thought: at least he’s not as big of an asshole as Donald Trump.
