Photo: Wikimedia Commons (free licence), cropped and styled by SportNestra — author and licence
Roman Abramovich considered buying FC Nantes and turning it into a satellite club for Chelsea, former goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon has recounted. In an interview with Ouest-France, Lollichon, who worked at Chelsea during Abramovich’s ownership, described a conversation that offered a glimpse of the owner’s ambitions beyond Stamford Bridge.
Lollichon said Abramovich had summoned him to his office at the training ground to ask for his view of Nantes. “One day, when I was at Chelsea, Roman Abramovich had me called into his office at the training ground. He said to me: ‘Tell me about FC Nantes. What is that club like?’” Abramovich was looking for another club to acquire that might contribute to Chelsea’s wider sporting project.
“He was looking for a club to buy that could potentially be a satellite club, but which had a structure and a playing model. The problem was that, at that time, there was no longer a playing model. On the other hand, I knew all the people who could have been responsible for that, and I alerted them,” Lollichon said. Abramovich appeared ready to move quickly to bring the right people into the project. “He said to me: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll send planes to pick them up.’”
About two months later, Lollichon said, Abramovich called him again and suggested Nantes might be too large for the role he had in mind. “He said: ‘I think this club is too big for what we want to do.’” The account describes an exploratory idea, not a completed deal: Nantes ultimately remained outside Chelsea’s ownership structure. Such an arrangement could have offered a different route for player development and recruitment.
Across Abramovich’s 2003–22 tenure, Chelsea collected five Premier League and five FA Cup trophies, alongside two wins apiece in the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Super Cup. Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent British government sanctions linked to his ties to the Russian state.
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