A consortium US billionaire Todd Boehly takes over Chelsea. The purchase price for the Premier League club with coach Thomas Tuchel is £2.5 billion, almost three billion US dollars. This was announced by the English club on Saturday. The sale is expected to close by the end of May, subject to all necessary regulatory approvals, it said. “That gives us a perspective,” said Tuchel. The Premier League and UK government have yet to approve the sale of the Champions League winners to the American-Swiss group. This is necessary because the assets of the previous owner Roman Abramowitsch frozen during the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. The £2.5bn to buy the club shares will be paid into a blocked UK bank account. “100 percent of the money will be donated to charity,” Chelsea said. Abramovich recently denied speculation that he would benefit from the sale of Chelsea. dpa
The German table tennis star Dmitry Ovtcharov has criticized the fact that a sports court of the European federation ETTU overturned the exclusion of his former Russian club Fakel Orenburg from the Champions League. “I don’t think it was the right decision to let Russian teams back into the competition at the moment. As of today, that’s a very bad signal,” said the former world number one on Saturday evening on ZDF. In early March, the ETTU banned all Russian and Belarusian teams from international competitions in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The two Champions League semi-finalists from Orenburg and Yekaterinburg were also affected. Both clubs and the Russian FA objected and were at least partly right. According to a ruling by the Board of Appeal, Russian and Belarusian national teams, but not Russian and Belarusian club teams, may be suspended from international competitions. The semi-final between Orenburg and Yekaterinburg must therefore be held. German finalists Borussia Düsseldorf have no intention of playing against a Russian team. dpa
