Worthington had joined Chelsea from Bolton Wanderers after Frank Arnesen, then the club’s director of football, called him with an offer.
He recalled to Football Presse, “For some reason Frank Arnesen had found out and he’d got my phone number from somewhere and he rang me up and he said, ‘Dave, I’ve heard that you might be leaving Bolton, what’s the story?’ I said, well, I am, I’m getting my contract paid up.
“He said, ‘Well, I’d like you to come and work for Chelsea,’ simple as that.”
Arnesen invited Worthington to see the training ground at Cobham, where the scale of the operation made an immediate impression.
“We’d been at Bolton which was a decent set up to be fair at Bolton but just going down to Cobham at Chelsea, unbelievable and watching the first team players train and seeing some of these stars and Shevchenko and all these boys.”
The offer was equally striking.
“Just as a European scout I was on twice as much there as I was as the chief scout at Bolton with like 12 men under me and I just started laughing and I thought this is fantastic.”
Abramovich wanted answers
Worthington said Abramovich took an interest in the work of his scouts and wanted to understand the players being recommended to Chelsea.
“He was sort of hands on, he wanted to know where his money was going and which player would come into Chelsea.”
On another occasion, Abramovich was discussing the need for a full-back. Worthington had concerns about the attacking style of Dani Alves and wanted to establish exactly what kind of player the owner expected.
“Dani Alves to me is a right winger that dropped back occasionally but they always tried to sell him as a right fullback and I said a fullback, it’s in the word in there, a fullback he stays back, he defends and he stops the opposition player playing and then occasionally when you get the chance you get forward.”
Worthington knew he was speaking up in a room filled with experienced scouts, but believed the question mattered.
“To me it was essential that I found out whether he wanted a defensive right fullback or whether he wanted a Dani Alves type who just goes marauding because I said in the back four, if Dani Alves goes marauding up there there’s an imbalance and teams will soon suss out and use that space where he’s left and start pumping balls into there and they’ll come attacking you.”
Abramovich, he said, wanted a proper full-back.
The wrong Gomez
At another meeting, Worthington was invited into Abramovich’s private suite before an international match. Sepp Blatter, then FIFA president, had been using the room for a meeting that overran into the time Abramovich wanted to welcome his family and guests.
Worthington was asked to intervene.
“I’m sure the bodyguard would easily have said, ‘Hey, you lot, get out of here, you know, Mr Abramovich is coming now,’ but I think he wanted it a bit more diplomatic so I went to Mr Blatter and asked him if he could, you know, sling his hook and get his party out of there now, because the top man was coming now.”
Blatter left, and Worthington sat near Abramovich for the meal. The conversation turned to a player Chelsea were considering signing.
“He just said, you know, Frank tells me that Gomez is a fantastic player and we’re going to spend a lot of money on him and all this and I said, ‘Gomez?’”
Worthington had recently watched another player with Gomez in his name in France. He thought Abramovich was referring to that player rather than German striker Mario Gómez.
“I’m thinking, I’ve not recommended Gomez to Frank so why is he signing him?”
He had already delivered his verdict on the player he mistakenly believed Chelsea were about to recruit.
“I said, he’ll never play for a team like Chelsea and I thought I’d dropped Frank in the soup.”
The mix-up was cleared up within minutes, but Worthington admitted it was an uncomfortable moment.
“I realised that I got it wrong. I got the wrong Gomez, you know. It was quite embarrassing for a minute or two until I got him talking about something different.”
Asked what Abramovich was like to meet, Worthington described him as reserved.
“He was quite reserved and obviously asking me about things that I did for scouting. Where did I go for them and things like that. So, he just seemed a decent guy. But, you know, like I said earlier, you take people as you find them and he was okay with me.”
The evening also produced an unlikely photograph with Blatter.
“If you’ve seen the photograph in the book my face is an absolute picture because I’m shaking hands with Sepp Blatter and it was good of him to ask me for my autograph and to shake hands with me and have his picture taken with me. I bet it’s on his bedroom wall now...!”
Dave Worthington is author of "Worthy: The Scouting Adventures and Football Life of Dave Worthington" - which is available here.
