Britain | Fall of the Roman empire

Chelsea is the latest Premier League club to fall into American hands

Roman Abramovich’s exit underscores big changes in English football

THE EFFECTS of war are rarely confined to the battlefield. Sport felt the ripples from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost at once, with the banning of the country’s football team from the World Cup and its athletes from the Paralympic Games in Beijing. Now the forced sale of Chelsea, a west London football club owned since 2003 by Roman Abramovich, an oligarch under British government sanctions, is about to transfer a prestigious Russian asset into American hands.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Fall of the Roman empire”

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