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You're listening to the Men in Blazers media network, Subopt and Radio.

This is Roch with a Men in Blazers emergency pod special on a remarkable day of chaos and turbulence across British football.

And then an enormous day in the history of Chelsea Football Club. We woke up this morning to news that the United Kingdom has frozen the assets of seven Russian oligarchs, one of whom is Romano Bromovic, the man who since 2003 has been the single owner of Chelsea Football Club.

Still have a trophy after the trophy in that period, 21 trophies. It's now been sanctioned by the British government. All of his assets have been frozen. He's also been hit with the travel ban.

It is a crazy day of hard news. And also tiny yet significant aftershocks and reactions. I think it is incredible how quickly this matter has torn like a forest fire

from macro state level geopolitics of oligarchs, punting sanctions to the very, very micro. You can't get your Christian policy shirt at the Chelsea mega store anymore.

It's immediately closed and there are much, much more major things than these tiny details and the grand scheme of the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the same time from a football perspective.

They make it so tangible, even in a way the theoretical future preventing sale of players does not. This is a major. It's so profoundly transformative. It's going to be incredibly fast moving.

But let's take a minute to dive in and try and process the geopolitical, the football, the rational and the emotional.

So Roman Abramovich has finally been sanctioned 4.2 billion dollars of UK assets have been frozen. He said by Forbes to be worth 12.5 billion dollars.

And there's the owner of a read about this in English tabloids, a 200 million dollar Kensington mansion, a 28 million dollar Westland, the penthouse.

And there's more than 1.7 billion dollars of yachts, private jet, helicopters, supercars and the rest scattered across the globe.

The most public and globally known of all of those assets is of course Chelsea Football Club. Another British government in their documentation of the sanctions have described Roman Abramovich as a quote pro-cremlin oligarch who was found to have, quote, received preferential treatment in the country.

And through his business links have been involved in again, this is all quotes destabilizing Ukraine and undermining and threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of the Eastern European country.

Roman for his part has constantly repeated, and he's gone to court to try and prove this attempted to message that he's not close to the Cremlin.

And he's not done anything which could merit in being punished, but that fiction has been stripped away this morning, the attempt to put Chelsea up for sale last week.

Now appears like an effort to get ahead of the inevitable.

And for now the asset freezing sanctions, whole that process under the terms of quote the special license granted to the club will delve into that in a second, which will run I believe until the 30th of May.

And for their part, Chelsea Football Club issued a simple statement confirming that the sanctions have occurred, quote, and by virtue of his 100% ownership of Chelsea Football Club PLC and affiliated entities,

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