Billionaires toy with the beautiful game No matter how rich we are, the camera becomes less flattering as we get older, and one picture of Roman Abramovich this week made him look less like his old persona - the cheeky chappie who won the lottery - and more like Henry VIII. Which is rather appropriate. Abramovich's lottery win came in the state assets free-for-all that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of his business career being somewhat opaque, he is best known for being owner of Chelsea Football Club since 2003. This week he embarked on his ninth manager, Rafael Benitez, having just fired No 8, Roberto di Matteo, despatched six months after winning the Champions League, the most important of all club trophies. The ex-managers are not, like Anne Boleyn, actually beheaded, the goings-on at Chelsea having replaced public executions as London's entertainment of choice. Instead, like Anne of Cleves, Abramovich's exes get shoved aside with a few insults and a large sweetener. But he really does pursue managers the way Henry VIII pursued women. Benitez is only meant to be staying at Chelsea until May, if that long. Abramovich is now fixated on Pep Guardiola, the former manager of Barcelona, who is enjoying a gap year doing not much in Manhattan. Only one of Abramovich's managers has lasted longer than two years: José Mourinho (2004-07) gave Chelsea their first English league title in 50 years. But his ego, which was more compelling than his team's football, proved too much for his master in the end. Katherine the Arrogant? Let's not push the analogy too far. But Mourinho can be regarded as King Roman's Cardinal Wolsey. As he contemplates becoming No 10, Guardiola may reflect on the differences between working for a proper football club and a Tudor dictatorship. Barcelona is what it says on the wall: a club, owned by its 180,000 members. Its main rival, Real Madrid, has a similar structure. Most German clubs are also majority-owned by their members. All the big US sports teams, though built on conventional business lines, are subject to socialistic restrictions that in any other walk of American life would be excoriated on radio blather-shows - salary caps, revenue-sharing and the player-draft are all designed to equalise opportunities for victory. Yet Britain, which on the one hand worships the NHS, is content to leave its other obsession, football, to the mercy of a very unBritish red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism. Clubs" on-field successes depend on the owners" objectives. Chelsea and Manchester City have both won trophies that would have been unthinkable under more businesslike ownership. Abramovich bought a mighty train set and loves playing with it. City, for reasons that have little to do with football as such, has been turned into a detached province of the UAE and derived the incidental benefit of winning the Premier League. Given infinite funds, I could make Northampton Town into champions of Europe, and it would be equally meaningless. Other buyers have different aims. Manchester United's American owners have loaded the club with debt for their own purposes. Portsmouth have endured two separate catastrophic regimes and are still flirting with extinction. It is easier to discover the meaning of life than the ultimate ownership of Leeds United. When lower-division clubs start climbing, it almost invariably means they have been taken over by someone flashing the cash. When they tumble, it is a sure indicator the owner has grown bored, gone broke or was a chancer. Clearly, Chelsea's players, ex-managers and, in a manner of speaking, supporters have all benefited from Abramovich's choice of hobby. The influx of funds has also enhanced the quality of the Premier League. However, international football tells a different story. The Spanish team, dominated by Barcelona and Real players, won the last World Cup and the past two European championships. The German team are invariably contenders. The England team is an international joke: in 2012 even the normal pattern of hope, hysteria and horrible exit was muted because the team was so obviously useless. There is considerable intellectual and some political interest in finding a better way. But only three of the 92 clubs in England's Premiership and Football League - Exeter City, AFC Wimbledon and Wycombe Wanderers - are now owned by their supporters: all of them are in League Two, the bottom tier, and the last two are both in danger of being relegated. In England, this method of ownership tends to be a last resort: it has never been tested at a club with a large fan base. Tomorrow Abramovich FC are home to Abu Dhabi City. Less obvious but perhaps more important is the fact that next Sunday AFC Wimbledon have a cup tie at the home of Milton Keynes Dons, in business terms the heirs of the original Wimbledon club, which was relocated on the chairman's whim in 2003. The new club fought their way back through the divisions by sheer bottom-up determination. Every footballing sentimentalist wants them to win next week. But there is more than sentiment at stake. The long-term sustainability of English football hinges on the game being ultimately controlled by those who love it most. We are all fascinated by Henry VIII but no one wants him back on the throne.