Deadly double act show they mean business

WHEN the champagne and lager stops flowing down the Kings Road, when the tears are wiped away, and heads have cleared in about four weeks’ time, there will be opportunity to reflect on the double act which has dominated the European football scene this season.

No, not Lampard and Terry, the admirable English spine upon which Chelsea's success on the field has been founded, but the unlikely conjunction of a Russian oil and gas magnate, and a Portuguese teacher. Both unfeasibly young men, both apparently from culturally different backgrounds.

One a brooding, emotional, motormouth; the other a man from the shadows who has amassed, in a little over a decade, one of the greatest personal fortunes in history. One a Latin with the smouldering looks of a sawn-off George Clooney and a taste for fine clothes. The other a dress-down Jewish orphan and former Red Army artilleryman.