Any mention of Avram Grant in the same breath as Chelsea and familiar memories come flooding back. Of an inconsolable John Terry burying his head in his manager’s sympathetic embrace, the crestfallen captain overwhelmed by the ramifications of that missed penalty in Moscow and desperately seeking escape amid the relentless deluge at the Luzhniki stadium.
Advertisement
Or, retreating slightly further back, of Grant himself as a hunched, haunted figure lost in pained thought as he shuffles along the touchline in the mizzle at Oakwell. He is flanked by concerned club security staff while gleeful Barnsley fans invade the pitch to celebrate the Championship club’s unlikely elimination of the FA Cup holders. A large number of those in the away end that evening in early March 2008 made clear their disgust by chanting his predecessor Jose Mourinho’s name.
A little under a fortnight since they had lost to Tottenham Hotspur in the League Cup final, the mood was mutinous.
Some of the more positive aspects of the Israeli’s eight-month tenure at Stamford Bridge — such as the winning streaks of seven and then nine games in all competitions (the latter equalling the club record), making Chelsea’s first European Cup final or taking the Premier League title race down to the final day — tend to go forgotten. Maybe the second leg of the Champions League semi-final is the exception, the giddy night when Liverpool were finally seen off at the third attempt at that stage of the competition and Grant’s faith in and support for Frank Lampard, grieving the recent death of his mother, drew such praise.
But, given what happened in the final, the prevailing sense of one of the stranger periods in Chelsea’s recent history is still one of missed opportunities and Grant as a nearly man. He was always such an unlikely successor to Mourinho — the anthesis of the Portuguese in almost every respect, and a coach with no established pedigree in Europe or even the requisite UEFA qualifications. There seemed no justification behind his rather grey presence in the dugout at a club seeking, in the words of their chief executive Peter Kenyon, to “turn the world blue”, other than his friendship with the owner Roman Abramovich.
He was clearly no upgrade on Mourinho, on or off the pitch. It was always difficult to fathom what the long-term thinking was behind his appointment. Maybe Chelsea, a money-flushed and upwardly mobile force, had been scarred by the collapse of Mourinho’s relationship with the oligarch, but Grant felt a stop-gap at best. In truth, in an era when Chelsea were competing with sides overseen by the charismatic Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, his presence always felt rather incongruous.
Advertisement
Those in positions of power at Stamford Bridge clearly recognised as much, albeit maybe only belatedly, given he was ushered out three days after coming within the width of a post of winning the Champions League. His stint as manager — on paper, so successful — would have been curtailed even if Terry had not slipped but, instead, planted that penalty beyond Edwin van der Sar to claim the trophy. The hierarchy accepted that honouring the four-year contract awarded six months previously was not the way to go. After all, there were international-class options, not least Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, who might be available after Euro 2008.
And yet, almost 13 years on, some kind of bond between Grant and Chelsea appears to be maintained that extends beyond his continued involvement in the club’s admirable campaigns against antisemitism. No one could argue that luring him back to former haunts in some capacity would ever be the logical move yet, now and again, it is still mooted. Whenever the club are considering an interim head coach, or an older head in an advisory capacity, his name is invariably mentioned in dispatches.
Such links should be outlandish. This is a manager twice relegated since Moscow — with a financially crippled Portsmouth and, a year later, at West Ham United – and whose nomadic coaching career at club level over the last decade amounts to brief stints with Partizan Belgrade and in the Indian Super League with NorthEast United. Yet, even if instinct screams the very notion is the stuff of wild fantasy, there is always a nagging doubt. After all, it helps if you have been represented by Pini Zahavi. Or, more pertinently, if you retain a close friendship with Abramovich.
Only last week, with Lampard under pressure, the 65-year-old felt obliged to deliver a public show of support for his former player. Grant’s Instagram posts have taken on a rather presidential air of late. He has broken away from providing weekly motivational messages and, instead, delivered soliloquies to camera, taking in everything from COVID-19 vaccines and lockdown restrictions to Lampard and Chelsea. He insists that the posts have been provoked by media enquiries, whether he has been made aware of his own impressive points-per-game record in the Premier League or is moving ostensibly to nip in the bud the latest swirl of speculation.
Not that the videos have necessarily had that effect.
Advertisement
“I have so many positive messages from Chelsea fans on Instagram. Thank you. But I must say, I didn’t receive any official approach from the club. I can repeat only what I said lately about the situation at Chelsea — be strong and look for a solution. What everybody needs now is time. It’s good for Frank — that I believe he will do the job well and is good for the club. Good luck to everybody.”
His own complaint was always that he was never granted that same time to prove himself in south-west London. This is the story of the unlikeliest permanent appointment of the Abramovich era to date; one that was effectively doomed from the outset.
Reflections on Grant’s vaguely surreal eight-month tenure require context. Mourinho’s first spell in charge had been glittering, his three complete seasons littered with trophies — a pair of Premier League titles, two League Cups and an FA Cup — and the team he had constructed with Abramovich’s money, while not always dazzling, had been relentless, powerful and imposing. The nouveaux riches had bulldozed themselves on to the scene, their abrasive approach personified by Mourinho at the helm. His mood permeated through the club, his personality imprinted upon the squad and epitomised in the team’s style.
Mourinho was the embodiment of the new Chelsea and then, as the off-field politics kicked in and his relationship with the owner fractured, he was gone.
Grant’s arrival as director of football in July 2007, after working in a similar capacity at Portsmouth, had been considered part of the power struggle. His appointment seemed unnecessarily provocative, not least given the specific duties he was actually fulfilling (“liaison on, and coordination of, football matters across the various areas of Chelsea FC”) were far from clear. Mourinho spent the summer’s pre-season training camp in Los Angeles claiming he had no issue with the new man, but grumbling behind the scenes at the involvement of a figure who clearly had Abramovich’s ear.
Grant, as coach of the Israeli national side, had apparently been introduced to the oligarch by Zahavi some three years previously. Public impressions of him would be heavily influenced by his rather hangdog appearance on the touchline or in sullen press conferences. He muttered where Mourinho had been so succinct and cutting, and once delivered five minutes and 39 seconds of monosyllabic responses to questions at Goodison Park as if in a sulk. But, one on one, he always had an ability to schmooze.
Influential figures appreciated his insight, intellect and dry sense of humour. He was good company.
Advertisement
Figures at Chelsea used to marvel at the circle of friends he kept. He would attend dinner parties as a guest of Matthew Freud, Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law at the time and a spin doctor supreme. He was close to his compatriot Arnon Milchen, the Hollywood film producer behind, among others, Pretty Woman, Fight Club, LA Confidential and Once Upon a Time in America. Grant informally mentored the French Open winner Ana Ivanovic, would matter-of-factly field phone calls from Israeli prime ministers past and present, and told members of staff down at Chelsea’s training ground in Cobham that he had the contact details for the head of Mossad, Israel’s secret service, in his phone.
They would laugh, unsure whether he was joking, but, given this was a man who had gone from meeting Abramovich to being invited on to the owner’s yacht and employed by the club almost overnight, concluded he was probably telling the truth.
So, when the manager’s unconvincing pledge to reinvent himself as “mellow Mourinho” petered out in the autumn of 2007, maybe it was less of a surprise to find Grant thrust forward as the owner’s choice as a replacement. The club had considered more high-profile figures who were out of work at the time and might have stepped into the breach. Marcello Lippi, a World Cup winner with Italy in 2006, was available. So, too, was Fabio Capello who had left Real Madrid over the summer. Jurgen Klinsmann’s stock was still high after leading Germany to the semi-finals of their home tournament the previous year, and Guus Hiddink was in charge of the Russian national team which, in fact, made him an obvious candidate for the role.
But Grant was in situ and was never likely to be as abrasive a coach as the man he had replaced. To the owner, after all the acrimony and upheaval, he represented a calmer, less volatile choice to oversee an elite group of strong-minded individuals, even if this seemed a strange moment to turn to a relative unknown who had not yet completed his UEFA Pro Licence coaching qualification.
“I’m not embarrassed by where we are today, and I’m not apologising for it,” said chief executive Peter Kenyon as Grant was presented to the media in his new role. “The criteria of what we need for a manager has changed because the position of the club has changed. I can honestly say one of the key criteria I was looking for (in 2004), what we hadn’t got in the team, was an ethos of what a winning team was all about. Jose came in with those credentials. We have moved on. Chelsea today is a very different club. The results in the future will demonstrate we have taken the right decision.”
The assumption at the time was that Grant’s elevation was temporary, though the club insisted to the contrary. Even those close to him were apparently unconvinced over the sanity of the move. “On the day he was appointed I told Avram, ‘You are either mentally ill or extremely courageous’,” Zahavi told Israeli newspaper Maariv in May 2008 — a surprising admission given the super-agent tended to wield significant influence at Chelsea. “To come like that, and step into the giant shoes of Jose Mourinho, not only as manager but also someone who became a media celebrity and a fans’ idol. And in Grant, we are talking about an Israeli who had never coached outside Israel, which is less than a cockroach in world football. It was clear the media reaction would be terrible.”
The press were about as convinced as large swathes of the support, even after Freud began working on the manager’s PR. There were attempts at humour offered up in press briefings, glimpses of the personality that plenty argued made him so popular in smaller gatherings. At his inaugural media conference he had listened as the chairman, Bruce Buck, suggested Grant’s appointment as director of football had never been considered the prelude to replacing Mourinho. “How do you know?” the new manager interjected, playing on his close relationship with Abramovich. But those flashes of mischief were rather lost amid more rambling, mumbled prose.
Advertisement
He was clever and pleasant enough, but he lacked Mourinho’s sparkle and stage presence. Grant’s English was good but sometimes how he expressed it was not.
That, of course, would have gone forgotten if his tactical skills eclipsed those of his predecessor but, if those on the outside considered this to be a remarkable choice then, more significantly, the sense of bemusement was shared by the fiercely ambitious players he inherited. The whisperings from the dressing room at the time were of a group utterly unconvinced. The previous incumbent had won a UEFA Cup and Champions League with Porto before arriving. Grant boasted none of those credentials, with his successes limited to Israeli domestic football. How did his appointment represent progression after the most successful three-year period in Chelsea’s history?
He was absent from training on the eve of his first game in charge, against Manchester United at Old Trafford, as he observed Yom Kippur. If that was unavoidable, it nevertheless added to the sense of uncertainty within the group. The hosts duly prevailed 2-0. His second league game was a goalless draw with local rivals Fulham in which Didier Drogba was sent off. Buck, in his programme notes that day, warned a small element of the club’s support any abuse of the new incumbent that “could be viewed as racist and antisemitic must stop immediately”. He cited written correspondence, online chat pages and banners, as well as chants. The issue would flare up again whenever the team suffered setbacks, a grim aspect of the job with which Grant should not have had to contend.
Yet for so many, inside and outside the club, the new man’s most heinous crime was that he was not Mourinho. “Jose is the reason I came to Chelsea and if I knew Avram Grant was going to be the coach, then I would have signed for another club,” offered the seldom-used centre-half Tal Ben Haim, an Israel international, later in the campaign. “I knew that nothing good would come with Grant as Chelsea coach.”
Those players enjoying greater involvement in the side were less overt in their protests. Indeed, time has mellowed the frustration that gripped the core group of senior players at the board’s choice of appointment. “Avram never really had a chance, looking back,” said Michael Ballack, speaking last year. “It is really difficult, after Mourinho, to work at Chelsea. It could cause a problem for any manager because Mourinho had such a huge impact, such a relationship with the players and the fans. It would be a problem for any coach.
“A lot of players thought he would be weak, which he wasn’t. He was really smart, a really intelligent coach. I remember we played really good football under him. We had more freedom. He managed the team differently: not so much leading the team, but giving more freedom to the players.”
Drogba, writing in his autobiography, was just as conciliatory. “Avram was always very calm, very relaxed, and he gave us players a lot of responsibilities on the pitch and a lot of freedom, knowing that he had (his assistants) Steve Clarke and Henk ten Cate behind him to keep us on track and focused,” he said. “The team he had was full of experienced players and we were able and willing to take on that responsibility. It’s not as if he was dealing with youngsters who needed to be told what to do.”
Advertisement
It helped that the club was able to convince the popular Clarke to stay on after initial doubts, fuelled by the manner of Mourinho’s departure. Clarke took centre stage, directing training sessions at Cobham. Ten Cate, formerly Frank Rijkaard’s assistant at Barcelona and close to Chelsea’s sporting director Frank Arnesen, was less well-received as the designated bad cop. Grant did help to set the theme of the day’s session, but would concentrate more on the psychological approach, pulling players to one side to talk one on one, gee them up and attempt to bolster their confidence. He was a sounding board, open and approachable. He considered man-management to be his forte.
“That squad was really strong, a powerful side, and the players didn’t need a lot of managing,” Branislav Ivanovic, who signed from Lokomotiv Moscow mid-season, tells The Athletic. “Even when Jose left, they were playing the same way. That’s why I think people assume Avram wasn’t really involved. But he managed it well, honestly. It was a difficult time with difficult games.”
Lampard will forever be grateful for the support he received as he mourned the death of his mother. “I’ve got a lot of time for Avram,” he said ahead of the FA Cup final of 2010, which pitted Chelsea against Grant’s relegated Portsmouth team. “He was brilliant with me. He was at Chelsea at a very difficult time for me personally and he was a top man in those times. I couldn’t have asked for any more from him. Some people look down on his time at Chelsea because he came from nowhere to take the job, but I’ve got nothing but nice things to say about him. He’s a good manager.
“He’s not a coach who stands and dictates every training session. But, as a person, he’s a very clever man and he’s good with people. He’s diplomatic and, in bad moments, you need someone who can bring things together. He’s the perfect man to speak to people individually and sort things out. He did that at Chelsea and, with hindsight, it’s much easier to see the results that came from him doing that.”
There was an undeniable upturn in form. It probably helped that some of the angst between board and management that had infected the camp over the latter days of Mourinho’s tenure had been quelled, but the side recovered their poise. They found some rhythm in games they would have been expected to win, smoothing progress out of their Champions League group and going unbeaten for 16 matches even if, at times, they appeared to be operating on auto-pilot. That run saw Grant sign a new four-year contract in mid-December but even then, sources inside the club suggested that was no guarantee he would be in place long-term. There would be candidates aplenty available come the summer.
The first match thereafter was lost 1-0 at Arsenal with Terry breaking his foot, though another 16-game unbeaten sequence followed, a fine run given Drogba, Salomon Kalou, Michael Essien and John Obi Mikel were absent for a month at the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, while Lampard and Petr Cech endured spells in rehabilitation from injury. Maintaining momentum with key personnel unavailable was impressive even if the team was forever hovering on the shoulders of Arsenal and United in the title race, cursing points dropped wastefully to the likes of Everton, Aston Villa and Portsmouth en route. The same sloppiness would cost them against Spurs and Wigan Athletic in the tail-end of the campaign. As a result, they were in contention, but rarely felt like contenders.
At times, Grant felt steeled enough to exert more control. Against Fulham on New Year’s Day, he made his displeasure at the performance clear at half-time. “If I need to, I can throw a teacup or break a chair,” he delivered deadpan post-match. “Everything was wrong in that first half. We hadn’t turned up. As a manager, your job is to do the right thing to achieve a result. You don’t have a lot of time (at the interval), so you have to use what time you have well. If the team is nervous, you have to be calm. But if people are too calm, you must be excited.”
His side rallied and won the game with a brace of goals around the hour mark, with his introduction of Mikel, aimed at liberating Essien, instrumental in instigating the recovery. “That was the owner’s decision,” Grant added, dryly playing to the gallery.
Yet, throughout it all, the suspicion lingered that Chelsea’s key performers were self-managing, that the side were enjoying success despite rather than because of Grant’s input. Perhaps that was unfair but, again, it stemmed from the contrast with everything this club had become used to under his predecessor. Where Mourinho had felt integral, Grant’s brand of motivation was clearly subtler. That could leave him appearing peripheral.
Advertisement
He seemed convinced that the style of football had improved, reflecting Abramovich’s craving for a more swashbuckling approach, though those who witnessed the campaign might query quite how transformed the team appeared. Yes, there were only flashes of enterprise — emphatic dismissals of Manchester City, West Ham and Derby County most notably, and those thrilling if chaotic and wasteful 4-4 draws with Villa and Spurs — with Grant insisting a process aimed at providing more exhilarating fare was underway. “Big clubs have supporters all over the world because they play an attractive style, which we want to do,” he said. “You are seeing the start of this.
“But it won’t come in one day. United didn’t win the title for 26 years, and it didn’t happen at Barcelona overnight. They built something. We’re trying to do the same thing here. I have respect for what Jose did at the club in the past. The club brought me here to go a different way and that’s what I have to concentrate on.”
Yet any long-term vision, however fanciful, would have to be pursued in conjunction with delivering immediate tangible success and, in the bigger games where Mourinho had forged his reputation, Grant either lacked the Portuguese’s killer instinct or his luck. His selection at Wembley in the League Cup final, with Ballack, Joe Cole and Ashley Cole omitted from the start and the recently arrived Nicolas Anelka operating wide left, contributed to a stodgy display. Where Mourinho might have taken control of the huddles, at full-time and in extra time, Grant looked rather lost as his players held court. Spurs prevailed in extra time.
That was only a third defeat in 35 games in charge, yet the trio of losses had been suffered in arguably the most significant fixtures of his tenure to date. “At Chelsea, from the outside, any loss is like a World War, but we know how to behave internally,” said Grant as if oblivious to how the hierarchy actually thought. “I’ve spoken to the players and they were very hurt by the defeat. It was embarrassing losing a game like that. I told them they had to come out fighting, and they agreed.”
The players did not buy into the soundbites and called a clear-the-air meeting back at Cobham a few days later. “We sat down and flushed everything out between ourselves,” said Terry, who had clashed with Ten Cate on the training ground in the build-up to the League Cup final. “There were a few home truths told and we spoke our minds. We might have upset a few people, we might have upset each other, but we worked out how to improve things. The manager and Steve Clarke spoke their minds, too, but things had to be said.”
To a certain extent, it worked. The team rediscovered some rhythm, the FA Cup loss at Barnsley aside, and there were noteworthy victories in the weeks that followed. Against Arsenal, Grant substituted a furious Claude Makelele and Ballack, switched from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 and was subjected to chants of, “You don’t know what you’re doing” from the Chelsea support, only for his rejigged line-up to overturn a deficit and prevail 2-1. A key meeting with United at Stamford Bridge later that month was also won, even in Lampard’s absence, to haul the victors level on points with the league leaders with two games to play.
The two-legged Champions League semi-final against Liverpool was claimed 4-3 on aggregate to force a passage to Moscow. Grant’s attempt to relax his players before the return leg had involved deliberately listing only 10 players on his tactics board in the pre-match team-talk. Apparently, Ballack was the first to notice, to prompt guffaws and a punchline of “at least one of you is paying attention.” In hindsight, that was actually a brave way to ready his team for battle given how much scrutiny his management had attracted.
Advertisement
The problem was the most rewarding displays were delivered in semi-finals, or league fixtures building up to the cadence. Everything thereafter tended to be imperfect. They were always playing catch-up with United, who duly won their last two fixtures and claimed the title. Against the same opposition at the Luzhniki Stadium, Chelsea were the better team for long periods and struck the woodwork twice. Drogba claims in his autobiography that he called for a switch to 4-4-2 during the game, “but the manager didn’t listen to me”. He eventually became so frustrated that he swiped at Nemanja Vidic and was sent off, forcing Terry on to the list of penalty takers in the shootout.
It was Anelka who missed the decisive seventh to ensure Grant and his players ended defeated and deflated as Abramovich winced in pain up in the stands. “Avram Grant was a kick away from being hailed one of Chelsea’s greatest managers,” added Drogba. “But in the end, within a couple of days, he had unsurprisingly lost his job.” That was a neat summary of a ludicrous situation.
Chelsea’s board did not waste time in instigating the change. Even on the flight back from Russia, with Grant contemplating his lot back in his seat, they had paved the way for separation. “We have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second-place finishes is just not good enough for us,” said Buck. “Chelsea are here to win trophies.”
At least confirmation of the inevitable was delivered in a face-to-face meeting with Abramovich back in London, the owner overcoming a late wobble and, according to Grant, offering him a return to the director of football role he had previously enjoyed, if only briefly. That option was apparently turned down. If there was a lingering bitterness at the divorce, then it was directed more at Abramovich’s lieutenants than the owner himself, though others seemed to be basking in his perceived failure. Kenyon would wait almost a year before declaring that the season had “underpinned where we had got to. The manager had some input (but) I have to say, I think the organisation had a greater input”.
Others were quicker to stick the boot in. Mourinho, preparing to return to management at Inter Milan, described the Israeli’s eight-month tenure as an “empty season” in an interview for the Observer conducted a few days after the final in Moscow. Asked whether he agreed with Grant’s assessment that the campaign had been positive, Mourinho added: “That depends on your philosophy of leadership. In my philosophy, it was a very bad one because, in football, ‘almost’ means defeat and Chelsea ‘almost’ won the League Cup, ‘almost’ won the Champions League and ‘almost’ won the Premier League. Almost is nothing.
“After two titles per season for the last three years, there were zero titles this season which, in my philosophy, means a really bad season. Maybe in the philosophy of a loser, this was a great season, which I respect.”
There was an undercurrent of spite to those words, a legacy of the ructions of the previous summer. Grant may have been able to lean on an outstanding group of players who were well steeped in how to achieve success but, given the turmoil in which the club found itself as he took up the reins, he deserved credit for steering them back on course and for the dignity in which he had overseen the role. A record of 36 wins in 54 games, whatever the extent of his input, was mightily impressive. Yet there was never any long-term prospect of him retaining the role. With the benefit of hindsight, that four-year contract feels even more like a golden handshake.
Advertisement
“I was surprised to be sacked,” Grant told reporters through a smile as he prepared to return to Stamford Bridge with Portsmouth for the first time, 19 months after his dismissal. “The chairman said that it was my fault that John Terry missed the penalty, and it was my fault that we hadn’t started the season so well. He forgot I was not there in the beginning. But you know what is the job of the manager? To be guilty. It was my fault.
“They were not in a good situation when I took over — not in terms of performances, in points, or in the Champions League. It was not an easy situation because nobody knew who I was. I understood the fans’ doubts but I came in with a different way of doing things and that takes time. Arsene Wenger and Ferguson took more than one year to put their influence on the team. We did it in a very short time, so I am proud of what I did.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)