Flavio Briatore and QPR Profiled

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Observer Sports Monthly
'I thought QPR was a barbecue restaurant'

He is a playboy F1 boss. They are an accident-prone Championship football team. How did 'love' blossom between Flavio Briatore and Queens Park Rangers? Given unprecedented access, OSM follows the new chairman.

· Click here for our behind-the-scenes pictures from Loftus Road.

Adrian Deevoy -
Sunday March 2, 2008
Observer Sport Monthly

It's not all beer and skittles being a famous international playboy. Sometimes you have to moor the yacht, ignore the supermodel voicemail and get back to what you do best. Making millions.

Forty-eight hours ago, Renault Formula One team principal Flavio Briatore was in Paris outlining his plan for the coming season. 'We're going to have a lot of fun,' seemed to be the central thrust of the campaign.

Yesterday, he tended to his Billionaire Couture clothing company. Clothing for gentlemen who prefer their fly-buttons fashioned from solid gold. He then dealt with Westminster Council regarding opening a nightclub in St James's. Last night, he dined out and relaxed. It always makes a pleasant change to eat somewhere you don't own.

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But today, the powerful Italian tycoon must consign inter-pit politics, extortionate underpants and global property concerns to the back burner, for there is a new distraction in his life.

Unusually for the former freelance love machine, this is not a beautiful woman (although he has dated more than most: step forward Naomi Campbell, Adriana Volpe, Eva Herzigova, Elle Macpherson, Heidi Klum - with whom Briatore has a three-year-old daughter - and now fiancée Elisabetta Gregoraci).

But you can be certain that Briatore's latest love will prove as difficult as the most demanding princess and doubtless be just as pricey to run. For the teak-tanned entrepreneur has been seduced by a redoubtable old dame residing in an unlovely pocket of west London.

Like many before him, your correspondent included, Flavio Briatore has fallen, and fallen hard, for Queens Park Rangers football club, currently sitting in lower mid-table in the Championship. And, while appreciating that there may be some rocky times ahead, he is determined to make it work.

'It's true,' he says, dark eyes crinkling behind his ever-present turquoise shades. 'I have come to love the club, the people, the loyalty of the supporters. But we must remember,' and here his expression hardens, 'this is a business. And although you must love what you do, you cannot make difficult business decisions purely with your heart.'

At 57, Briatore has made in the region of a hundred million quid's worth of difficult business decisions. Some have been ground-breaking: his development of the Benetton F1 team in the early Nineties was nothing short of visionary. Some have landed him in hot water: he had to leave Italy hastily in the late Seventies to avoid a four-year sentence for fraud.

Asked to consider his triumphs and transgressions, Briatore shrugs and says: 'I am very happy. I am healthy, thank God. Every day I am just happy to wake up.' He cups his hands as if holding a delicate bird. 'Life is very fragile,' he sighs. 'Very fragile.'

His arrival at Loftus Road this February afternoon, for a game against Bristol City, is signalled by the appearance of an expensively pointy cowboy boot from a sleek, discreet, blacked-out jeep. You know that the boots alone cost more than your car, and the vehicle carrying them is worth, in certain neighbourhoods, more than your life.

Briatore marches briskly - and shadowing him you realise swiftly that he rarely goes below 'brisk' - through the players' entrance. He signs autographs, glowers ruggedly into camera lenses and shakes the hands of fans and staff, offering a gruff 'ciao, ciao' as he goes.

Flanked by two dark-haired and highly attractive women, Briatore takes the stairs up to the directors' suite, mumbling in his melodic mother tongue as he goes. 'Sometimes the logistics of the stadium are difficult,' he apologises, negotiating a tight chicane. 'I still get lost in the corridors.'

The directors' suite operates a strict 'no jeans' policy but, in the case of Signor Briatore, they are prepared to make an exception. He does, after all, kind of own the place.

Before Briatore and his friend, the Formula One overlord Bernie Ecclestone, bought QPR last August the club were going under. Gates were down, performances were poor, morale was close to non-existent and the money had run out. Relegation, and worse, loomed.

The Super Hoops were in a suicidal state. The boardroom burned with accusations of corruption; a 'friendly' against the Chinese Olympic team in February last year degenerated disgracefully into a full-scale fist-fight - 'The Great Brawl Of China'. Then there was talk of reckless gunplay behind the scenes. In August 2005, before a game against Sheffield United, armed police were called to Loftus Road when then chairman Gianni Paladini claimed to have been threatened with a pistol and beaten by a group of men demanding he sign away his stake in the club. But all the accused, including another director of the club, were acquitted at a subsequent trial.

'It was a very bad time for the club,' Briatore agrees. 'All their dreams had disappeared, all their hope. They were hopeless,' he laughs, relishing the word.

But he's right. Rangers were bloody hopeless.

Then, like footballing fairy godfathers, Flavio and Bernie waved their magic wonga; they cleared the club's £13m debt and in October installed Luigi De Canio as the team's new manager, allowing him a generous budget to purchase players and build a squad. The motor racing men have since been joined as shareholders by Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate and fifth richest man in the world, who, aptly enough, has bought a fifth of the club.

Their aim: to get QPR promoted to the Premier League within three years and established as a successful brand thereafter. More than that, they want to rediscover the romance and theatre that used to transform a scruffy tin stadium in Shepherds Bush into a place of joy and wonder. 'Football should be an event,' Briatore declares. 'Our mission is to make it entertainment.'

Dramatic changes have already occurred up in the directors' suite at Loftus Road. There's an espresso machine, for one. Then there are the elegant women with their tiny behinds and enormous sunglasses. And the dress-sense has improved immeasurably. It is impossible to calculate the acreage of cashmere in the room.

The suite itself has not changed since the days of 'QPR rule, OK?', those glorious mid-Seventies when Stan Bowles and Dave Thomas humiliated defenders for fun. The anaemic wood panelling is of a hue that would make any airport hotel proud and the royal blue carpet gives off the reassuring spark of man-made fabric. The crowning glory is the fake-log fireplace around which Rangers' new owners and patrons now gather.

Everyone either looks or is Italian. Men sport collar-length hairstyles not seen since Howard's Way ruled the ratings. They drink pink aperitifs and greet each other with kisses. They openly finger the fabric of other men's blazers. There's not a pint of Whitbread or a bookie's Biro to be seen. What would Don Givens, the Irish striker in that mid-Seventies team, make of it all?

At the centre of this perfumed throng stands Briatore. Tall and physical, he thumps backs, slaps shoulders and hugs his male acquaintances. Women are welcomed with body language that says: 'Now you are here, my life is complete.'

He works the room with the ease and authority of an alpha male: large and in charge. You obviously don't get to employ a thousand people without picking up a few man-management tips along the way.

But now Briatore's considerable nerve is about to be challenged. There has been sad news: Gigi De Canio's father has passed away and the QPR manager is on a plane to Italy to be with his family. This means that someone else will need to give the team talk before the game. There is no discussion as to who that will be.

Twenty minutes before kick-off, Briatore stands in a soundless QPR changing room, the young players staring in reverential silence as he delivers the most concise of motivational homilies. 'You are professionals,' he says, establishing unwavering eye contact with every person present. 'We pay you. You know exactly what to do. I want you to go out there and do it. You win. For Gigi. OK, that's all.'

In the lift afterwards, Briatore exhales mightily, his face folding with emotion. 'Gigi is a good man,' he says of his bereaved manager. 'A very good man.' Then, as Italians often do in times of heightened emotion, he eats. Joining friends and business associates - a communications billionaire here, a fat cat from Fiat there - Briatore orders a plate of roast lamb with vegetables (no gravy, steady on the spuds). There is a convivial, almost familial atmosphere, as Chianti is sipped slowly and some distinctly European cheese makes the rounds.

Gianni Paladini eats standing up to one side of Briatore's table. This may be so as not to crease his immaculate navy suit, but ballistics experts will tell you that it's difficult to sit down to lunch while wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Amit Bhatia, Lakshmi Mittal's son-in-law and representative on the QPR board - he is vice chairman - stops by for a chat wearing the most luxuriant camel coat the world has ever seen. With his laughing green eyes and perfectly tossed hair, he could pass for an Indian Robbie Williams. He is overheard saying to Briatore: 'We must do something about the stadium.' He is smoothly reassured that plenty will be done.

There is a nursery planned for QPR toddlers, a DJ will play live before games, a catering overhaul is imminent, luxury seating is to be installed in the posher stands. The entire match-day experience will be re-evaluated and improved. They may even put some air freshener in the lavatories.

One day, of course, if all goes to plan, QPR will have to leave Loftus Road for a more accommodating stadium. 'This is an amazing place,' Briatore says. 'And the history is very important. The club has been part of this community for generations. It would be a pity if we have to move ... but it might be necessary.'

Lunch is barely over and Briatore has another pressing matter to deal with. And it is perhaps an insight into his obsessive character that this one detail occupies him for longer than it reasonably should. While he could be thinking about his hefty property portfolio or healthy hedge funds, he has but one thought on his mind.

One of his gloves is missing. But this is not just a glove. It's a Billionaire Couture glove: made out of several small animals and costing an arm and a leg. And, as Michael Jackson has shown us, gloves worn in the singular just look daft.

Briatore pulls on the widowed one and flaps his arms like a distressed penguin. 'Stupid, huh?' He bangs his palms together, producing the muffled sound of one hand clapping, while repeatedly inquiring: 'Where is it? Where has it gone?'

Perhaps, it is mooted, one of the players filched it when Briatore was in the changing room - a couple of them do look slightly light-fingered. 'If they have did, I'll take it out of their wages,' he says. 'Believe me, I will.'

He leads a surreal conga - including club chairman, clipboard-wielding PR manager, reporter, photographer and assistant - back downstairs in an effort to locate the rogue mitt. He retraces his steps, becoming increasingly perplexed as each revisited venue turns up nothing.

Outside the physio's room, he asks a puzzled player if he has seen the elusive item and, for an instant, it looks like the entire team might be press-ganged into the strange search party.

Briatore shakes his silver mane and utters some earthy Italian oaths. 'One glove,' he harrumphs, sounding as if he may have launched into the familiar Bob Marley song. 'No good to anyone.' Yet by the time the glove is found, Briatore has lost interest and nonchalantly stuffs it into his Puffa-jacket pocket. It was, you suspect, the thrill of the chase that engaged him.

Brief as it may have been, Briatore's pre-match talk works a minor miracle. QPR, who start the match in 19th position in the Championship, play better football than they have in years and methodically take apart a strong, second-placed Bristol City side. Rangers are composed, confident and 2-0 up at half time, thanks to a fine brace of goals by striker Patrick Agyemang, recently signed from Preston and mysteriously known to the club cognoscenti as 'Dave'.

While The Loft (as the home end is known) sings 'Gigi De Canio, Bernie and Flavio' to the tune of Verdi's 'La Donna è mobile', Briatore is speaking softly in English into his mobile. 'Fantastic,' he murmurs. 'Two great goals ... playing so well ... everyone says, "It's like the old days ..." wonderful ... yes ... fantastic.'

The next call is in Italian, during which he more than likely says: 'Playing out of their skins ... a proper tonking ... get in, my son ... top of the league? They're having a laugh.'

It is 3-0 by full time - mercurial Hungarian midfielder Akos Buzsaky having driven home a classy third on the hour - and in the changing room there are wide smiles and high spirits.

Briatore plunges into the fug of steaming socks, soiled shorts, hot food and horrible aftershave to congratulate his gladiators, most of whom, it is hard to ignore, are stark naked. Little Hogan Ephraim is deep in conversation with big Patrick Agyemang. Long-limbed Jamaica international Damion Stewart works his way through a bowl of pasta at an impressive rate, while Buzsaky stands watching the football results on television, absently toying with the family jewels.

Carefully avoiding the danglier aspects of the first XI, Briatore embraces several players before saluting the goalscorers. He bangs Agyemang manfully on the right pectoral and ruffles Buzsaky's hair. The striker glows with pride; the midfielder accepts the praise graciously then gives his penis one last triumphal tug before striding to the showers.

Three days after the victory against Bristol City, I'm invited to Briatore's well appointed London office. You can tell it's an upmarket location - the local corner shop is Harrods.

En route, I decide to buy him a small gift. But what do you give the man who has everything? When you have your own Sardinian nightclub, Tuscan beach club and African spa, what more do you need to soothe your soul? If you sail around the world in a 160-foot yacht, what is going to float your boat?

I settle on a first edition of historical journalism entitled The Heart of London by HV Morton. It goes down surprisingly well.

'A book,' beams Briatore, visibly more relaxed than he was at Loftus Road. He mulls over the title and a light bulb goes on above his head. 'Like Rangers, eh? QPR - the heart of London.'

He settles back in a broad-backed leather chair that, perhaps unnecessarily, bears his initials and gestures towards a lower velvet-covered seat on the other side of a vast glass desk. The espresso comes in dainty cups with engraved silver handles.

Coffee having hit the spot, Briatore talks without a comma for 45 minutes, pausing once to take a call - 'Ciao, Naomi. Are you in New York?' - and later to check his watch, which is the size of an ashtray. He cheerfully admits that he stumbled into football by happy accident. He was in talks to open a 'high-end pizzeria' in London, so when a call came regarding QPR, 'I was still thinking about food. I thought maybe QPR was a barbecue restaurant.'

His business-plan, he explains, is simple. He wants to 'do a Benetton'. That is, take a middling team and make them world-beaters with a positive balance sheet within five seasons. This would sound wildly over-ambitious had Briatore not already done precisely that with Benetton.

The Italian's genius was in understanding that motor racing was not so much about engine technology as the sheer electricity the sport generated. Now, the marketing architect who made F1 the world's most glamorous sport is preparing to focus his formidable attentions on the humble Coca-Cola Championship.

'Bernie was going to buy Chelsea [before Roman Abramovich's takeover],' he recalls. 'But I think buying a smaller club will ultimately be more satisfying. And less of a painful learning curve.' He jokes that whenever QPR's new owners meet for dinner, he is the poor relation (his fellow backers have a combined wealth of £21.4bn). 'I pay the tip,' he winks. 'They take care of the rest.'

When he speaks of other teams in the second flight, he does so with phonetic difficulty. 'Nor-wich' is problematic, 'Sheffield Wed-nes-a-die' is a tricky one and Scunthorpe is a minefield. 'There are some very strong teams in this division,' he says. 'We have to take it slowly, step by step. I don't want to go up to the Premiership and come straight down again like an elevator. Little by little. That's the way to become a protagonist in English football.'

Before taking his next meeting, Briatore announces that he is particularly excited by 17-year-old Colombian winger Angelo Balanta, recently promoted from the youth team. 'Very talented,' he enthuses. 'I think he will be a big star.'

And when the man who discovered Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso makes such a prediction, you tend to listen.

'I work very, very hard,' he says, removing the trademark blue glasses and placing them carefully on the desk. It is a gesture that says: 'I know people think I'm a vain, womanising money-worshipper, with an ego you can see from the moon, but I've worked my tanned Italian behind off to get here.' Point made, he drains his espresso and picks up his new book. 'The Heart of London,' he purrs. 'You know, I like that.'

Rangers' next home game is a tough evening tussle with play-off-chasing Burnley. Once again, the directors' box is a carnival of cashmere and costly cologne. But, this evening, there is a distinct Briatore-shaped hole. Unavoidably detained in a stylish European location.

In his absence Ecclestone holds the fort but, without his charismatic Italian amico, something is missing. Something is missing on the pitch, too: like the inability to hold on to a 2-0 lead.

Rangers lose 4-2, undone by a superior team and an excellent Andy Cole hat-trick. Ecclestone does not look best pleased and can be seen texting furiously, with one thumb like your nan, at full time. In a stylish European location, a message arrives. 'Get your tanned Italian behind back to west London,' it says, 'there's work to be done here.'

A brief history of Queens Park Rangers

1886

St Jude's football club merge with Christchurch Rangers to become Queens Park Rangers

1898

First professional game

1917

After playing at a dozen grounds in north-west and west London, QPR settle at Loftus Road, though later have two brief spells at nearby White City

1920

Join the Football League's Third Division

1926

Strip changes from green-and-white hoops to blue-and-white

1967

Become first Third Division side to win the League Cup, beating West Brom 3-2 after being two down at half time

1968

Reach the First Division for the first time

1976

Miss out on the League championship to Liverpool, who win their last game to take the title by a point. Stan Bowles is the most celebrated player and Gerry Francis the captain of QPR's best-ever team, managed by Dave Sexton. He joins Manchester United in

1977

and Rangers go down two years later

1981

Loftus Road's grass pitch is replaced with a plastic surface, which lasts until 1988

1982

Reach FA Cup final under Terry Venables, but lose in a replay to Spurs

1993

Managed by Gerry Francis, QPR finish fifth in the inaugural Premier League to be the top ...#8209;placed club in London. Les Ferdinand scores 20 goals and is picked by England

1995

Ferdinand joins Newcastle for £6m a year after Francis becomes Spurs manager

1996

Relegated under Ray Wilkins

1998

Gerry Francis returns, but Rangers are relegated to Division Two in 2001

2004

Promoted back to Division One (now the Championship) under Ian Holloway, but fail to make much of an impression

2006

Youth-team player Kiyan Prince, 16, murdered

2007

Teenage striker Ray Jones is killed in a car crash in August. Club bought by Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone in September

2008

Meet Chelsea for a west London derby in the third round of the FA Cup and put up a creditable performance in a 1-0 away loss. QPR fans wave banners declaring themselves the richest club in the world

A brief history of Flavio Briatore

1950

Born 12 April in Verzuolo, north-west Italy, to schoolteacher parents

1960s

Studies land surveying; works as a ski instructor before opening a restaurant

1970s

While working at the Italian Stock Exchange, meets and befriends Luciano Benetton, founder of the fashion company. But Briatore later flees to the Virgin Islands after he is sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for fraud over his involvement in the bankruptcy of Italian company Paramatti

1980

Put in charge of Benetton's expansion into the US, eventually opening 800 stores

1989

Leaves fashion arm of the company to join Benetton's Formula One team, also-rans behind Williams, McLaren and Ferrari. Briatore hires Tom Walkinshaw as chief engineer

1991

Signs a young German driver who has made a strong impression in qualifying as a late replacement for the Jordan team. His name is Michael Schumacher

1992

Schumacher picks up 53 world championship points, more than the team earned in the previous season

1994

Schumacher wins his first Formula One drivers' championship with Benetton

1995

Schumacher retains his title and Benetton win their first constructors' championship

1997

A year after Schumacher leaves for Ferrari, Briatore is fired as managing director

2000

Renault buy the racing team from Benetton and bring back Briatore as team manager

2003

He replaces Jenson Button in Renault's line-up with (then) test driver Fernando Alonso

2004

Heidi Klum, one of many supermodels dated by Briatore, gives birth to his only child, Helene

2005

Alonso wins the F1 drivers' championship and Renault the constructors' championship

2006

Alonso and Renault complete back-to-back drivers' and constructors' championship wins

2007

Briatore becomes joint owner of QPR with fellow F1 magnate Bernie Ecclestone

Observer Sports Monthly