The Shocking Truth About The Downfall Of Portsmouth FC

in may 2008 portsmouth became the first club since everton in 1995 from outside of what was then known as the big four to win the fa cup in one of the most bizarre fa cup campaigns of all time it was already guaranteed that that would be the case by the semi-final stage with a string of upsets creating a less fashionable last four namely portsmouth west brom cardiff city and barnsley in the 127th season of the world's oldest football tournament i was fortunate enough to attend both portsmouth's semi-final and final victories against west bromwich albion and cardiff city both were no wins and both successes coming courtesy of nigerian great noewankwukanu scoring the only goal of the game they weren't vintage wembley fa cup fixtures from the perspective of a neutral if i'm totally honest but it was great to see the celebrations among the pompey fans as the club from the south coast won their first piece of major silverware since lifting the first division title back in 1950. it was portsmouth's finest achievement since the invention of colour television and on the eve of that triumph portsmouth owner sasha gardemac outlined his ambition to challenge the aforementioned big four by building equivalent stadium infrastructure and training facilities on the south coast within the next 10 years and yet just seven months later portsmouth were thrust into chaos as news broke of enormous debts and guymak announced his intention to sell the club within five seasons rather than breaking into the premier league's big four portsmouth were playing in the fourth tier having finished bottom of league one the previous season the demise of portsmouth over this period is a subject i've often been asked to make a video about on this channel but since it was a downfall that i lived through and watched as it unfolded in real time i figured it wouldn't be as interesting or enlightening as similar videos documenting the rise and fall of teams like ersteshand or ansi makachkala but i also thought that about the madness in mayhem and knotts county at roughly the same time before biting the bullet and making a video about that which proved to be one of the most bizarre and i think one of the best documentary videos that i have made and having now taken a deep dive into what actually went on at fratton park between 2006 and 2016 roughly speaking rather than simply watching on from afar in real time i can safely say that the same is true of portsmouth during that period so sit back relax and join me on a journey to portsmouth the only island city in the united kingdom to the home of the royal navy the birthplace of charles dickens and the site of the world's first mass production line as we take a look at the rise and fall of the only professional football team in england which is not located in mainland great britain how they went from reaching two fa cup finals in three seasons to three relegations in four seasons quite literally in immediate succession in a tale containing more villains than the star wars trilogy more fake shakes than a vegan milkshake bar and more takeovers than your average formula one grand prix normally with these types of documentaries i start by giving a little bit of background on the club involved but there is just so much to pack in in this instance that we are going to begin our story less than two and a half years before seoul campbell lifted the fa cup as portsmouth captain in january 2006 29 year old french and israeli businessman sasha geidermak acquired a majority shareholding in portsmouth from milan madrid who had owned the club since 1999. guymak's arrival was immediately controversial since the young businessman's father the russian-born billionaire arcadey geidermak was subject to an international arrest warrant at the time for the illegal sale of arms in angola during the 1990s arcadi was accused of trafficking 790 million u.s dollars worth of arms along with the french businessman pfalcon between 1993 and 1998 during the angolan civil war and many years later in 2015 arkady surrendered himself to the french authorities and served a three-year prison sentence for his crimes however his son sasha attempted to e-support his concerns by claiming that his father would have no involvement in his ownership of portsmouth and that he was buying the club with his own money claiming to have a master fortune in excess of 300 million pounds before he had turned 30. geidermak wasted no time putting that capital to use forking out 4.1 million pounds to sign benjamin for a club record fee in only his second day at the club before investing a further 7.5 million pounds on four players a week later ben gianni proved to be a dud in his debut half campaign scoring only once in 16 games but harry redknapp's men still managed to narrowly avoid relegation at the last securing a sensational six wins from their last 10 games it was a strong start given the fact that pompey had been in the bottom three when ghadamac arrived but both redknapp and portsmouth's new multi-millionaire owner seemingly had ambitions well beyond mere survival heavy spending continued over the following summer not so much on transfer fees but more so on wages as redknapp recruited a number of high-profile players entering the end of their careers arsenal legend sol campbell and owanku kanu both arrived on freeze to be joined by fellow gunners favourite lauren in january england internationals david james and andy cole were brought in from manchester city for a combined 2 million pounds and glen johnson arrived on loan from chelsea the added experience seemed to do the trick and portsmouth posted their highest league finish since 1955 ending the season in ninth place in the premier league four points of qualifying for the uefa cup the following season yet again pompey weren't done just yet and despite enjoying such a strong showing in the league wholesale changes were made harry redknapp might not like being called a wheeler dealer but portsmouth signed practically an entire new starting eleven between that season's summer and winter transfer windows forking out more than 50 million pounds as the likes of sully muntari lasana diarra and jermaine defoe all arrived at the club of course on a superficial level both guidemak and rednap were vindicated during the 2007-08 season as portsmouth climbed to eighth in the premier league and knocked out manchester united on route to lifting the fa cup for only the second time in their history and for the first time since 1939. as mentioned in the introduction though it didn't take long for portsmouth's paper fortress to come crashing down portsmouth's success saw them post record revenue figures in 2007.08 totaling 70.6 million pounds but they still managed to spend 78 of their total turnover on wages alone even whilst generating revenue that was unlikely to be sustainable for the foreseeable future whilst the club rubbished reports claiming that john utaka was handed a contract worth eighty thousand pounds a week which would have been twenty thousand pounds a week more than arsenal's highest earned assessed fabregas at the time the club's accounts did confirm that they had the largest wage bill last season outside of the so-called big four and newcastle united the following season further reinforcements were added most notably in the forms of peter crouch and eunice kabul however in september 2008 a new story in israel caught the attention of one or two onlookers on the south coast arcadie gardimack sasha gadamac's father who sasha had been adamant had nothing to do with portsmouth when he bought the club in 2006 had given an interview with an israeli newspaper in which he laid out his billion dollar business empire which included the listing of a certain portsmouth football club which he valued at 300 million pounds arcadia had given the interview in an effort to disprove claims that his business empire was crumbling and to illustrate his wealth but it put his son in rather an awkward position portsmouth maintained that arcadia had nothing to do with the club and sasha was their sole owner but fans could be forgiven for thinking that something fishy was going on especially when harry redknapp left the club the following month to take over at tottenham hotspur there was already talk of tightening the waist belt at fratton park and redknapp stated when jumping from the sinking ship that the five million pounds compensation portsmouth had received for his services would help ease some of the club's financial problems blamed his change of tact and pompey's struggles on the global financial crisis with much of his wealth said to have been tied up in real estate which have been hit hard but again long suspicious portsmouth fans suspected gardemak who was reported to have just made 34 million pounds in arms sales by the sunday times of a more sinister plan to try and strip the club of their assets in december 2008 seven months after pompey lifted the fa cup gardemak put portsmouth up for sale and though both he and the club's chief executive peter story denied allegations that the club was facing financial meltdown their denials weren't particularly convincing over the january transfer window the fire sale began la santa dia joined real madrid and jermaine defoe returned to tottenham as stories detailing the true extent of the issues facing the club began to surface pompey finished 14th under the management of paul hart that season who replaced tony adams in february during a campaign in which the club still managed to draw to all with an ac milan side containing the likes of dida zambrota kaka gattuso sadorf shevchenko and ronaldinho having led 2 nil in that game up until the 84th minute over the summer though the last morsels of talent remaining in the pompey squad were rapidly picked apart glenn johnson peter crouch silvan distant eunice kabul and nico crenshaw all departed as geidermak totally pulled funding and players wages began to go unpaid over the summer portsmouth fans hoped that they had found their saviour in the form of suleiman alpha he who was described in the press as an emirati billionaire from dubai who had previously been linked with buying out roman abramovich at stamford bridge al fahem had assisted in the takeover of manchester city by shake man saw 12 months earlier which appeared to be going pretty well for the citizens who had already broken the british record fee with the signing of robinho and were planning significant investments in manchester city's infrastructure al-fahem was a board member of the abu dhabi united group which owns 78 of the city football group which today controls seven football clubs and has minority stakes in a further three longtime chairman peter story kept his job in effect though his official title changed to ceo as alvahin took the reins as chairman and story told supporters that quote this appointment brings stability to the club and is excellent news for pompey supporters i have every reason to believe that together with the new chairman we will be able to take the club forward to further achievements building on the successes of the past three years end quote yeah about that not much was known about alfheim at the time other than the fact that his parents and brother had died in a car crash when he was 11 years old he had emigrated to the united states and that he now hosted a reality tv show in the united arab emirates al-fahem's supposed billions and stories promise of stability wouldn't last long seemingly unable to run the club using his own resources al-fahem went out in search of a loan but no one would lend him the necessary funds as portsmouth fell deeper and deeper into a financial black hole as players went unpaid the premier league stepped in and ordered alphahim to sell portsmouth fewer than 50 days after he had acquired the club upon his arrival at fratton park alphahim had promised a new stadium and top eight finishes within five years in reality it took barely five weeks for him to board the first plane back to dubai in 2018 alphahim was sentenced to serve five years in prison by courts in the united arab emirates for stealing five million pounds from his wife in 2009 which he then used to buy portsmouth from gaidemak which doesn't really reek of mansour like billions in the bank account does it the way in which the premier league had been suckered into believing that al fahem was the next sheikh mansour or roman abramovich forced the league to tighten their ownership rules when sanctioning the takeover of a club though sadly for portsmouth fans these rules did not come in before their next owner arrived ali al-faraj was the man who arrived to save pompey or so it was said acquiring the club from al-fahem just days before portsmouth would have been forced to enter administration alfa raj who is not to be confused with nigel farage though both men do have one or two traits in common had tried to buy portsmouth previously a couple of months earlier from ghana mac having been approached by chairman peter story and the israeli football agent penny zaharti geidermak refused alfa raj's advances unconvinced by his proof of funds selling the club to alfahim instead but with al-fahem ordered to sell the club al-faraj came back into the fold al farage acquired a 90 stake in portsmouth from al-fahem supposedly through his own investment firm named falcondrone limited who were believed to have taken out a loan from another firm named portpin limited amounting to 17 million pounds in order to finance his takeover of the club though although never actually set foot in the city of portsmouth within weeks of his arrival an interview surfaced from saudi arabia appearing to show portsmouth's new billionaire owner laughing off suggestions that he was actually a billionaire stating that he had zero interest in sport and that he hoped to turn a quick buck on the club by selling them in the next six months portsmouth initially denied that the man in the clip was ali alfarage before u-turning quicker than boris johnson every time marcus rashford hits the tweet button and admitting that it was in fact their owner who had made the rather awkward comments as far as the official story goes geidermak was right to doubt alforage's lack of funds and with players once again going unpaid and enormous debts mounting he or rather his company falconron limited defaulted on their repayments to port pin limited and poorpin limited therefore took control of all of falcondrone limited's assets including portsmouth football club with falconron's chairman balram chandrai also becoming the chairman of pompey that is the official version of events the unofficial version of which there are more than one is even more bizarre in fact at one point it was widely reported that ali al-faraj might not even exist after all no one had ever seen him he'd never stepped foot in england and the only sighting of him was an embarrassing interview in saudi arabia for which there was no real way of knowing that was actually ali alfarage or the owner of portsmouth fc yahoo news even reported in 2011 after raj had gone that he probably didn't exist we can now say with some confidence that ali alfaraj did exist but how much involvement he ever had with the ownership of portsmouth is highly questionable one theory widely popularized among investigative pompey fans and first formulated online by supporter mika hall posits that all of portsmouth's post 2008 chaos owes solely to debts that were owed by sasha gaidemak's father guidamak two four men namely baloram chanrai levi kushner yoram yosophoth and ron magner when arkady told the israeli newspaper of his vast business empire it is alleged that portsmouth was the only hard asset that he actually owned at the time and that despite tireless efforts the quartet who were owed money by the convicted arms dealer had been unable to get it as such it is claimed those four men hatched a plan to take portsmouth over strip the club's assets and recoup as much of the money that arkady owed them as was possible hall and others believed that sasha guided math aside from just realizing that ali alforage didn't have enough cash to buy portsmouth figured out that the supposed saudi businessman was just a front for his father's creditors hence why he turned them down and sold the club to al-fahem instead with al-fahem gone though the four men along with daniel azugi a former lawyer who had been convicted of fraud and deception offences in tel aviv in 2001 set about trying to extract as much cash as possible from the club if this was the case it didn't turn out to be very easy for them portsmouth didn't have any money and every time they did receive any money either in the form of tv payments from the premier league or transfer fees from other clubs the premier league automatically reallocated those funds to pompey's footballing debtors as per premier league rules at that time it meant that you would have to clear all footballing debts though crucially not portsmouth's other debts such as those out to the banks before you could even attempt to take any money out of the club what is not up for debate by the way is that daniel azugi the convicted fraudster from tel aviv was running much of the day-to-day footballing operations at portsmouth as was widely reported at the time the premier league claimed that they were unable to intervene since although azuki wouldn't have been allowed to hold an official role at boardroom or senior management level at the club due to his criminal record the fact that he was only employed by the club on a short-term contract as a consultant meant that it didn't break league rules extraordinarily whilst all of this was going on and despite the fact that portsmouth were unsurprisingly falling apart in the premier league routed to the bottom of the table all season they also reached their second fa cup final in just two years under israeli boss avram grant back at wembley pompey would face a tougher test than last time around up against grant's old club and his close friend roman abramovich at chelsea but in spite of everything that was going on both behind the scenes and the inevitable knockout effects on pompey's depleted playing staff they were only narrowly beaten one nil by carlo ancelotti's side courtesy of a goal from big game specialist didier dropper when whoever was behind ali al-faraj the saudi nobody who has not been heard of either before or since the portsmouth affair and who the saudi royal family claimed to know nothing about despite his wealth supposedly coming from close ties or actual relations to them along with the cabal which presented itself in the form of balram chandrai and porpin limited all finally left portsmouth in 2011 they were replaced by a very wealthy incredibly passionate and thoroughly decent local businessman to whom no scandals were ever attached and who clearly always had the club's best interests at heart just kidding after losing almost their entire squad upon relegation from the premier league steve cottrell had managed to keep pompey in the championship against all the odds balram chandrai was then replaced by a young russian banker and that is not cockney rhyming slang who bought the club through his own investment firm namely conveys sports initiative or csi for short ironically then i suppose antonov was investigated for a crime all of his own almost immediately after acquiring the club when he was served with a european arrest warrant relating to the asset stripping of a lithuanian bank meaning that his assets were frozen and he was unable to put any money into the club these really were bleak times for pompey fans as the club entered administration for the second time in as many years with little sign of a way out administrators came in and discovered that the club still owed a total of 58 million pounds in debt with no conceivable way of them ever being able to raise anything like those kinds of funds in the championship let alone in league one where they will be playing next season having finally now been relegated from the championship the club was handed a ten point deduction ahead of their first season of third so football since 1983 and their entire first team squad departed rarely as a team appeared to be more doomed heading into a new campaign as michael appleton desperately attempted to assemble some semblance of a squad using free agents academy players and presumably some planks of wood hammered into the ground in training appleton lost his job pretty harshly it has to be said following five wins from his opening 16 games of the season and his successor guy whittingham won the same number of games across 30 fixtures that season as pompey were somewhat inevitably relegated in last place just before the end of the season with relegation already confirmed portsmouth finally came out of administration with a pompey supporters trust striking a deal to take over the club over the next three seasons portsmouth stabilized themselves in league two whilst owned by their own fans before winning promotion in the 2016-17 season as league two champions over the following summer the club took the incredibly difficult decision to allow a private investor back into the fold but only after extensive screening and due diligence it was reported that michael eisner the former disney ceo acquired the club through his own private investment firm the tournament company for a fee close to six million pounds in a deal which carried assurances of a further 10 million pound investment into the club eisner is a legitimate billionaire whose net worth has skyrocketed over the last few years alone since he took over at fratton park and pompey have twice made the ligue 1 playoffs since his arrival still pushing for that elusive return to the championship crucially over the summer just gone portsmouth finally acquired the freehold on a training ground all of their own for the first time in the history of the club believe it or not but when pompey won the fa cup in 2008 they trained at a school in the city of their bitter rival southampton with none of that premier league or fa cup winning money ever finding its way into long-term sustainable forms of investment like infrastructure the story of portsmouth football club over the six or seven years commencing with the takeover of sasha gardenac is a tale of extraordinary self-interest deception and total disregard for a club at the heart of a community that these supposed custodians ought to have been looking after it is a tale which has become all too common in the modern game but portsmouth are an extreme example even by those appalling standards with one of the most opaque ownership structures and among the highest density of bad fate actors that the british game has ever seen to reach two fa cup finals in three seasons only to enter administration twice during an even shorter period of time immediately afterwards owen carlsberg 1039 pounds and 33 pence and pucca pies 40 pounds no you heard that right i didn't miss any zeros at the end there administrators rarely found the pompey owed pocket pies forty quid well that takes a devilish concoction of either stupidity or greed and for more than five years portsmouth had both in spades as recklessly as portsmouth will run so nearly costing the club their very existence if you wanted to end on a positive they have still won a major trophy more recently than newcastle united west ham leeds united everton or tottenham hotspur and at long last there are reasons to be cheerful for pompey fans who appear to have a long-term strategy now currently sitting in sixth place in league one with three wins one draw and one defeat to their name so far this season so that is it for today's video but thank you all very much as ever for watching hit the like button if you enjoyed it let me know your thoughts down below in the comments and make sure you're subscribed of course go start saying and have notifications turned on for hide c7s you can also find me on twitter or on instagram where the username at hrtc7s on both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 273,263

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Portsmouth, Premier League, Sheikh, Owner, Fall, Documentary, FA Cup, Money, HITC Sport, Gaydamak, Manchester City, Portsmouth FC, League One, Downfall, Truth, Remarkable

Id: 1sf_yzQzqUI

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021