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Since taking over the club last September, in tandem with Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman Flavio Briatore has made a number of comments outlining the new owners' plans for QPR. With fan unhappiness at the recently-announced season ticket increase and the manner in which it presented to fans, thought it would be interesting to "revisit" what Briatore has said about their plans for QPR. Most of those statements can be read below. (The statements and quotes are in reverse chronological order, with the most recent coming first.) The season tickets controversy comes in the aftermath of the hyped-up presentation of a new crest, which is not universally adored, and the departure of QPR manager, Luigi De Canio and his replacement by Iain Dowie. It's the first serious expression of fan unappiness with developments, since Briatore, Ecclestone and Mittal took over the club, to wild QPR fan excitement as QPR became - in media terminology/hyperbole -"the richest club in the world"
May 2008 - BBC "Inside Sport" Interview " Inside Sport: Flavio Briatore interview
Inside Sport's Des Kelly meets Flavio Briatore to discover what plans the wealthy QPR co-owner has for the west London club." Inside Sport Interview
May 2008 - QPR Chairman Flavio Briatore Outlines His Plans for QPR-
QPR Chairman Briatore Speaks...
Marketing Week - F1 boss on how he will turn QPR into super-brand
"..... Queens Park Rangers FC is Briatore’s new baby. In September last year, he swooped – “an hour before bankruptcy was declared,” he claims – and bought the troubled west London club.
QPR was at a low ebb, languishing at the lower end of the Championship with scandals in the boardroom and a team brawl during a “friendly” match with the Chinese Olympic team. When potential star striker Ray Jones was killed in a car crash and the club faced going into administration, things looked terminal to the fans.
Together with close “we talk 20 times a day” friend, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, Briatore paid £1m for the club and agreed to clear £13m of its debts. Since then, the pair have been joined by Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man.
Billed as the world’s richest football club, QPR’s financial footing is now more than secure. Collectively, the trio are worth over £30bn, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, making Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich's fortune of £11.7bn look almost paltry.
“Yes, none of us was looking for a job,” Briatore smiles, adding that they are not looking for what he calls “main” money.
But behind the glamour, the unimaginable wealth and the procession of supermodel girlfriends, Briatore is a shrewd operator. Though QPR may seem like an unlikely rival to Arsenal, Manchester United or Chelsea as a “global brand” – its stated aim – Briatore is not prone to investing in unsuccessful ventures.
He took over the Benetton F1 team in 1989 and transformed it from also-rans into world champions within five years. Briatore says what he did at Benetton was “simple”, but it can only have helped that in 1991 he signed a promising young German driver called Michael Schumacher.
The goal is now to pull off a similar transformation at QPR. “In F1 there is a large team behind a product – the car. It is the same at QPR, the team, the football is only the product. In sport, business efficiency is everything,” he says.
Briatore explains: “If I’m going to invest in champagne, I’ll go to France, if I decide to invest in ham then I’ll go to Parma. If you’re going to be in football, you have to be in England. And football is treated like a business here.”
There appears to be no sentiment involved for any of the new owners, in contrast to the likes of Harrods boss Mohamed al Fayed at Fulham, among others. None were avid supporters of the club before the deal, but Ecclestone was linked to buying a number of clubs, including Chelsea before Abramovich beat him to the punch.
The strategy that lies behind QPR’s position in this new chapter is based on “past, present and future”. Drawing on the club’s heroes of old like Stan Bowles and Rodney Marsh, the new regime intends to emphasise the club’s heritage and position the club as a “London jewel”.
Much is made of QPR’s ground Loftus Road being the “closest club to central London” and the club’s essential “Londonness” will be vital when marketing the QPR brand overseas.
A change of ownership and subsequent “change in direction” of a football club is a concern for supporters. Briatore, while not exactly dismissive of die-hard QPR fans, is clear on his position. “The first thing to remember is that without us, there was no QPR. It’s as simple as that.”
He adds: “I don’t want everybody telling me what I need to be doing. People believe the club is owned by the fans but it’s only a few that put their money down. For the rest of the people, it’s easy to criticise [when] they maybe spend £20.”
The plan is for the Championship side to win promotion to the Premiership within three years. Briatore says QPR will develop its own young team that will take the club up and keep it up.
The team’s performance improved dramatically after Briatore installed his friend “Gigi” Di Canio as manager but Briatore believes it would have been a “disaster” if QPR had been promoted this season. “I don’t want to be in an elevator, going up and down,” he says. Di Canio departed “by mutual consent” last week. Everything about QPR is set to be spruced up. Loftus Road will be improved, perhaps with extra seating, while Briatore’s exclusive Mayfair eaterie, Cipriani, will provide catering for the QPR restaurant.
Yet can the club hope to succeed against the odds? Just this month Newcastle United boss and former England manager Kevin Keegan spoke of the vicious circle that drives English football – run almost exclusively by a cartel of the big four clubs, nobody else has either the money or the marketing power to compete. QPR certainly has the cash, and could – eventually – compete in terms of commerce and pulling power.
One of Briatore’s great strengths in F1 has been his ability to attract highly lucrative sponsorship deals. He says he already has agreements with “three of four international companies” for QPR. At the end of March, the club announced it had signed a five-year deal worth £20m, the biggest ever Championship deal of its kind, with Italian firm Lotto Sport Italia as kit manufacturer.
And while the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea seem to be chasing the Asia dream, through Mittal the connection with India will be very important for QPR’s expansion into new markets. Mittal’s son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, has been installed as vice-chairman and says the club is looking to develop its links with India.
While QPR fans will not see an Abramovich-style spending spree this summer, Briatore is less parsimonious in his personal life. In one corner of the room sits a glass-encased model of a very large yacht. Asked if he owns the real thing: “Not yet,” he twinkles. Marketing Week
Briatore Talking About QPR-SportHome Chi siamo - Direttore Responsabile: Giuliano De Risi « ”(AGI/ITALPRESS) - Roma,3 mar. - “......
English Web "Translation" vis Alta Vista's Babel Fish
Sport Home Who we are - Responsible Director: Giuliano De Risi "MOTION: GP QATAR, RED "GREAT SFIDA"BASKET WAITS FOR US ONE: NATIONAL, RECALCATI "I WANT PEOPLE MOTIVATED And DECIDED" "SOCCER: BRIATORE "AGO APPEAL TO TO SEE REOPENED CHAMPIONSHIP" (AGI/ITALPRESS) - Rome, 3 mar. -
"To the Queens Park Rangers we try to learn. When we have acquired the society the transfers were sluices. We have lost the first 10 games, we were to 6 points from the penultimate one. Hour we are qundicesimi, we have recovered on 12 squares and by now we are knows to you. This was our plan, now will be strengthened in order to go up in Premier League ". It has said Flavio Briatore, Co-owner of the Qpr and team manager of the Renault in Formula 1, to the microphones of "Politics in the Football" on Gr Parliament. "we are playing much good - Briatore continues - if we had held the average of the last games we would be in the play-off. De Canio e' a normal person and I have said all. In this world you see people that they earn figures outside from every rule. De normal Canio e' and ago much good. We have need of 22 players, there are many games, then accidents, want two players to us for every role here. Ours e' a difficult championship, much hard one. Tantissime they have left ". On the Italian championship, the day after the first one ko of the Inter, Briatore explains: "I have seen the contest of Naples in tv and creed that dispiace to the interisti tifosi but ago it appeal to to the world perche' reopens the championship. Naples has made the contest of the life, the Inter not. Creed that this does good soccer. They are tifoso juventino and must remember that the arrived Juve e' from the B series for which us puo' also to be to lose with the Fiorentina that has piu' the beautiful plan of Italy, to along sara' winning ". "If in the Juve not there were the old Juve would be from demotion. There e' Buffon, Of the Piero, there e' Trezeguet. The ` nuova' I badly see perche' yesterday creed to it that Buffon has adorned much good. A porter thus you da' 20 points. The old Juventus is playing, of the new not there e' a lot. Giraudo? It does not speak with me about the Juventus but creed that is one what that does not interest to it, a various argument. It is spoken about the Qpr, e' a our tifoso, but of the Juve not if of it it speaks ". Briatore and the salaries of the soccers player. "Entirety we will have to put a limit to the wages of the players, we do not ask moneies with the gun, we are to give them. And the goblets want a gap, useless to increase us to the games. Who piu' earns to us is the players, the societies must always increase the park bench. E' a sport much laborious one to make soccer but is rich persons much for which arrivals to a point that the rich soccers player much run a little less, we spend figures that do not have sense based on turn out to you. Collaboration with Luciano Moggi for the Qpr? Moggi alive in Italy, I do not have null against of he, but if a day returns to make the job that it made I do not have problems. We have 90% of English players to the Qpr, for which there e' politics on the young people. But if there were from collaborating with Moggi I would have zero problems ". Briatore and ennesima "the Cassanata". "E' thus, if it does not succeed to change, must to a sure point to decide what to make from large. Yesterday the gesture was free, the guilt seemed of the arbitrator but I would distinguish the two things ". (AGI/ITALPRESS)
Babel Fish QPR Report
Ealing Gazette/Yann Tear - We won't destroy things that make Rs special
THE NEW owners of QPR have pledged to safeguard the identity of the club - even though they want to transform it into a club of Premier League standing.
Fans will be eager for reassurances that the potentially exciting times ahead for their club and the understandable ambitions of the men who saved the club from debt, do not mean a gradual erosion of everything they value about life at Loftus Road.
That includes the club's name, location and even the famous blue and white hooped shirts - all aspects of the club which are non-negotiable in the eyes of even the most casual of supporters.
Both Flavio Briatore and Amit Bhatia - respectively chairman and vice-chairman of QPR Holdings - claim supporters had nothing to fear.
"The most important thing for us is that we maintain what is quintessentially QPR," said Bhatia on the day the club announced an unprecedented five-year kit sponsorship deal worth £20m with sportswear manufacturers Lotto Sport Italia.
"We want to keep the club's identity intact and the fans have nothing at all to be worried about. They should be excited like we are.
"I most definitely hope the Rangers of the future is one the fans would recognise."
Bhatia, the son-in-law of billionaire steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose almost limitless resources led to Rangers being dubbed 'the richest club in the world' added: "What attracted us to
QPR is everything about it's identity and I don't see any benefit in trying to change it. There's a history behind this club and why damage that?
"When the stadium becomes a concern, we will address it but it's really not a concern now. We love the area, I love the stadium.
"We don't want to move and if we have to move in the future, we'd want it to be in the vicinity." [25a0] Cont page 63
Briatore said: "We want to stay in this area. This is very important. For respect to the fans. We want to be 15 minutes from London. This is the big plus of QPR.
"We don't know where the club is going yet. We are just trying to go step by step. Our goal now is just to stay in the Championship. I'm sure next year we will try to improve.
"We want to consolidate the club and create a good base in the sports side and in the marketing and commercial side."
Briatore this week gave more insight into his vision for Rangers and why he opted for a club in a lower rather than top division.
"Everybody asks me 'Why did you buy QPR?' I say it's because you want to start from the bottom and create a new club," he said.
"This is much more more exciting. This is a good adventure, starting at the bottom to build up a good football club."
"QPR was a good deal," he added, saying he was a fan of English football because it was "not an excuse to fight" as it often is in his native Italy and was enjoyed by children and families.
"It's a club in the centre of London. The location of the stadium is the best location.
"QPR have a nice story behind them and it's a club with a lot of potential.
"We are a bunch of friends together who want to do something in football and we want to start from this kind of division."
Briatore refused to be drawn on type of player he wants at the club or have their eyes on and agreed with Bhatia's assessment that: "We're very happy with what we have now."
"Gigi has done a fantastic job in the last three months," the Italian said. "The club is alive. We play good football and the fans love it. We play some of the best football in this league and this is recognised by everybody."
Sport is complicated, with luck involved, Briatore said.
"Nothing is guaranteed, but we will try to do the best as possible.
"We will not throw away money. We are talking about QPR, we're not talking about Chelsea. It's completely wrong to compare the clubs. We want to do it our way.
"Whenever somebody arrives in a new business, people think this is the new blood to suck, but there is nothing to suck here."
Rangers' deal with Lotto looks like it may be followed by shirt deals and other sponsorship tie-ups. Kingfisher - the Indian lager brand - is one expected soon, although Briatore denies it for now.
The cash will help lay the foundations for promotion next season and may even be used to re-establish a youth academy.
The club lost its set-up a few years ago and it would cost at least £1m to set up the facilities and coaching staff for such a project. But talks are apparently in progress.
"The aim is to bring this club back to the heights of the past and even beyond that," said Lotto president Andrea Tomat.
"It's an important investment for our company, but we know the plans for the club are to go to the highest possible levels and I believe the strengths of the people involved will certainly provide that." Ealing Gazette
March 26, 2008 The Times/Kaveh Solhekol
QPR billionaires will not jump through hoops for agents in bid for success Flavio Briatore did not become a billionaire by throwing his money away and the co-owner of Queens Park Rangers has warned agents that he will not be taken for a ride as he tries to transform the fortunes of the Coca-Cola Championship club.
Speaking at the launch of QPR’s new £20 million, five-year kit deal with Lotto, the Italian manufacturer, Briatore, who is also the managing director of the Renault Formula One team, dismissed rumours that the West London side wanted to sign superstar players such as Luis Figo, the Inter Milan winger and former Portugal captain. “Figo is a fantasy,” Briatore said. “There are lots of rumours in English football - it is even worse than Formula One.”
Briatore bought QPR last November with Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, two of the richest men in the UK, and the billionaires want to reach the promised land of the Barclays Premier League without lining the pockets of agents.
“Everybody thinks that new people have come in and they can suck our blood, but we have no blood,” Briatore said. “There is nothing to suck here. There is no blood in my body. Just because the shareholders are wealthy, it does not mean that the club is wealthy.”
QPR were in the relegation zone when Briatore and Co arrived at Loftus Road, but they have climbed the table steadily since the appointment of Luigi De Canio and the Italian first-team coach will be given about £10 million to spend on new players in the summer. “We have wish list of who we want, but we won’t be discussing it in public. If I tell you who we want to buy, the price will become ten times bigger,” Briatore said. “We don’t want fantasy players, we need players who will work hard and players who share the same motivations as the shareholders of the club.” Despite being a friend of Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea, Briatore will not be following the Russian’s lead in the transfer market. Prudence is the watchword at Shepherds Bush. “It is completely wrong to compare QPR with Chelsea,” Briatore said. “Chelsea are Chelsea and QPR are QPR. We will not be throwing our money away.”
Briatore wants his club to be playing in the Champions League in five years and to do so the Italian has accepted that the club will need to move away from their home in West London. Several sites in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham are being considered. “At the moment we are facing a problem with the stadium, but we have to change things little by little,” Briatore said. “If you want to build a tower, you have to build it on strong foundations. You cannot build a tower on sand.”
The future of QPR appears to be a lot brighter than Briatore’s Formula One team. Renault have been off the pace in this season’s opening two grands prix and Fernando Alonso, the former world champion from Spain, said yesterday that he may leave the team and join Ferrari next season. “Sport is not easy, it is very complicated,” Briatore said. “It is about the people you put together, it is about luck. You need a lot ingredients to be successful. We will just try to do our best.” The Times
The Guardian/Mike McGrath - QPR sign £20m sponsorship deal
Queens Park Rangers have landed a £20m kit sponsorship deal with the Italian sportswear firm Lotto to add to their new wealth but Flavio Briatore insists the club will not be held to ransom despite their war chest. Briatore believes the five-year deal will help to build a foundation for success in the future although the co-owner is also wary of radical changes.
Should there be a need for a bigger stadium, Briatore wants the club to stay in west London. In the short term, the Championship club are looking for the right transfer targets rather than high-profile signings.
We are not going to throw away money at all," Briatore said. "We [will] try to put the club together in the right way and what we have done now is a demonstration of that. We are not the new blood of football. QPR is QPR, Chelsea are Chelsea - we will do it our way.
"If we say which players we want, the price is 10 times bigger. When somebody arrives in the business people say that it is new blood to suck. There is nothing to suck here. We don't have blood."
Briatore, who runs the Renault grand prix team, owns QPR with the formula one rights owner, Bernie Ecclestone, and the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal. Their investment has seen the club linked with a host of players. "We have a wish list," said Amit Bhatia, QPR Holdings' vice-chairman.
Ecclestone considered nearby Chelsea before Roman Abramovich took over but Briatore did not want to make comparisons between the clubs. Abramovich brought almost instant success to Stamford Bridge but Briatore says he is merely looking to build foundations.
"We want to consolidate the club and create a base," he said. "This year our goal is to stay in the Championship. We need to do it step by step. We want to build up a club. You want to start from the bottom and create a new club, this is exciting. It's a new adventure. It is a club in the middle of London, probably the best location in the city. The club has a story behind it and a lot of potential, as we've seen already." Guardian
FINANCIAL TIMES - Lotto Sport Italia deal makes QPR continental
By Roger Blitz, Leisure Industries Correspondent
Queen Park Rangers' unlikely connections with international wealth and glamour continued apace with the announcement that Lotto Sport Italia would become kit supplier of the mid-table Football League Championship team in a deal worth £20m ($40m).
The once high-flying west London side attracted attention in November when it was taken over by Flavio Briatore, owner of the Renault F1 team, and Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One Management's chief executive.
After clearing a £13m debt, they added to the club's new-found lustre by attracting investment from Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire steel magnate, and have now persuaded one of Italy's biggest sports clothing retailers to join the party.
Lotto Sport Italia will provide new kits and training gear and develop fashionable QPR-branded shoes and clothes. The value of the deal, over five years, is dependent on QPR gaining promotion to the Premier League.
Amit Bhatia, vice-charman and Mr Mittal's son-in-law, said the QPR board hoped this would be the first of several deals and that it would attract attention from other corporations.
"We are dedicated to try and make this team a success," Mr Bhatia said. "We have a really solid base of young players."
The vice-chairman sought to disabuse QPR supporters of the assumption that the club's high-profile and wealthy owners would throw money at the team in an attempt to catapult it back into the elite of English football.
"The reality is the opposite. The idea is to be very prudent, not to throw money at the club but to spend wisely," he said. "The shareholders are successful people and they became successful by spending wisely and prudently."
Mr Bhatia added that their aims were neither to lose money running the club nor to profit extensively from it.
"You have to have a nice balance," Mr Bhatia explained.
"Everybody involved loves their football and is a fan first. But do we think QPR has potential? Absolutely." Financial Times
The TELEGRAPH/Mike McGrath - Queens Park Rangers' £20 million deal
Queens Park Rangers have announced a £20 million deal with kit manufacturers Lotto Sport to add to their new wealth - but co-owner Flavio Briatore said the club would not be held to ransom in the transfer market.
Briatore said the five-year deal is part of building a foundation for success in the future, and added that, should there be a need for a bigger stadium, he wanted the club to stay in the same area of west London. In the short term, the club are looking for the right transfer targets rather than high-profile signings.
"We are not going to throw away money at all," he said. "We are trying to put the club together in the right way and what we have done now is a demonstration of that. We are not the new blood of football. QPR are QPR, Chelsea are Chelsea - we will do it our way."
Briatore owns QPR with Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone and steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal - with the new investment leading to the club being linked with a host of players.
"This year our goal is to stay in the Championship. You need to do it step by step. You want to start from the bottom and create a new club, this is exciting. It's a new adventure." Telegraph
This is London/Daily Mail - What a Lotto QPR have got as they cook up a tasty dish
Such is the showbiz buzz around Queens Park Rangers these days that the mere sight of co-owner Flavio Briatore jetting into London from the Malaysian Grand Prix can generate its own micro-climate of rumours.
He arrived in a blizzard, and the word was that the new owners were thinking of changing the club's name to West London Rangers, wanted to build a new stadium, design a new badge and abandon the traditional blue and white hoops.
Playboy: Briatore and vice-chairman Amit Bhatia
Briatore swept into Loftus Road looking every inch the international playboy: suntanned, luxuriantly coiffured, wearing blue-lensed spectacles and a cashmere scarf tucked inside his upturned collar.
He was here to announce a new £20million, five-year kit deal not with Versace but with Italian firm Lotto. There will not be a Roman chariot embroidered into the sleeve and, to the disappointment of sports photographers, it was not about to be super-modelled by Naomi Campbell.
Lotto insist the hoops will remain. In fact, to the relief of those Rangers supporters convinced this is all too good to be true and there simply has to be a catch, there were no terrifying rebranding schemes in the air.
'A new name?' laughed Briatore, shaking his head. 'Maybe we should call it Oxford,' he added, laughing again at his own joke, which no one else could work out.
Renault's F1 team leader Briatore and the sport's overlord Bernie Ecclestone completed their joint takeover of QPR in November, before quickly selling 20 per cent of the shares to Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man. Between them the trio could dwarf Roman Abramovich's estimated £500m investment in Chelsea without losing much sleep but, yesterday, Briatore was in no mood for fantasy.
'Do not be confused,' said the Italian. 'Although the shareholders are wealthy the club is in a completely different situation, we won't be throwing away money. It is completely wrong to compare QPR to Chelsea. We are doing the thing our way.
'We won't sit here and talk about the players we want to buy because we want to make sure the price is not 10 times bigger. When somebody arrives in a new business, everybody says: “Oh my God, this is the new guy, the new blood to suck”. There's nothing to suck here.'
This is unlikely to extinguish the excitement around Shepherds Bush. The new owners instantly wiped out £13m of debt and bought well in the January transfer window to help new manager Luigi De Canio haul the club up the Championship table.
'When we arrived QPR were not much,' said Briatore. 'We were starting from the beginning. Our first goal was to make sure we weren't relegated. When we took over the club that did not look so easy but the players and Gigi have done a fantastic job.
'The club is alive. QPR is safe. Without us there would be no QPR any more. This is the biggest difference between us being here and not being here. We are 50 per cent safe in mid-table and we are playing good football, some of the best in this league, and the fans love it.
'Everybody asks why we bought QPR. We are a bunch of friends together who want to do something in football and this is the right approach. We wanted to start from the bottom and create a new club. This way it is more exciting.'
The type of glamour-puss friends Briatore and Ecclestone keep will ensure that as many cameras are trained on the directors' box inside Loftus Road as they are on the pitch for the rest of the season.
Then all the attention will be on how Rangers, relegated from the Barclays Premier League in 1996, will behave in the summer transfer market as they equip themselves for an assault on promotion.
'Before I came here I didn't know QPR existed,' said Briatore, who thought he was buying a barbecue restaurant when the business proposition was first put to him by Ecclestone. 'But I was in Kuala Lumpur and three or four people stopped me to talk about QPR. Everybody is talking about QPR.' This is London
MIRROR/Darren Lewis - FLAV: NO RIP-OFF LIKE ROM
Fearless Flavio Briatore yesterday unveiled a new £20million sponsorship deal for QPR then insisted: "I won't get ripped off like Roman Abramovich".
The F1 team owner, who has taken over at Loftus Road with billionaires Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, refused to say which players the club are targeting to turn them into superpowers. But he said QPR will challenge for the Championship title next season and play in the Premier League the season after that.
"It's between us and our sporting director the players that we are thinking of," said Briatore. "Otherwise when I try to buy players the price becomes 10 times bigger.
"You only have to look at what has happened with Chelsea. We are working to ensure that if we go up we will stay up and not come straight back down."
Since Abramovich took over at Stamford Bridge in 2003, Chelsea have splashed out £17m on Damien Duff then were forced to take a £12m loss on him when he moved to Newcastle for £5m in 2006.
Other players on which they have had to take huge losses include £16.8m striker Hernan Crespo, who left for Inter Milan on a free transfer, and £15m forward Adrian Mutu, who was sacked after failing a drugs test.
But Briatore, who signed a five-year shirt deal with Lotto yesterday, said: "We wi ll not throw any money away. Even though we are wealthy there is no blood to suck. QPR is QPR, Chelsea is Chelsea.
"Next year we will try to improve our position, but right now we want to consolidate the club and provide a good base.
"I chose QPR because the location of the stadium is the best. Its also a club with a lot of potential.
"A few years ago Bernie tried to buy Chelsea and Abramovich paid more for it. So we want to create our own club. It's very exciting. Now we want to build up from the bottom." MirrorQPR Report
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Briatore Reiterates No Big QPR Spending Plans...Talks About QPR's Future Plans-
AP - Briatore taking things slowly at QPR even after clinching lucrative sponsorship deal-Fans of English club Queens Park Rangers are likely to be disappointed if they are expecting Flavio Briatore to splash big money on players to fund a return to the Premier League.
The Renault Formula One team boss took over the struggling League Championship side in November along with F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, and announced on Tuesday that the club had negotiated its biggest ever sponsorship deal.
But the 20 million pounds (US$40 million; ?26 million) that Italian sporting goods manufacturer Lotto will pay the club over five years could represent much of the on-field investment for now.
In contrast to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has spent hundred of millions of pounds on Chelsea in the past five years, Briatore says he plans a much more sustainable future for his west London club.
"We will not throw away money at all,'' Briatore said. "Don't be confused. The club is still the club. We'll try to put the club together in the right way. We're talking about QPR. It's completely wrong to compare QPR with Chelsea. We want to do it our way.
"We want to build up a club. We want to start from the bottom and create a new club. It is much more exciting.''
QPR, which has never been champion of England, has struggled since relegation from the Premier League in 1996, at one point dropping into the third tier for three seasons, and also owed tax to Britain's Inland Revenue.
It was in serious financial trouble when the F1 pair arrived, languishing at the foot of the second tier, but a change of coach and a batch of new players in January has helped lift the club into mid table.
Although the club is just seven points off the promotion playoffs, Briatore insists he is happy to take things slowly and stay in the League Championship for another season.
"When we arrived, QPR was bottom of the table, meaning just this year our goal is staying in the Championship,'' Briatore said. "It is step by step. There will be no miracles. We want to consolidate the club.
"We don't live in fantasy, we deal with reality.''
The reality is that, if QPR wants to compete with more illustrious London clubs such as Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and West Ham in the Premier League like Briatore hopes it will, a move from the 19,148-seat Loftus Road stadium to a bigger arena could be necessary.
Even so, Briatore promised to stay near to QPR's current home in the Shepherd's Bush region of London.
"It's a club in the center of London, maybe the best location of any stadium in London,'' Briatore said. "It is better for the fans that we want to stay in this area. We want to be 15 minutes from London. This is the big plus of QPR.''
And fans have already seen that Briatore's plans for a stable, successful club doesn't mean some money won't be there when coach Luigi Di Canio wants it.
With the family of the richest man in Britain, steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, owning a 20-percent stake in the club and represented on the board by his son-in-law Amit Bhatia, Di Canio acquired eight players in the January transfer window.
"In the January window, there was a lot of action, but what we have now is a base that we're very proud of,'' Bhatia said. "The idea is that we're very happy with what we have now. There are other things potentially, but nothing worth discussing now.''
And Briatore is already seeing the boost his presence has given the team.
"When I go around now, everyone is from QPR,'' Briatore said. "Before, I didn't know QPR existed. I was in Karampur (Pakistan) three days ago, and everybody there asks me about QPR.'' AP
REUTERS - BRIATORE
Former champions Renault can still win grands prix this year despite a difficult start to the Formula One season, team boss Flavio Briatore said on Tuesday.
"I think so, yes, in Barcelona we have the new package and absolutely yes (we can win)," he told Reuters.
Briatore was speaking after announcing a new 20 million pounds ($39.85 million) five-year sponsorship deal with Italian clothing company Lotto for his English Championship (second division) soccer club Queens Park Rangers.....
...Briatore would not be drawn on whether he thought QPR would be in the Premier League before Renault were champions again.
"It's difficult to say because nobody expected Renault to win the championships in 2005 and 2006. I don't know, let's see," he said.....
The team boss is a co-owner of QPR with Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone and Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal.
"Bernie is an incredible asset for QPR and we have fun as well," Briatore said of their partnership.
"In life you need to have fun, but you have fun only if you are successful. I think there is a lot of synergy because we want to be competitive and be the best and this is the same in football as well as Formula One Reuters
Sporting Life/James Pearson - Briatore plays down spending spree
R's supremo says summer plans have not changed
QPR co-owner Flavio Briatore has stated the club's impressive new sponsorship deal will not mean a summer spending spree for Luigi Di Canio.
The West Londoners have struck a five-year sponsorship deal with Lotto Italia that could be worth up to £20million should they win promotion to the Premier League.
Briatore has confirmed QPR will strengthen come the end of the season, although he has hinted it might not be the wholesale changes the media are predicting for the Loftus Road outfit.
"I don't see the sponsorship deal changing our programme," he told Sky Sports News. "We've put a programme together to strengthen the squad, that's independent of the sponsorship.
"Luigi's done a very good job with the players. He's great.
Good job
"I remember when we took over the window was closed. In January we brought so many players together. To amalgamate everybody was not so easy and Luigi's done a good job.
"But credit to the players as well. They've responded as well. Of course we need to improve, but at least we have plenty of time to do that."
Meanwhile, Briatore has put to bed long-standing rumours the club could secure the services of Portuguese legend Luis Figo in the summer.
"Forget it. It's a lot of fantasy. He's good, but there have been a lot of rumours," he concluded. Sky Sports QPR Report
The Guardian - Donald McRae - Tuesday March 11, 2008
Flavio Briatore may just be the smartest man in a business crammed with seriously bright operators and so, on the brink of a new formula one season, it is always worth taking a step back to watch him at work. As the leader of Renault and the personal manager of a disconsolate Fernando Alonso, the deposed world champion, Briatore has brought a struggling team and his favourite driver back together again. And while Alonso re-adjusts to Renault, with whom he won two world championships before his brief and unhappy defection to McLaren, Briatore shrewdly focuses attention on the sport's current acrimony and subterfuge....
The 57-year-old can escape such trials by lingering over his fiancee, Elisabetta Gregoraci, 28, the strutting Wonderbra woman, who represents his latest supermodel conquest after Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson, Eva Herzigova and Heidi Klum. In slightly less romantic fashion Briatore has also combined with two billionaires in Bernie Eccelestone and Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth-richest man, to buy Queens Park Rangers.
"I never expected this to happen. Each morning I only expect to wake up and shave. The rest I don't know because life is so fragile. Life, for me, is the moment. That's why I don't buy green bananas - who knows what will happen tomorrow? But now that I am with QPR it is amazing. We always have between 15,000 and 18,000 to see QPR - whether they play Colchester or Scunthope. Against Chelsea there were 41,000. That's why English football is fantastic. In Italy if Milan play Lecce you have 2,000 people."
Briatore smiles when asked how he and his billionaire chums and girlfriends have coped with the lack of glamour around the lower reaches of the Championship. "Our stadium is not the best so I'm not shocked. I go to Stoke and all over England and it is very civilised. Hospitality is very nice. We are the same with our fans - very clear and transparent. We aim to be in the Premier League in two more seasons but we will do it efficiently."
So there is little hope for gleeful QPR fans expecting a £40m injection in the summer? "No way. That number is completely wrong. Let's see at the end of the season but with this squad we have super players with a super attitude. You need a certain type of player to get out of the Championship and I think we have them. But, of course, Bernie, Lakshmi and me are as bad as each other when we lose. We want to win with QPR."
Briatore sounds typically determined but, for the moment, he is more consumed by this weekend's opening grand prix in Melbourne than the visit of Blackpool to Loftus Road. "The best two sports in the world are football and formula one and to be involved in both is very exciting. But you must understand one thing - my DNA is formula one. It is not football. Formula one comes first for me." Guardian
QPR Report
Sunday, March 02, 2008 Flavio Briatore and QPR Profiled
-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.
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....
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
QPR Report
Saturday, March 01, 2008 - Behind the scenes at QPR with Flavio Briatore-
Observer: "Behind the scenes at QPR with Flavio Briatore (8 pictures) -
Flavio Briatore is the new Messiah at QPR. OSM spent a typical matchday with the Hoops' owner, venturing behind the scenes to witness his impromptu team-talk, the authentic Loftus Road cuisine and the post-victory love-in with the players. [Photos by Chris Floyd. [Especially this photo and this photo.]
Photo 1 - Formula one team owner, fashion entrepreneur and supermodel magnet, Flavio Briatore takes on his latest incarnation as the Messiah of QPR.
Photo 2 - At home in the QPR directors' box
Photo 3 - Justification, if ever it was needed, that Briatore was right to consider setting up a London restaurant.
Photo 4- QPR fans are hoping that Flavio's touch of glamour will reflect on the field as well as off it.
Photo 5 - Flavio wonders whether his complex tactical team talk ("We pay you. You win") has worked.
Photo 6 - It has. Flavio celebrates as The Hoops score against Bristol City.
Photo 7 - Briatore welcomes the 3-0 win with a salute for the players.
Photo 8 - Briatore offers some words of congratulations and to Mikele Leigertwood while Damion Stewart goes for brownie points by tucking into a plate of pappardelle.
Observer
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Flavior Briatore Speaks About QPR (and Other Things) "Why He Loves Loftus Road"-
The Times/Kaveh Sokhekol - February 27, 2008
Fast cars, models and . . . QPR. 'In life, you need to be happy'
The Italian with the playboy image on why he loves Loftus Road
Flavio Briatore wants to get married and settle down one day, but for the time being the 57-year-old is happy running a Formula One team, owning a football club and dating a supermodel. Growing up in northern Italy in the 1950s and 1960s, Briatore never dreamt about owning nightclubs and restaurants and rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. “I never wanted to be anything,” he said in his Knightsbridge office, overlooking Harrods. “I just wanted to be happy.”
A chance meeting in the late 1970s with Luciano Benetton, the founder of the Italian clothing company, changed his life and catapulted him into a world of fast cars and big business. This year he is planning to open a branch of his Billionaire nightclub chain in Mayfair and a Billionaire boutique is also about to open on Sloane Street in Central London. But when he gets out of bed at 6am every day, he has more than clothes and nightclubs on his mind. There is the Formula One team he has to run and the football club he has bought with Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, two of the richest men in the UK.
“I wake up very early,” Briatore said. “I wake up when everyone else is going to bed and I start work straight away - why waste two hours reading newspapers? Then I work all day and I never go out during the week. In London, maybe I go out once a month, but only to places I own. I never go to someone else's restaurant or bar.”
February is a busy month for Briatore. The Formula One season is about to start and he is determined to get things right at his Renault team. Last season was a write-off and he winced when talking about finishing a distant third behind Ferrari and BMW Sauber in the constructors' championship (after McLaren's disqualification) thanks to an uncompetitive car that did not get to grips with the Bridgestone tyres that all teams had to use.
According to Briatore, the managing director, this year will be different because Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard who won two world drivers' titles with the team in 2005 and 2006, is back after a miserable year at McLaren and the new R28 car is a vast improvement on last year's model.
“Renault is back and we are confident that we will be protagonists this year and fighting for places on the podium,” Briatore said. “For me, Fernando is the best. He gets bad publicity in England because last year he was fighting with Lewis Hamilton, but it is always like this in England.
“There will be no problems between Fernando and Lewis this season because they are very intelligent. The problem between them was not personal animosity, it was competition and the fact Fernando felt McLaren were not treating him the same as Hamilton. For Fernando it was a team problem not a Hamilton problem.”
The feud between Hamilton and Alonso may have been bad for McLaren, but it has not done Formula One any harm. Propelled by Ecclestone's relentless drive for new opportunities, races are springing up in countries such as Singapore, China, Bahrain and Turkey, and there is talk of an Indian Grand Prix.
“What Bernie has done is sensational,” Briatore said. “When he was talking about going to China ten years ago everyone was laughing, but Bernie has a vision and what he has done to develop Formula One in countries with economic potential is amazing. Next we have to look for opportunities in India, Korea and Russia.”
Briatore made his name in Formula One at Benetton, where he became the manager in 1990 and led the team to two drivers' world titles, with Michael Schumacher at the wheel. Some people get into Formula One because they love cars; Briatore loves the spectacle, but not the cars. “I'm not excited about cars. It takes me 15 minutes to get in and out of a Ferrari or a Porsche,” he said - and in London he is driven around by his chauffeur in an unremarkable Nissan.
Like most Londoners, though, one of his pet hates is Ken Livingstone's dreaded congestion charge, along with the traffic, traffic wardens and pollution. “The charge is very expensive,” Briatore said. “It's a little bit too much. Some people need their cars every day. I don't drive myself because of this. I have a driver. Everyone wants to reduce pollution, but you also have to improve public transport and make sure that the train is on time.”
The way Briatore sees it, London could do with someone who listens to people and then makes decisions, in the same way that he says he does at Renault and Queens Park Rangers, the Coca-Cola Championship club he bought last year with Ecclestone and Mittal. Briatore dismissed the rumour that he thought someone was trying to sell him a restaurant when he took a phone call from an associate who wanted to see if he was interested in buying QPR, but he accepts that the deal has raised eyebrows.
Why buy a struggling Championship club when the gang of three could have bought any club they wanted and be rubbing shoulders with Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, and the other big hitters in the Barclays Premier League? “The centre of football is England,” Briatore said. “If you want to do Formula One you need to be in England. If you want to make champagne you go to France. If you want to make ham you go to Modena. Location is important and at the moment the best football is in England.
“Anyway, I met Mr Abramovich when we played Chelsea in the FA Cup and I have a lot of respect for him. I have known him for a long time and we were joking about why anyone would want to run a Formula One team and a football club.”
But why QPR? Why not Fulham or Reading or any other top-flight club rumoured to be for sale? “We prefer something that is more of a challenge,” he said. “In the last 20 years I speak to Bernie at least five or six times a day. We are in the same business, we travel together, he is my best friend. Whatever I do, Bernie is always part of it. We have a very good understanding and Lakshmi Mittal is also a very great person. He's a very smart businessman. It is great to have these kind of partners, but more importantly it's very important to have these kind of friends. Last year I used to go to ski every weekend, now I stay in London because we all go to watch QPR together with our friends.”
There is a picture of some of those friends at Loftus Road - Elisabetta Gregoracci, the Italian model from the Wonderbra advertisements, to whom Briatore is reportedly engaged, Naomi Campbell and other assorted models and “It” girls - on the wall of Briatore's office next to the Formula One trophies and two old black and white photographs of the 1908 QPR team.
So, is that happy-go-lucky Italian boy, who grew up without a care in the world, happy with his Formula One team, his football club and all those supermodels? “First of all, QPR doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the fans and the shareholders,” he said. “In life you need to be happy with yourself and the job you are doing. Just because you are in F1 is not going to make you happy. Whatever you are doing, if you give 100 per cent then you will be happy. If you are a butler, or a waiter, you have to work hard to have success and then one day you might make it to F1 or have a football team.
“It is important as well that you meet the right girl in your life and fall in love. Maybe for me it has been a little bit more difficult, but you never know.”
Life in the fast lane
Flavio Briatore is the managing director of the Renault Formula One team and the co-owner of Queens Park Rangers. The 57-year-old also owns the Cipriani restaurant in Central London, a pharmaceutical company and holiday resorts in Italy and Kenya, as well as the Billionaire nightclub in Sardinia and Billionaire Couture.
He has been romantically linked with supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum and, according to Italian newspapers, he is engaged to Elisabetta Gregoracci, the 27-year-old Wonderbra model.
April 12, 1950 Born in Verzuolo, Italy
1968 Leaves school with a diploma in land surveying and works as a ski instructor and restaurant manager before moving to Milan to work at the Italian stock exchange
1979 Appointed director of Benetton’s operations in the United States.
1990 Appointed manager of Benetton F1.
1995 Michael Schumacher wins his second world drivers’ title and Benetton win constructors’ title
1997 Briatore leaves Benetton
1999 Briatore becomes Fernando Alonso’s manager
2000 Briatore becomes managing director of Renault’s Formula One team.
2006-7 Alonso wins world drivers’ championship. Renault win constructors’ title.
2007 Briatore buys QPR with Bernie Ecclestone.
Two cars, one passion
Flavio Briatore is the managing director of the Renault Formula One team, but he is not a fan of fast cars. He is driven around London by his chauffeur in a Nissan and his favourite car is a blue Fiat Cinquecento he bought in 1968...." The Times
Also May 21 2006 Times "The Big Interview" with Briatore
QPR Report
Sunday, February 24, 2008 - Briatore and Ecclestone on QPR-
Telegraph/Derick Allsop - QPR rev up for tilt at the big boys
Flavio Briatore had that countenance of any football fan when his team run out of ideas and almost out of luck. But then, as he says, it has to be a step at a time and at least this was another point. Behind him, in the Queens Park Rangers directors' box, Bernie Ecclestone muttered: "Told you it would be 1-1."
Maybe he was wishing they had bought Chelsea, after all. We'll get back to that. For better or worse,
Briatore and Ecclestone, two luminaries of the Formula One world, have committed themselves and some of their fortunes to the mission of turning Rangers into a force in the Premier League.
They have the track record and Rangers have a pedigree of sorts. Some of the 15,383 who saw them hold on for a draw against Sheffield United will recall a time when this was a cult club: winners of the League Cup as a Third Division team, runners-up in the old First Division. Their style, bordering on arrogance, was epitomised by those Loftus Road icons, Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles.
There was little evidence of swagger or even hope when Briatore and his chums took over Rangers in September. "Flavio rescued them, make no mistake," Ecclestone said. The pair pledged to pay off £3 million debts and invest in the ailing
Championship team, now managed by Italian Luigi de Canio. "We [Italy] have given England and Ireland their managers but this is just a coincidence," said de Canio's compatriot, Briatore, over pre-match lunch.
Briatore, who led Benetton and their successors, Renault, to Formula One supremacy, and Ecclestone, responsible for transforming haphazard Grand Prix racing into the finely-tuned extravagance it is today recruited three partners, including steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose wealth puts even Bernie in the shade.
But despite the resources of the world's fifth richest man, Briatore insists they won't aimlessly throw money at their football project.
"We didn't waste money at Benetton or Renault and we won't here," Briatore said. "We have a three-year plan to take the club to the Premier League, improve the stadium and facilities, but the focus is the sport."
Briatore, a Juventus fan from boyhood, now has another club dear to this heart, although he admits he thought QPR was a restaurant. "I'd never heard of QPR," he said. "But now I am glad we don't have a restaurant! My job is Formula One. Here we have people in position to run the club properly. Football is an emotional sport and when you are involved, it matters. I get as nervous as any supporter. I don't know what will happen today."
Ecclestone interjected: "I do. We'll win 4-0. I've had a word with the referee." Bernie is renowned for his impish sense of humour as well as his power. He was just joking…wasn't he? He goes on: "For me this is a nice diversion. Trouble is, wherever I go people want to talk about Formula One. At least I don't have to worry about every little detail and nurse-maiding boring VIPs as I do at a race. The thing about football is that it can be uncertain until the last minute of injury time. You don't get that so much in Formula One."
So what is this about Chelsea? "We would have bought them if Roman Abramovich hadn't done," he said. "It would have cost us about £140 million. We'd have done it, but then Abramovich came in."
Briatore said: "I like taking a small club and making it a big club, so I'm happy we're here." Ecclestone came back: "I'd like Chelsea!" Rangers are light years from Chelsea's status but De Canio brought in 10 players during January and they have edged away from danger.
Just as Ecclestone and Briatore head for the directors' box, Birmingham score a late equaliser against Arsenal. "See what I mean," Bernie said.
Briatore studied the team sheet and pointed to No 36, Angelo Balanta. "He is only 16, one of the most talented players we have."
His eye is caught also by United's No 6, James Beattie. "They paid £5 million for him - we bought all 11 players for that." Briatore was soon enthusing about his goalkeeper, Lee Camp. "Bravo, bravo." Both men were up on their feet when Balanta scored after 18 minutes. "It's the kid, it's the kid," Briatore yelled.
Rangers held their lead at the break and Bernie and Flavio retreated to the chairman's suite to study the half-time scores.
United, managed for the first time in a league match by Kevin Blackwell, resumed with greater purpose and Fitz Hall, the Rangers defender, was summoned to work overtime.
Briatore twinged in anxiety and Ecclestone popped out to take a call and was probably grateful for the relief.
He returned to see United claim an inevitable equaliser though the scorer was less predictable. For once Hall was unable to clear decisively and United's centre-half and captain, Chris Morgan, drilled in the equaliser. As Briatore and Ecclestone were aware, it could have been worse. Telegraph
QPR Report
Monday, February 11, 2008 QPR's Financial Situation Under its New Owners: Bernie Ecclestone's Perspective-
The Times/Alex Wade - February 11, 2008
QPR fans give thanks a billion times over
Throw money at Loftus Road? That’s rich, says Bernie Ecclestone (worth £2.24bn)
Bernie Ecclestone does not mince his words. “One thing’s for sure,” he says. “If we owe anything, we pay it back.”
Ecclestone, one of the wealthiest men in sport with an estimated fortune of £2.24 billion, was not referring to his family policy on monthly credit card repayments. The Formula One impresario was alluding to the debts he inherited when, along with Flavio Briatore, another of motor racing’s more colourful characters, he took over Queens Park Rangers.
Their arrival was greeted with rapture by long-suffering fans who in recent years have seen the club teeter from one calamity to another. The subsequent arrival of an even wealthier investor – Lakshmi Mittal, reputedly the world’s fifth-richest man – consolidated a new nickname for the club. With Mittal having bought 20 per cent of Briatore’s shareholding, fans were chanting “1-0 to the billionaires” when their team opened the scoring in a Coca-Cola Championship match against Barnsley last month.
But for all the excitement – even Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, has been seen in the directors’ box – QPR’s recent history is fraught. Since relegation from the top division in 1996, the club have gone into administration and been dogged by a succession of controversies. There have been off-field tragedies involving young players, the infamous “Great Brawl of China” – when a match against the China Olympic team descended into violence – and a remarkable court case in 2006 when seven men were acquitted of charges of conspiracy to blackmail, false imprisonment and handgun possession after Gianni Pala-dini, the chairman, alleged that a gun had been held to his head before a home match against Sheffield United.
But if high noon at Loftus Road seemed, at times, in danger of becoming a weekly event, QPR emerged from administration in 2002 thanks to a £10 million loan from the ABC Corporation. The benevolence of the Panama-registered company came at a price – a cool £1 million in annual interest – and, until the Formula One duo turned up, seemed set to dog any attempt to escape the lower reaches of the second tier.
Yet even as Ecclestone and Co took the reins there were murmurs of disquiet. One newspaper made much of the fact that, some two months into the new regime, the ABC loan had yet to be discharged. Ecclestone is happy to set the record straight.
“We will pay the debt when we can – at the end of June this year,” he says. “That’s when the loan matures, so that’s when we can pay it back.” Likewise, debts to Antonio Caliendo, a former director and major shareholder, reportedly owed £2 million after the takeover. “We’re finalising the balance sheet with Mr Caliendo in order that we can clarify what is owed to him,” Ecclestone says. “When this is completed he will be paid immediately.”
The settling of such obligations will be good news for QPR fans; so, too, Ecclestone’s sense of the club and their future, despite what appeared to be some rather heretical confessions. He cheerfully admits that he was “never all that interested in the domestic game” and that, if anything, QPR’s sworn rivals, Chelsea, were his team, thanks to watching matches at Stamford Bridge with Roman Abramovich.
Moreover, Ecclestone says that QPR “wasn’t on my radar” and that he initially thought that they were not even a football team. “Flavio had been telling me he was looking at buying a restaurant, so when he called me one day to talk about QPR, that’s what I thought he was talking about,” Ecclestone says. Since getting involved, however, he has been delighted by the fans’ response. “They’ve been great,” he says. “They’re incredibly loyal and passionate, a really good bunch of supporters.”
The new owners see this season as one for consolidation, with a push for promotion in 2009. The idea of moving to a new stadium is not on the agenda, although Ecclestone agrees that Loftus Road, with a capacity of fewer than 19,000, is on the small side. “But we can’t move the place so we’re looking at ways to upgrade and refurbish it,” he says. “We need to work out how we can get the maximum use out of the ground.” Money has been spent, with Akos Buzsaky, the Hungary midfield player, Matthew Connolly, the defender signed from Arsenal, Hogan Ephraim, the former West Ham United winger, and Rowan Vine, the striker recruited from Birmingham City, among several players to commit their futures to the club. Luigi De Canio, the Italian manager, has overseen a steady climb towards mid-table safety.
Ecclestone is proud to have “saved the club from going out of business” but adds cautionary words for those who think a bottomless pit of money is available. “QPR isn’t a wealthy club. It’s a club that’s owned by some wealthy people,” he says. “No one is going to be lashing out lots of money. Things need to be done correctly and that’s what we’re going to do.”
After the club’s helter-skelter existence of recent years, a strong dose of pragmatism mixed with a healthy bank balance may be what the doctor ordered. The Times
QPR Report
QPR Plot to Rule The World -
Daily Mail - QPR supremo Flavio: Within four years we will challenge Milan in Europe
Flavio Briatore today promised to take Queens Park Rangers from the Championship into the Champions League within four years. The club's multi-millionaire owner also revealed he had been part of Bernie Ecclestone's bid to buy Chelsea, only for them to lose out to Roman Abramovich.
Rangers are 20th in the table and just three points off the relegation zone but Briatore believes the club can achieve his dream thanks to their new-found financial muscle-power.
Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, are also on the board and
Briatore insisted: "Within four years we will challenge Milan in Europe. Our programme is to reach the Premier League within three years.
"I want to be in Europe within four years. It would be great to challenge Milan. Briatore against [Adrian] Galliani [Milan president].
"I love football. But buying a football club is not what the doctor ordered so you need to enjoy yourself.
"That's why I got Bernie Ecclestone involved emotionally. I don't think he even knew QPR existed.
"To be honest, Bernie and I tried to buy Chelsea three months before Abramovich.
"But Roman put in an offer that was far more interesting than ours."
Briatore joked about how, in London, billionaire Abramovich was considered "poorer".
"For sure,"he told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. "Ecclestone and I have 70 per cent of the shares but one of my good friends, Lakshmi Mittal, has 20 per cent and he has a fortune estimated at around 60billion euros (£42bn)." Daily Mail
Briatore's Interview - Briatore's interview (in Italian) with Corriere Della Sera
QPR Report
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 - Briatore's QPR Spending Plans-
TEAMTALK
Briatore rules out spending spree
Flavio Briatore insists he and QPR's board of billionaires will not be tempted into a Roman Abramovich-style spending spree at Loftus Road.
Rangers have been dubbed 'the Chelsea of the Championship' after Briatore, co-owner Bernie Ecclestone and the Mittal family invested heavily in the west Londoners.
Boss Luigi De Canio has already spent around £5million on eight players this month, but the Renault Formula 1 chief is determined to turn Rangers into a successful business as well as a successful team, and not just a rich man's plaything.
"This is serious project in business and in sport, we want to become a great club in England and Europe," the Italian told Sky Sports News.
"QPR is one of the richest clubs in the world but I promise we will not be spending money. We will never do something crazy.
"We are not interested in top players. We want to do it our way. Shevchenko and Ronaldinho are cheaper to watch on TV than to have in your team." Teamtalk QPR Report
Thursday, January 10, 2008
QPR's Owners - "QPR Tycoons Hesitate on Spending Spree"-
Telegraph - QPR tycoons hesitate on spending spree
For a club just two hours from going bust, the transformation in the financial fortunes of Queens Park Rangers is one of the most amazing stories seen in English football since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003.
But for those QPR fans hoping that new investor Lakshmi Mittal has joined forces with Formula One tycoons Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore to bankroll an Abramovich-style spending spree at Loftus Road, there is likely to be disappointment.
Despite being worth around £19.25 billion, Britain's richest resident has spent only £200,000 on acquiring his 20 per cent stake in the club from flamboyant Team Renault boss Briatore. He has also pledged £1 million to help cover debts and buy new players. To put that figure into context, Mittal spent £30 million on his daughter Vanisha's lavish 2004 wedding in Paris.
All of which begs the question why the Indian steel magnate, an entrepreneur with more than enough money to buy every club in the Premier League and still have change, chose to spend a relatively tiny sum to buy into QPR, a club languishing at the wrong end of the Championship. Although Mittal has access to an executive box at Chelsea and went to the 2006 World Cup final between France and Italy, he is not a big fan of the game.
A clue to the reason for his interest may be found in the involvement of his son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, himself a wealthy investment banker from a rich Delhi family. Bhatia is to take up a place on the QPR board and is said to be the one with a keen enthusiasm for football.
Bhatia was also the driving force behind the foundation of the Mittal Champions Trust, a £4.5 million funding programme set up to boost India's Olympic team in time for the London 2012 Games.
Vinod Mehta, editor of Indian magazine Outlook, said: "Although he is very rich, Lakshmi Mitall is a very simple man. He is not a man of extravagant taste. He is not star-struck, so buying into this is not to get publicity or to elevate his status. I suspect this is just for the benefit of his son-in-law."
Ecclestone explains Mittal's involvement in more simple terms. "I told him he should come on board and he took my advice," he said last month. The two became close after Ecclestone sold his house in Kensington Palace Gardens to Mittal for £70 million in 2003.
Mittal is understood to be happy to remain a silent investor in the project, leaving Briatore and Ecclestone to drive the push for the Premier League. "It would be wrong to give your readers the impression that Mittal is about to become another Abramovich," said one source.
But even if Mittal decides not to dent his considerable fortune, these are still heady times for long-suffering QPR supporters. Briatore, worth £110 million, and Ecclestone, worth £2.25 billion, have pledged to turn the club into a Premier League force within the next three years.
The pair completed their £14 million takeover in November, spending £690,000 to acquire their 69 per cent majority stake in the club. Ecclestone spent £150,000 on his 15 per cent, while Briatore, through his British Virgin Islands registered company, Sarita Capital, bought 54 per cent for £540,000. He has since sold on 20 per cent of his stake to Mittal.
Another 31 per cent of smaller shareholders turned down the Briatore and Ecclestone offer of 1p a share, choosing to hold on to their stake, perhaps sensing even greater profits in the future. Briatore and Ecclestone have also pledged another £5 million in convertible loan facilities to help buy players and have covered £13 million of debt, taking their total commitment to nearer £20 million.
But so far they have made no attempt to pay off a £10 million loan to the ABC Corporation which carries a punitive £1 million annual interest charge - a massive burden on a team with an annual turnover of £10 million-£15 million a year. Another £2 million is owed to former director and major shareholder Antonio Caliendo who waived £4.5 million of loans he was owed when he sold out to Briatore and Ecclestone.
Although the former football agent Gianni Paladini has been retained as chairman of the football club board for the time being, the business is now being overseen by the QPR Holdings chairman Alejandro Agag. Married to the daughter of Spain's former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, he has close links to the F1 business and is one of the most powerful men in his country.
Despite talk of a property plan which would see the new owners sell Loftus Road for redevelopment and move to a new ground - perhaps on a BBC-owned site at White City - he has assured fans they have no immediate plans.
He maintains the strategy is to build the club up slowly ahead of funding a major push for the Premier League next season. They have also vowed to refurbish the existing home and use their F1 experience to increase sponsorship revenues. A new chief executive is expected in the next few weeks.
The owners have wasted no time in matching their words with action in the transfer market, signing five players since the window opened 10 days ago, including the £800,000 capture of Hogan Ephraim from West Ham and the £350,000 signing of Preston's Patrick Agyemang. More signings are said to be imminent.
The question now is whether Mittal, Ecclestone and Briatore are prepared to up their investment to put the club on the same level as their Russian-owned neighbours.
Telegraph QPR Report
Saturday, January 05, 2008
The New Super Wealthy QPR - Various Articles Look at QPR Today, Owners and Manager De Canio and Look Back at QPR's Recent Troubled Past-
Guardian/Dominic Fifield - Chelsea v QPR, FA Cup third round
Seconds out for the world's richest derby
QPR meet Chelsea with a wealth and ambition that masks three years of hell
Stamford Bridge hosts the richest club in English football this afternoon, a club whose fans plan to brandish £20 notes and gloat at their relatively impoverished opposition. The club is not Chelsea. Queens Park Rangers, from the wrong end of the Championship, travel the short distance across town to resume a local rivalry that has simmered without engagement for 12 years. These two teams have spent most of that time moving in opposite directions, yet many among the swaths sporting blue and white hoops in the away end will hope for not just an FA Cup giant-killing but perhaps a glimpse of the shape of things to come.
West London is experiencing a second footballing revolution. Roman Abramovich may have shifted the landscape of the Premier League by pouring millions into Chelsea, establishing glamorous underachievers as a real force among the elite, but the wealth boasted by the QPR owners sitting in the directors' box dwarfs the Russian's considerable fortune. Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, the formula one magnates who purchased a club struggling at the foot of the second tier in September for £1m and guaranteed debts of £13m, last month sold a 20% stake in Rangers to Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man.
The Indian steel magnate is worth an estimated £19bn. Two years before Abramovich splashed £30m on Andriy Shevchenko Mittal lavished the same amount on his daughter Vanisha's wedding. Some £4m was spent on flowers.
The numbers, presumably like the table decorations, are staggering when Ecclestone's £2.5bn worth is added to Mittal's and compared with Abramovich's £10.8bn-odd. Briatore is valued at a mere £110m and recently admitted he had been seeking to buy a "high end pizzeria or maybe a churrascaria" when he stumbled upon QPR, thinking initially it was a barbecue restaurant. Yet the mind-boggling story slips snugly into the recent history of this club.
Rangers used to be as unassuming as Chelsea were flash. In the years since Simon Barker equalised John Spencer's goal to earn Ray Wilkins' side a point on their last visit to Stamford Bridge, the drama which has enveloped this pocket of Shepherds Bush would have been considered too outlandish for a failing soap opera.
There have been two relegations and a promotion in that time, as well as seven managerial appointments, but that tells only a fraction of the story. There were the allegations of boardroom gun plots, the 30-man brawl with the visiting China Olympic team, a player accused of rape, the murder of a bright youth team hope and, most recently, the death of a hugely promising striker, all played out in the shadow of administration. Any putative "Westenders" would need a broadcast slot after the watershed.
"It's been a long tunnel and there was never any light at the end of it, until now," said the midfielder Gareth Ainsworth. "To go from those dark days to this is unbelievable. Chelsea in the FA Cup is suddenly a game between potentially two of the biggest clubs in the world."
Ainsworth is this team's longest-serving player, having joined from Cardiff in 2003, and he has since witnessed the best and worst of the club. QPR, then in League One, had already suffered one spell in administration with the stop-gap loan negotiated with ABC Corp - at an eye-watering 11.59% interest - stunting the board's attempts to recover fully. The chairman, Gianni Paladini, did well to stave off the administrators. "We were promoted at Sheffield Wednesday four years ago but none of us knew whether we'd be paid the next week," said Ainsworth. "Mr Paladini deserves credit for keeping us going but the threat of administration was always there. When we heard about Mr Ecclestone and Mr Briatore we thought it might be another false dawn. Then again, that's understandable as we've had our fair share of things going wrong."
The ugly scrap with the Chinese during a friendly at the club's Harlington training complex - the visiting player Zheng Tao was knocked unconscious and had his jaw broken in two places - was embarrassing, though other traumas were more unsettling. Paladini was allegedly held up at gunpoint after being ambushed by a fellow director, David Morris, in the boardroom in August 2005. Morris and six other men were later cleared but the scandal was pursued by tragedy.
The stabbing of the youth-team player Kiyan Prince, who had intervened to prevent the bullying of another boy outside his school in Edgware, sent shockwaves through the club. Six months later Tu Quang Hoang Vu, a Vietnamese student, died at Earl's Court tube station after falling under a train. It was claimed at the time that Harry Smart, a 17-year-old QPR youth-team player, had been on a friend's shoulders and fell, knocking the bystander on to the track. Police later deemed the incident to have been an accident but Smart himself was badly hurt.
"At times it was practically unmanageable," admitted the former head of youth, Joe Gallen. "A combination of the China brawl, the Harry Smart incident and the stabbing of Kiyan meant I was dealing with police every day. There was a stage where the police did not leave the building for about three weeks and all I seemed to be doing was giving statements, making sure the players weren't getting into further trouble and arranging solicitors to represent them. I wondered at times whether I was still a coach and not working in a young offenders' institute or a police station."
Then, last August, the 18-year-old forward Ray Jones was killed in a road accident after his VW Golf collided with a double-decker bus in East Ham. Two other teenage passengers in the car also died. Jones's death demoralised a threadbare squad, perhaps contributing to a dismal start which saw John Gregory's side take three points from their opening eight games. "What happened to Ray was devastating," said Ainsworth. "Losing a friend like that put football into perspective: his locker's still downstairs and we still think about him all the time. But Ray will be looking down on us and he'll be really pleased by what's happening now at QPR. We've come out of the dark days and there's a massive aim for all of us now."
This afternoon it is Chelsea although, ultimately, the aim is a return to the Premier League. Briatore and Ecclestone have been hugely enthusiastic - the latter was in the dressing room after the New Year's Day victory over Leicester - but utterly realistic in their expectations since assuming control. "We were going to buy Chelsea, then Roman came along," admitted Ecclestone recently. "But there's no point buying Ferrari. The only way is down. At QPR we're in Formula Renault. Next we want to move up to GP2 and then GP1."
That is putting this sport into a context the 77-year-old perhaps better comprehends, though already huge strides are being made. The former Udinese and Napoli manager Luigi de Canio took over in October. The Italian speaks little English and is still coming to terms with the Championship, but he signed seven new players of genuine pedigree at this level last week with others to follow.
"I took a step back to join this club and, hopefully, realise the dream," said De Canio. "The owners told me it was about laying foundations that can be built on in the future. There is a very long road ahead. They are excellent entrepreneurs and they know how to invest their money and take this team to the level they are aiming for. It is nice to be starting out on this journey with everyone here but I'm not equipped to perform miracles: Chelsea may be suffering in terms of numbers at the moment but they are still a team of champions and we are a Championship team."
They are an improving side with De Canio having hoisted them to 18th place, three points from the cut-off, with one defeat in seven. Watford, the division's leaders, were beaten 4-2 at Vicar- age Road last week and the arrivals of youngsters such as West Ham's Hogan Ephraim and Matthew Connolly from Ars- enal, allied to the experience recruited in Watford's Gavin Mahon, Fitz Hall from Wigan and Patrick Agyemang from Preston, bodes well. All will revel in the creative supply-line offered by Akos Buzsacky, who completed a £500,000 move from Plymouth this week having scored six fine goals in a 13-match loan. The Hungarian played alongside Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira, and under Jose Mourinho, at Porto. He is a player who could grace the top flight.
"There is a real sense of optimism that we are growing and going forward, and I wanted to be part of a big club," said Buzsacky. "When I arrived we were bottom of the league but everyone knew things were going to change. We've improved since but the investors here are not thinking about instant success. They first want us to maintain our league position and stabilise, then move forward. If that is to the Premiership, so be it. If it is further, great."
"Mr Ecclestone and Mr Briatore have told us in no uncertain terms that the Premier League's where QPR have got to be within two or three years," added Ainsworth. "They're winners. We've got to be winners with them. They've invested emotionally as well as financially in this club, so we know what's expected of us. The fans deserve this game at Chelsea. They've put up with some really bad days and it must have been like a scene out of The Football Factory in some pubs when the draw was made."
Rangers have had very little to crow about while their local rivals have been propelled by Abramovich's millions to the pinnacle of the Premiership yet, with the backing this club now boasts, there is hope that they can be caught. "At the moment the chance of QPR being bigger than Chelsea out on the pitch is still a dream," added De Canio. "But there is no law against having dreams." Too much of this club's recent past has been a nightmare. Better times lie ahead.
Troubled times and takeovers
July 2004
Terrell Forbes, with five other men, is accused of rape. After a lengthy trial, he is cleared at Kingston Crown Court
August 2005
The chairman, Gianni Paladini, alleges he was held at gunpoint by his fellow director David Morris and ordered to sign documents that would see him relinquish the club. At the trial, Morris and six other men were cleared
May 2006
The promising youth player Kiyan Prince is stabbed to death outside his school in Edgware
November 2006
Tu Quang Hoang Vu, a 25-year-old Vietnamese student, dies at Earl's Court station after falling under a Piccadilly Line train. It was claimed that the QPR youth player Harry Smart fell, knocking Hoang Vu with him on to the track. Smart was badly hurt but police later said the incident was accidental
February 2007
Rangers' reserves are involved in a 30-man brawl with the Chinese Olympic team. Rangers are fined £40,000
August 2007
The striker Ray Jones is killed in a road accident in the early hours of Saturday, August 25 in East Ham
September 2007
Formula one magnates Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone complete their £14m takeover at Loftus Road
December 2007
Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian steel magnate worth some £19bn, buys a 20% stake in the club
December 2007
Bob Malcolm, the Derby defender on loan at Loftus Road, is charged by police with drink-driving - Guardian
Chelsea £10.8bn, QPR £21.8bn: Why Abramovich is overshadowed today
Chelsea
* ROMAN ABRAMOVICH: Russian oil billionaire, orphaned at three; began selling plastics on a market stall. Spent £500m-plus on Chelsea, £155m on his divorce. Estimated worth: £10.8bn
Queen's Park Rangers
* LAKSHMI MITTAL: India-born steel magnate; describes himself as a 'son of the desert', but followed his father into the business. Spent £30m on his daughter's wedding. Estimated worth: £19.25bn
* BERNIE ECCLESTONE: Son of a Suffolk trawler captain, he made his fortune selling TV rights and spin-offs to F1. Estimated worth: £2.25bn
* FLAVIO BRIATORE: Former ski instructor who was sentenced to jail for fraud early in business career. Made his fortune through Benetton clothing then moved into F1. Has had a string of supermodel girlfriends. Estimated worth: £80m
Independent
THE TIMES Nouveau riche Rangers urged to go easy on poor relations -Matt Hughes
Queens Park Rangers travel to Stamford Bridge for their FA Cup third-round tie today having surpassed Chelsea as the richest club in world football and keen to let Roman Abramovich know what it feels like to be the poor neighbour. However, Paul Finney, of the QPR supporters group, Independent R’s, has given warning to fans who were intending to wave £20 notes at their Chelsea counterparts that they have yet to earn the right to gloat.
“We’ve always been morally better than Chelsea, but we should wait until we are above them in the league before we do that,” Finney said. “It might only be a couple of years before that happens, so let’s save it up for when we give them a thrashing in the Premier League.”
Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, is well placed to tell Luigi De Canio, his opposite number at QPR, how to deal with a billionaire backer. The combined fortunes of Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, the Coca-Cola Championship club’s owners, far outweigh that of Abramovich, giving QPR a competitive advantage over their Championship rivals that could result in the return of this West London derby as a regular fixture.
The thrust of Grant’s advice to De Canio is to treat his employers as normal human beings and concentrate on his areas of responsibility. In keeping with his penchant for charming the rich and famous, Grant is also close to Ecclestone and Briatore and is sympathetic towards QPR’s bid to keep up with their neighbours.
"I know Bernie and the other guy and I wish them all the best. If QPR become a big club and there’s another derby, then fine,” Grant said. “Just do your job. It doesn’t matter [how rich they are]. We’re managers and we need to do our best for the team. We need to know the vision and targets for the club and then to do it on and off the pitch in the right way. Owners, like everyone else, are human, not monsters.”
While Grant is waiting to complete the signings of Nicolas Anelka and Branislav Ivanovic, De Canio has embarked on a spending spree reminiscent of Abramovich’s first summer in charge of Chelsea in 2003. Fitz Hall became the seventh player to arrive at Loftus Road in the past four days yesterday when he completed a £1 million move from Wigan Athletic and more will follow, with Rowan Vine, the Birmingham City striker, Stefan Postma, the Den Haag and former Aston Villa goalkeeper, and Sebastián Rusculleda, of Tigre, the Argentine club, expected to sign in the next few days.
De Canio’s team have won four of their past six matches to climb away from the relegation zone and Grant is expecting a difficult afternoon. “They have bought a lot of players in the last few days and they have won a lot of games,” he said. “They will be difficult opponents.”
Grant had little to report on the proposed signings of Anelka and Ivanovic that are expected next week, though one mischievous soul at the club’s training ground yesterday saw fit to write the name of Anelka, the France and Bolton Wanderers striker, in the visitors’ book. “[Dimitar] Berbatov and Kaká were also in there [in the book],” Grant said. “Maybe Anelka’s here, I don’t know. We’re following many players, but not just thinking about the next two months or four months. We’re thinking about the next few years, and maybe beyond. I’ll always look for players who can make the team better.”
West London spending sprees
Chelsea stunned football by spending £110 million on ten players in six weeks five years ago, but Queens Park Rangers are doing their best to catch their neighbours.
Here are QPR’s first signings of their new era . . . Kieran Lee, Man United, loan; Gavin Mahon, Watford, loan; Akos Buzsaky, Plymouth, £500,000; Hogan Ephraim, West Ham, £800,000; Matthew Connolly, Arsenal, undisclosed; Patrick Agyemang, Preston, £350,000; Fitz Hall, Wigan Athletic, £1m
. . . and this is how they compare to Chelsea’s first seven signings Glen Johnson, West Ham, £6m; Gérémi, Real Madrid, £7m; Damien Duff, Blackburn, £17m; Wayne Bridge, Southampton, £7m; Juan Sébastian Verón, Manchester United, £15m; Joe Cole, West Ham, £6.6m; Adrian Mutu, Parma, £15.8m - The Times
Telegraph/Sarah Edworthy - QPR and Chelsea billionaires at the Bridge
Bernie Ecclestone is a familiar figure in the directors' box at Stamford Bridge, just as Roman Abramovich had clocked up a number of Formula One grid walkabouts.
Today Ecclestone is again a guest of his Russian friend, along with QPR co-owner Flavio Briatore and investor Lakshmi Mittal.
Their attendance not only renders the Chelsea box with Guinness Book of Records potential — the highest density of millions per man per square foot — but also marks a new era in sporting rivalry: the battle of the billionaires.
Chelsea have enjoyed a glorious renaissance under Abramovich. Now it is the turn of their former West London rivals to relive glory days.
A measure of the excitement engendered by the investment of Ecclestone, Briatore and Mittal is that long-suffering QPR fans are already referring to new signing Akos Buzsaky (the Hungarian international) as 'the new Stan Bowles'.
"Excitement is the key word after the uncertainty of years of administration and lack of money," acknowledges Gareth Ainsworth, the much-travelled midfielder now in his fifth season at Loftus Road.
"I joined QPR just after the club had missed out on the First Division play-offs in 2003. Administration hung over us and we used to worry. Were we going to get paid? Were we not going to get paid? I was part of the team that got promotion to the Championship at Sheffield Wednesday. It was probably one of the club's greatest hours in recent years and yet we still had the financial issue hanging over us.
"Suddenly, now, to have some of the richest men and best business brains invest in the footballing future of the club has removed the worries. It's just total excitement in the dressing room. The new owners are winners. Their target is to get to the Premier League. The expectation is massive and it's great to be a part of that. It's buzzing."
As they have proved in Formula One, Ecclestone and Briatore are hands-on with their sporting interests. "Mr Briatore came in, introduced himself to us all and said, 'Lads, this club is going to go to the Premier League.' When you see what he's done in Formula One – creating world champions in probably the biggest sport in the world – to have him backing you is fantastic,'' added Ainsworth.
"They're in the dressing room before a match. Mr Ecclestone was in before the Leicester game last Saturday, just to make the lads aware that they are behind us."
As the new manager, Luigi de Canio, says, it is "a long, long road" for the club to go from 18th in the Championship to considering themselves equals to Chelsea.
Today's FA Cup third-round tie is more of an emotional symbol of their prospective renaissance than a marker in footballing terms.
"It's a welcome distraction from the league," Ainsworth said. "Our aim is to get to the Premier League. The FA Cup has never been mentioned. This game is fairytale time for us and our fans."
De Canio has added a catalogue of new players in the January transfer window: Hogan Ephraim from West Ham, Arsenal's £1million defender Matt Connolly, Manchester United loanee Kieran Lee, Watford's Gavin Mahon, Preston striker Patrick Agyemang, Buzsaky and Fitz Hall from Wigan.
"The new manager has power. If you're not doing it for him, he can bring in new players. It's good, it's creating competition for places."
Ainsworth says the gelling process is not a concern, though he admits De Canio's arrival was not an instant assimilation.
"The transition period took longer than anyone expected. The language thing is a big issue. The England set-up will find this out – though that's a bit more part-time. But we've got to know Gigi better and he's got to know us better. Telegraph
DAILY MAIL/Matt Barlow
'Paupers' Chelsea to host the jet set as QPR make the short trip to Stamford Bridge
Bernie Ecclestone tapped a friend on the shoulder after QPR had lost at home to Crystal Palace and demanded to know the identity of the loud man across the room.
More to the point, he wanted to know what he was doing in his boardroom.
Whether it was Ecclestone's mischievous sense of humour or blissful ignorance of Palace chairman Simon Jordan is open to question. Either way, the Formula One supremo seems to be settling into his new environment.
Today, he will be a guest of Roman Abramovich in the Chelsea boardroom, alongside his fellow recent investors at Loftus Road.
The combined wealth of Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore shot Rangers towards the top of football's rich list when they joined the club in September.
But the introduction of Lakshmi Mittal last month gives them a potential pool of resources greater than Abramovich, who has spent more than £500million on Chelsea in less than five years.
Mittal is Britain's richest man, the fifth wealthiest in the world, with an estimated £19.25billion.
The excitement is hard to disguise after years of gloom on the pitch and drama behind the scenes.
A gangster power struggle hit the boardroom in August 2005 when chairman Gianni Paladini was allegedly held at gunpoint and ordered to sign letters of resignation during a game against Sheffield United.
Less than a year later the club suffered the loss of Kiyan Prince, a promising 15-year-old who was stabbed to death.
When it seemed the club could take no more, tragedy struck again in August last year when striker Ray Jones, 18, was killed in a car crash.
"Football meant nothing in the days after Ray had gone," said winger Gareth Ainsworth, who joined the club from Cardiff in 2003 and has seen the soap opera unfold.
"His locker is still at the training ground and there are pictures of him. We think about him all the time. In a way, Ray will be looking down now on us and he'll be really pleased the way it's going at QPR."
Ainsworth, 34, remembers when a 3-1 win at Sheffield Wednesday clinched promotion to the Championship but the players left the pitch unsure whether they would be paid their wages, never mind their bonus, as the threat of administration loomed.
"We've come full circle," said Ainsworth. "We've got Chelsea in the Cup and it's potentially the two biggest clubs in the world playing each other. It's amazing." Mail
MIRROR - AINSWORTH: LAST TIME I PLAYED THERE IT ENDED IN A 16-MAN BRAWL
THE FA CUP e-on CHELSEA v QPR, STAMFORD BRIDGE, TODAY, KICK-OFF 3PM My battle of the Bridge John Cross 05/01/2008
Gareth Ainsworth has colourful memories of Stamford Bridge and one of the most notorious tunnel bust-ups ever.
The Queens Park Rangers midfielder was a member of Wimbledon's Crazy Gang when they were involved in a 16-man brawl at Chelsea in February 2000.
It left former Wimbledon boss Egil Olsen with a pair of broken glasses and ex-assistant manager Mick Harford taking on the world as the Crazy Gang lived up to their reputation.
But even that mad day cannot compare to the soap opera which 34-year-old Ainsworth has observed at Loftus Road in the past five years since he joined QPR.
Rangers have lurched from one financial crisis to another, chairman Gianni Paladini was famously threatened at gunpoint in the boardroom, and then there was the training-match bust-up with the Chinese Olympic team last season.
But now Ainsworth is seeing light at the end of the tunnel after Formula One tycoons Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal took over the club in a £14million buy-out.
Ainsworth (below) was injured and did not play when Wimbledon went down 3-1 at Stamford Bridge in 2000 and, he insists, a spectator of the tunnel bout. He said: "I played with the Crazy Gang in 1998, against Frank Leboeuf and Marcel Desailly.
"Things have changed, though not that much - they've still got World Cup winners in their side - but I'll be getting every lad up for it just as we did 10 years ago.
"There was also that little incident at the end where we accidentally went into the home dressing room at the end and had a few words.
"But those days have gone. I'm one of the older, more experienced guys. I'll just be trying to win the battle on the pitch.
"We'll give a good account of ourselves and we'll be up for it. Our fans deserve this. They've put up with some really bad days at QPR.
"It must have been like a scene out of The Football Factory in some pubs when the draw was made.
"It's a real rivalry. The money adds spice, but we're only thinking about getting a good result."
Ainsworth - lead singer of his own rock band Dog Chewed The Handle - is now relishing the better times under the club's new owners.
And the midfielder aims to make the most of a rare FA Cup adventure under new boss Luigi De Canio.
Ainsworth added: "I've seen a complete change here - from the real dark days to the unbelievable days today.
"I remember getting promoted at Sheffield Wednesday in 2004 and still realising administration was hanging over us, with none of us knowing whether we'd be paid the next week and that we might not be getting our bonuses.
"We've come full circle since then. We've got Chelsea in the FA Cup and suddenly it's potentially two of the biggest clubs in the world playing each other.
It's amazing.
"Now, with new faces and a big game coming up, it's fantastic to be at QPR. The players were over the moon when we heard what was happening in the boardroom.
"The guys who have come in are total winners in business and in sport, so we know what's expected of us now. We want to be winners.
"They haven't just invested their money, they've invested their time and their hearts. "They've been in the dressing room before games - Bernie Ecclestone was in the dressing room before the Leicester game, and Flavio's been in the dressing room before a few games, not talking football but just shaking hands with the lads, wishing us the best and backing us.
"That's fantastic to know, that they're supporting us emotionally as well as financially.
"It's not a hollow thing. Look at them up in the stands when we score and it means as much to them as it does to us."
Qpr have not won away at Chelsea since a League Cup game in January, 1986 Mirror
MIRROR (2nd article) BOSS AVRAM: THESE FANS LOVED MOURINHO . . BUT I'M WINNING THEM OVER
THE FA CUP e-on CHELSEA v QPR, STAMFORD BRIDGE, TODAY, KICK-OFF 3PM My battle of the Bridge Martin Lipton Chief Football Writer
Avram Grant last night told the Chelsea fans still pining for Jose Mourinho that the start of his managerial reign has been a "dream" for the club.
Grant is still struggling to develop a rapport with the supporters nearly four months after replacing Mourinho at the helm.
But on the eve of the beginning of the club's defence of the FA Cup they won at Wembley in May, he pledged to bring silverware in a more eye-catching manner than his predecessor - and insisted he had surpassed all reasonable expectations.
Grant, who has an outside chance of welcoming Didier Drogba back for one game before he flies off on African Nations Cup duty, said: "When I took over the team, if I'd said we'd win 16 of our first 23 games, that would have been kind of a dream for me and the supporters.
"Our target in the next few months is to try to keep our position in the league, stay in the cups, and then the other players will come back from Africa and injury. Then, anything can happen.
"Yes, the target is to win trophies. But what's most important for me is the way to the trophy. But I want to do it in the right way.
"The way to win them is very important for me.
"What we've done up to now shows that better than anything I can say.
"Okay, so those magic words 'three points' are very important, but just as important is how we do it.
"In want us to do it through good character, good spirit, good style and a good atmosphere in the camp. Then in May you can ask me whether we've had a successful season."
Chelsea take on neighbours QPR in a battle of the west London megarich, with the Loftus Road side reaping the instant benefits of the investments from Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.
But where Mourinho's rift with Roman Abramovich became too cavernous to be healed, Grant - still without nine first-teamers - had some advice for opposite number Luigi De Canio.
"What would I say to him?" asked Grant. "Do your job. Nothing else matters.
"We need to know the vision and targets for the club, and then to do it on and off the pitch in the right way. Owners, like everyone else, are human, not monsters.
"I enjoyed working with the previous manager. I needed to do my job, he did his. I don't compare myself to other managers."
Defeat would be unthinkable for the Blues but Grant counselled against his players thinking they only have to turn up to win.
"In other sports 90 per cent of what you expect to happen, does. But in football only 60 per cent actually happens," he said. "Like fans, excited about FA Cup third round day." Mirror QPR Report
Friday, December 21, 2007 Briatore and Ecclestone Speaking About QPR - How and Why They Bought QPR and Their Plans for QPR
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Mirror - Football - Ecclestone and Briatore exclusive
Exclusive by Oliver Holt Chief Sports Writer 21/12/2007
Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore are sitting in a backstreet pub in Knightsbridge, west London.
They're talking teams. Not Renault or McLaren, but QPR.
They're talking team players. Not Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso, but Rowan Vine and Michael Mancienne.
They're talking venues. Not Monaco or Monza, but Loftus Road and Deepdale.
As usual, Briatore bubbles with enthusiasm. But he stops gabbling, just for a second. Ecclestone is speaking and, generally, when Bernie speaks, you stop.
"One hundred per cent, we were going to buy Chelsea," Ecclestone says. "Seriously. One million per cent we'd have bought it. No argument. It was ready to be done. Then Roman came along."
There was a putative bid for Roma, too, but the deal was too complicated. Then there was Arsenal. That came to nothing.
So why Queens Park Rangers? Flavio looks round the pub and answers in the infectious spiel that makes him the marketing genius he is. But Ecclestone stops him again. "Tell him the truth, Flavio," Bernie says.
Flavio gives him a thanks-for-nothing look, then tells the story of how two of the most charismatic and powerful men in sport came to buy a west London institution.
"Ok," Briatore says. "I've a friend who wanted to open a restaurant with me in London. We'd been talking about opportunities, discussing opening a high-end pizzeria or maybe a churrascaria.
"Anyway, a couple of weeks went by and this guy phoned me out of the blue and said there was an opportunity to buy QPR. I was still thinking food. QPR? I thought maybe it was a barbecue restaurant."
But Briatore, boss of Formula One team Renault, quickly found out what he needed to know about QPR and in September, he and F1 billionaire Ecclestone paid £1m for the Championship club and agreed to clear £13m of its debts.
They saved it from going out of existence and are now planning for the Premier League. "I don't want to buy players for QPR just because they've a big name," Ecclestone says. "We don't need to massage our egos like that. Our egos are big enough to look after themselves."
Some fans are sceptical. They think Ecclestone and Briatore might be in it for the real estate.
But why would a bloke worth £2.4bn be bothered about a bit more loose change?
Truth is, things are looking brighter for QPR than they have for a long time. With the investors they have, they're the envy of every club in Englan Industrialist Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man, joined Ecclestone and Briatore as a major shareholder yesterday.
Qpr are bottom of the table but with Ecclestone around, won't be for long. "Abramovich, watch out," Ecclestone said with a wicked grin.
A few weeks ago, the 77-year-old watched QPR play Sheffield Wednesday. It was a cold afternoon and Briatore's friends sat in the Loftus Road directors' box with cashmere blankets spread on their knees.
When QPR missed a chance, Ecclestone looked around disdainfully at pained expressions on people's faces.
"Nothing happened," he says. "We're not playing the pools. We're only looking for a result."
In the second half, he made the occasional dart back to the directors' room to check on the racing from Lingfield Park.
But he and Briatore have caught the football bug, like Abramovich, like Mittal, just like a lot of awfully rich men.
"Most guys with a few quid, whether they've thieved it or whether they've earned it, are competitive people," Ecclestone says. "It's the needy and the greedy. Most of all, it's about trying to prove they're right."
Ecclestone said he was upset when he saw the state of the facilities at Loftus Road. Things are going to change fast.
Boss Luigi di Canio has been given money to bring in a host of players in January to help push the club clear of trouble.
Old sponsors will go. New ones will come. Briatore has plans for top London restaurant Cipriani to do the VIP catering, and to hire a leading DJ for the pre-match entertainment.
They want to get fans to the game earlier, get them more involved in the club. Revenue, it is fair to say, will increase. Briatore and Ecclestone, after all, have always been rather good at that side of things.
"Look," Ecclestone said, "football's something that goes on when Formula One's in its off season. Getting QPR back on top would be like buying Spyker and building that up.
"There's no point buying Ferrari. The only way is down. At QPR, we're in Formula Renault at the moment. Next, we want to move up to GP2 and then GP1.
"If we hadn't bought the club, there wouldn't have been any singing or anybody complaining about anything because there wouldn't have been any club to sing about.
"Now Flavio is doing his best to make sure the club succeeds so the fans should be very happy. We'd both like to do things that haven't been done in football before. Everyone seems to follow the same format. Maybe what we do will be wrong but there's only one way to find out.
"Everyone's copied what I did years ago in Formula One."
What if things only improve slowly and the crowd starts to sing rude songs about him and Briatore? "We'll sing along with them," Ecclestone says.
"But they'll have to have good voices if we're going to listen to them," added Briatore.
The grand plan goes like this. Stay up this season, consolidate next season, promotion to the Premier League the season after.
"We need to work on the stadium, the sponsors, the team, everything," said Briatore.
"This isn't a case of throwing money at something. Bernie invests in an efficient way and when I won championships in Formula One with Benetton, I won with lower budgets than a lot of the other teams."
In January, QPR visit Chelsea in the FA Cup. Ecclestone, a Chelsea fan and a mate of the owner, is relishing it.
"I go to Chelsea with Roman now and again," he says, "so we might have to go easy on them, put out a weakened team and give them a bit of a chance."
New Stars Of The R's
Flavio Briatore
Age: 57. Women: Engaged to model Elisabetta Gregoraci. Business: Managing director of Renault Formula One team. Worth: Is thought to have £70million fortune.
Bernie Ecclestone
Age: 77. Women: Married to former model Slavica, has two young daughters, Tamara and Petra. Business: Supremo of F1 Racing. Worth: Estimated at £2.2bn.
Lakshmi Mittal (left)
Age: 57. Women: Married to Usha and has two children. Business: CEO of Arcelor Mittal, world's largest steel company. Worth: World's fifth richest man worth £50bn.
Mirror
QPR Report
Setanta Briatore sets promotion target by Chris Stanton, 19 November 2007
Queens Park Rangers’ joint owner Flavio Briatore has targeted promotion to The Premier League within the next four seasons.
By Briatore’s own admission QPR seem more likely to be battling it out at the wrong end of The Championship during this campaign.
However the ambitious Formula One supremo believes Luigi De Canio’s side, who have been out of the top flight since 1996, will regain their status by 2011.
“The objective this season is survival but in the next three years we will be aiming for promotion,” said Briatore.
Far-fetched speculation has linked Rangers with Briatore’s countrymen Alessandro Del Piero and Francesco Totti but the Loftus Road club are unlikely to be welcoming any big names to Shepherds Bush just yet.
“The transfer market is closed and it is useless to speak about it,” said Briatore.
“At this moment, purchases do not interest us - it would be like putting Schumacher behind the wheel of a machine that does not work.” Setanta QPR Report
September 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
What Briatore Expects From - and Offers To - QPR
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Sporting Life - BRIATORE'S CASH PLEDGE
Potential new QPR owner Flavio Briatore has pledged to make January transfer funds available to boss John Gregory but has pleaded for fans to be patient as he bids to turn the club's fortunes around.
Renault Formula One team boss Briatore, in conjunction with motorsport magnate Bernie Ecclestone, has had a takeover bid in the region of £14million recommended by the current chairman Gianni Paladini and the QPR board.
Earlier in the week Briatore revealed his four-year promotion plan, but despite promising full financial backing he knows there is a long way to go before he can realise his Premier League ambition.
"They (QPR) are a club with a fantastic history but as well they have had fantastic trouble in the last three years," he told the club's official website.
"We want to make sure the fans understand that something is not just going to happen overnight because the situation we found was not fantastic and the club was already in deep trouble, but we have saved it.
"It's not only players that we need to address but also organisation and everything that has built up at QPR.
"We arrived at the last second and it was impossible to buy players because everything closed on the Friday.
"But now we will save up until January but in the meantime we need to motivate everyone at the club from the coach to Gianni (Paladini) to everybody because we know that finance is needed to support the team. That is our duty and we expect everyone else to fulfil theirs." Sporting Life
Briatore's comments can be heard on the QPR Official Site (for subscribers to World)
QPR Report
Further Press Reports re Brigatore Plans for QPR-
QPR Official Site DESTINATION PREMIERSHIP!
Flavio Briatore wants Premiership football within four years.
The 57 year-old, who alongside Bernie Ecclestone has had his offer for the Club recommended by the Board, has wasted no time in setting his stall out at Loftus Road.
In an exclusive interview with QPR World - to be screened tomorrow (Wednesday) - the Italian speaks candidly about his hopes and dreams with the R's.
"We are very happy to be part of QPR," he said.
"We have already taken the first good step because the Club is still here. I am very sure that without our involvement QPR would not exist this week.
"We know what we need to do to be competitive. We are involved because we are serious. I didn't do this because I've got nothing to do on a Saturday.
"We have already saved the Club and that's a good way for us to introduce ourselves to the fans."
Briatore added: "We have put a programme together to reach the Premier League in four years. Whenever we (Bernie and I) have set a target in our history, it has been reached and I can't see why that will not happen this time too.
"I want everyone to be proud of Queens Park Rangers Football Club."
You can join QPR World now for just £3.99 - click here for further details!QPRBasically the same story being reported in the different papers. But not too arduous to keep rereading!
The actual BBC London Interview with Brigratore can be heard at BBC London/Brigatore
BBC London - Flavio Briatore on QPR
Renault Formula One boss Flavio Briatore spoke to BBC London 94.9 about his plans for Queens Park Rangers - listen again to the interview
Flavio Briatore has revealed he and Bernie Ecclestone have devised a four-year plan to get QPR into the Premier League.
The two Formula One magnates are poised to complete their takeover of the Coca-Cola Championship club and Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, believes the duo can fulfil all the ambitions of the Loftus Road faithful.
Asked how long it might take to set Rangers promoted, the Italian told BBC London 94.9: "You set a target and when we take over we're talking about four years' time. If it happens earlier, it happens earlier. "You need a strong base and the moment you arrive in the Premier League you stay there."
He added: "When we started at Benetton (now Renault), we said we wanted to win the championship in five years. Afterwards, we had our champion in three years."
You can listen to the full interview with BBC London 94.9's Kevin Hand below:
03.09.07 Listen to the Flavio Briatore interview >
Saturday saw the club reveal Briatore and F1 supremo Ecclestone had made "a recommended offer", believed to be about £14million. The club are reportedly in debt to the tune of £13million.
Briatore would not be drawn on the figures involved but insisted sufficient funds would be made available to strengthen the team in January.
He added: "I won seven championships in Formula One and I won the championship with a barely good budget proportional to the results. "We won't do anything crazy. What's more important is the programme you are doing, step by step, and it's impossible to change everything in one year. "You need the money to do the job but what is more important is the total organisation of the club."
Briatore claimed he became interested in Rangers "a long time ago" and insists he and Ecclestone are not buying the club simply to make a profit selling it on. "We take it to keep it," he said. "It's not a real estate investment, it's a sport investment."
He added: "QPR have the potential to be at the top again. "It's a great team, a great club. They have a lot of fans who support the club. "I believe it's a good opportunity." Briatore drew comparisons between football and F1. "Sport is sport and there is a lot of similarity between football and Formula One," he said. "The Formula One investment is nearly 10 times bigger than a football team."
Chairman Gianni Paladini and manager John Gregory are expected to stay in place if the takeover succeeds. "Paladini has done a job with small resources and John as well," Briatore said. However, the 57-year-old admitted his various business interests would make it impossible for him or Ecclestone to attend every Rangers match.
He said "We have different activities as well, not only in Formula One. It's a question of management, it's a question of the people you put in charge. "Myself and Bernie understand very well what you need to be competitive. "If I'm there or not, the club is not better or not." Meanwhile, Gregory has warned supporters Briatore and Ecclestone will struggle to bring immediate success.
He said: "The investors can really help this club move forward, but, as always, it will take time. "We can't do it overnight and the transfer window is closed, so it will take time to make the transition." BBC
Telegraph - F1 bosses have a Premier plan for QPR
By Jeremy Wilson and Alistair Grant
Queens Park Rangers might lie in the relegation zone of the Championship, but Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have wasted little time in outlining their aim of taking the club into the Premier League by 2011.
"Gianni [Paladini, the club's chairman], Bernie and I are all determined to see the club return to the Premier League within the next four years," said Briatore, who is the managing director of the Renault Formula One motor racing team. Under the proposed takeover deal, Briatore's Sarita Capital company will gain control of just under 50 per cent of the shareholding. Ecclestone, the billionaire ringmaster of Formula One, has bought 15 per cent of the shares and will work in unison with Briatore.
Four more years: Flavio Briatore has promised the funds to return QPR to the Premier League by 2011
Their offer for QPR values the issued share capital at approximately £1 million and the duo will take on £13 million of the west London club's debt.
They will also loan QPR £5 million, which will be partly made available to the manager John Gregory for strengthening the club's squad.
The proposal was yesterday welcomed by Gregory. "The investors can really help this club move forward but, as always, it will take time," he said. "We can't do it overnight and the transfer window is closed, so it will take time to make the transition."
Under the proposed new structure, Paladini will remain as chairman while Briatore, Bruno Michel and Alejandro Agag will join the board with Antonio Caliendo and Franco Zanotti both resigning as directors.
In recommending the offer to shareholders, the club's board predicted that the ownership of QPR by Sarita Capital and Ecclestone could be the catalyst to promotion into the Premier League.
"Sarita Capital has provided assurances to the board of QPR that Sarita Capital and Bernie Ecclestone intend to commit further significant sums to fund the current and continuing working capital requirements of the club and, in particular, to fund the development of the club's first-team squad, its academy and its scouting system," said a statement.
QPR have also confirmed the departure of former assistant manager Richard Hill following his part in the brawl that erupted during a friendly match against the Chinese Olympic team earlier this year.
Rangers dismissed Hill during the summer but have only just stated it publicly, a club spokesman saying: "Richard Hill's contract was terminated in mid-July." Hill was found guilty of violent conduct by the FA, who banned him from football for three months. He has appealed against the verdict.
QPR were fined £40,000 for their involvement in the incident, £20,000 of which has suspended until May 31, 2008.
The China team were seven days into a two-week visit to England when the brawl, which was alleged to have erupted when China's striker Gao Lin aimed a punch at defender Patrick Kanyuka, took place at QPR's training ground in West Drayton.
Both the police and the London ambulance service had to be called to the scene. Defender Zheng Tao suffered a broken jaw in the melée which involved about 30 players, including QPR first-team regulars. Telegraph
The Sun - Flav four-year target for QPR
FLAVIO BRIATORE revealed he and Bernie Ecclestone have a four-year plan to get QPR into the Premier League.
The Formula One magnates are poised to complete their £14million takeover of the Championship club and Briatore — head of the Renault F1 team — believes the duo can fulfil the fans’ ambitions.
The Italian said: “You set a target and, when we take over, we’re talking about four years’ time. If it happens earlier, it happens earlier.
“When we started at Benetton — now Renault — we said we wanted to win the championship in five years. We had our champion in three years.”
But Rangers manager John Gregory has warned supporters not to expect Briatore and Ecclestone to bring immediate success to Loftus Road.
He said: “The investors can really help this club move forward — but we can’t do it overnight.” The Sun
Guardian - Briatore reveals plan for QPR to join the elite Ben Rumsby
Flavio Briatore has revealed that he and Bernie Ecclestone have devised a four-year plan to get QPR into the Premier League. The two formula one magnates are set to complete their takeover of the struggling Championship club and Briatore, head of the Renault team, believes the pair can fulfil all the ambitions of the Loftus Road faithful.
Asked how long it might take to get Rangers promoted to the top tier, the Italian said: "You set a target and when we take over we're talking about four years' time. If it happens earlier, it happens earlier. You need a strong base and the moment you arrive in the Premier League you stay there."
Briatore added: "When we started at Benetton [now Renault], we said we wanted to win the championship in five years. Afterwards, we had our champion in three years."
The club had revealed on Saturday that Briatore and Ecclestone had made "a recommended offer", believed to be about £14m for Rangers. The club are reportedly in debt to the tune of £13m.
Briatore would not be drawn on the figures involved but insisted sufficient funds would be made available to strengthen the team in the January transfer window.
He added: "I won seven championships in formula one and I won the championship with a barely good budget proportional to the results. Guardian
Mirror - Rangers up four it
Flavio Briatore has revealed he and Bernie Ecclestone have devised a four-year plan to get QPR into the Premier League.
The Formula One magnates are poised to complete their takeover of the Coca-Cola Championship club and Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, said: "QPR have the potential to be at the top again."
And asked how long it might take to get Rangers promoted, the Italian said: "When we take over we're talking about four years' time. If it happens earlier, it happens earlier."
Saturday saw the club reveal Briatore and F1 supremo Ecclestone had made "a recommended offer believed to be about £14million. The club are reportedly £13m in debt. Mirror
See Also: Earlier Reports re Brigatore/Ecclestone Plans and comments QPR Owner Talk About Their Plans
QPR Report
Monday, September 03, 2007 QPR's New Owner Talks About Their Plans
-Sporting Life - Ben Rumsby, PA Sport - BRIATORE PLANS TO REVIVE RANGERS
Flavio Briatore has revealed he and Bernie Ecclestone have devised a four-year plan to get QPR into the Premier League.
The two Formula One magnates are poised to complete their takeover of the Coca-Cola Championship club and Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, believes the duo can fulfil all the ambitions of the Loftus Road faithful.
Asked how long it might take to set Rangers promoted, the Italian told BBC London 94.9: "You set a target and when we take over we're talking about four years' time. If it happens earlier, it happens earlier.
"You need a strong base and the moment you arrive in the Premier League you stay there."
He added: "When we started at Benetton [now Renault], we said we wanted to win the championship in five years. Afterwards, we had our champion in three years."
Saturday saw the club reveal Briatore and F1 supremo Ecclestone had made "a recommended offer", believed to be about £14million.
The club are reportedly in debt to the tune of £13million.
Briatore would not be drawn on the figures involved but insisted sufficient funds would be made available to strengthen the team in January.
He added: "I won seven championships in Formula One and I won the championship with a barely good budget proportional to the results.
"We won't do anything crazy. What's more important is the programme you are doing, step by step, and it's impossible to change everything in one year.
"You need the money to do the job but what is more important is the total organisation of the club."
Briatore claimed he became interested in Rangers "a long time ago" and insists he and Ecclestone are not buying the club simply to make a profit selling it on.
"We take it to keep it," he said.
"It's not a real estate investment, it's a sport investment."
He added: "QPR have the potential to be at the top again.
"It's a great team, a great club. They have a lot of fans who support the club.
"I believe it's a good opportunity."
Briatore drew comparisons between football and F1.
"Sport is sport and there is a lot of similarity between football and Formula One," he said.
"The Formula One investment is nearly 10 times bigger than a football team."
Chairman Gianni Paladini and manager John Gregory are expected to stay in place if the takeover succeeds.
"Paladini has done a job with small resources and John as well," Briatore said.
However, the 57-year-old admitted his various business interests would make it impossible for him or Ecclestone to attend every Rangers match.
He said "We have different activities as well, not only in Formula One. It's a question of management, it's a question of the people you put in charge.
"Myself and Bernie understand very well what you need to be competitive.
"If I'm there or not, the club is not better or not."
Meanwhile, Gregory has warned supporters Briatore and Ecclestone will struggle to bring immediate success.
He said: "The investors can really help this club move forward, but, as always, it will take time.
"We can't do it overnight and the transfer window is closed, so it will take time to make the transition." Sporting Life
See Also: Clive Whittingham/QPR Rivals Report of the Radio Interview Brigatore Speaks
See Also BBC Radio London QPR Report
Saturday, September 01, 2007 QPR's Completed Takeover by Eccelstone and Briatore - Press Reports-
AP -Ecclestone, Briatore set to buy Queens Park Rangers after board recommends bid
Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone and Renault team principal Flavio Briatore are set to buy Queens Park Rangers after the English soccer club's board recommended the pair's offer.
QPR, which plays in the second-tier League championship, announced the move Saturday.
The takeover has been mooted at 30 million pounds (US$60.5 million; ?44.4 million) by British papers and should mean the west London team can now plan without the threat of financial administration.
QPR has struggled since relegation from the Premier League in 1996, at one point dropping into the third tier for three seasons, and also owed tax to Britain's Inland Revenue.
Had the club entered financial administration - continuing operations without selling off assets to pay debts - it would have had 10 points automatically deducted from its league total under Football League rules.
Gianni Paladini will carry on as chairman, with Briatore, Bruno Michel and Alejandro Agag joining the board in place of Antonio Caliendo and Franco Zanotti.
"This offer provides much needed investment and an excellent opportunity to move the club forward, which in turn, we are sure, will be translated into positive results on the pitch,'' Paladini said.
QPR was a regular in English soccer's top division and was a founder member of the Premier League in 1992. Winner of the League Cup in 1967, the closest QPR ever came to winning the English championship was in 1976, when it came within one point of edging powerhouse Liverpool.
"We are fully aware of the history of QPR and the loyal fan base that it has,'' Briatore said. "We are therefore totally committed to bringing future success back to the club.''
Ecclestone had been linked with a move for Arsenal, but his chances of buying into the Premier League powerhouse seemed to end Thursday when former vice chairman David Dein sold his 14.58 percent stake to a consortium led by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. AP
BBC - F1 magnates to take over at QPR
QPR have confirmed that Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have made a recommended offer for the club.
Gianni Paladini will remain as chairman but Antonio Caliendo and Franco Zanotti have agreed to resign from the board.
Briatore told the club website: "Bernie and I were delighted to receive a recommendation from the QPR board for our bid for the club.
Paladini said: "This offer provides much needed investment and an excellent opportunity to move the club forward." BBC
Guardian - Ecclestone and Briatore take control of QPR
QPR have confirmed that Formula One magnates Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have "made a recommended offer" for the Coca-Cola Championship club. Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, and Ecclestone will now take control of the club although current chairman Gianni Paladini will remain in position.
Briatore told the club's official website http://www.qpr.co.uk: "Bernie and I were delighted to receive a recommendation from the board of QPR for our bid for the club and we look forward to working alongside Gianni Paladini and his team. We are fully aware of the history of QPR and the loyal fanbase that it has and are totally committed to bringing future success back to the club."
Paladini said: "This offer provides much needed investment and an excellent opportunity to move the club forward which will be translated into positive results on the pitch. I am delighted that Flavio and Bernie have asked me to remain on the board and I hope to play a large part in the future of QPR."
The news was announced prior to the Championship clash with Southampton at Loftus Road, where all 11 Rangers players donned shirts carrying Ray Jones' name on the back. The 18-year-old striker was killed last weekend in a car accident and the club confirmed that no further comment on the takeover would be made today.
A statement said: "The club will be making no further comment at this stage, as our focus today remains on celebrating the life and times of Ray Jones, who tragically died in a motor accident last weekend." Guardian
PA Sport, Tom Rostance - ECCLESTONE IN AT QPR
QPR have confirmed that Formula One magnates Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have "made a recommended offer" for the Coca-Cola Championship club.
Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, and Ecclestone will now take control of the club although current chairman Gianni Paladini will remain in position.
Briatore told the club's official website www.qpr.co.uk: "Bernie and I were delighted to receive a recommendation from the board of QPR for our bid for the club and we look forward to working alongside Gianni Paladini and his team.
"We are fully aware of the history of QPR and the loyal fanbase that it has and are totally committed to bringing future success back to the club."
Paladini said: "This offer provides much needed investment and an excellent opportunity to move the club forward which will be translated into positive results on the pitch.
"I am delighted that Flavio and Bernie have asked me to remain on the board and I hope to play a large part in the future of QPR."
The news was announced prior to the Championship clash with Southampton at Loftus Road, where all 11 Rangers players donned shirts shirts carrying Ray Jones' name on the back.
The 18-year-old striker was killed last weekend in a car accident and the club confirmed that no further comment on the takeover would be made today.
A statement said: "The club will be making no further comment at this stage, as our focus today remains on celebrating the life and times of Ray Jones, who tragically died in a motor accident last weekend." Sporting Life
SKY - F1 Bosses Take Over QPR
QPR have confirmed that Formula One magnates Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone have "made a recommended offer" for the club.
Briatore, head of the Renault F1 team, and Ecclestone, who runs Formula One, will now take control at Loftus Road.
Current chairman Gianni Paladini will remain in position.
Briatore said: "Bernie and I were delighted to receive a recommendation from the board of QPR for our bid for the club and we look forward to working alongside Gianni Paladini and his team.
"We are fully aware of the history of QPR and the loyal fanbase that it has and are totally committed to bringing future success back to the club."
Paladini said: "This offer provides much needed investment and an excellent opportunity to move the club forward which will be translated into positive results on the pitch.
"I am delighted that Flavio and Bernie have asked me to remain on the board and I hope to play a large part in the future of QPR." Skynews QPR Report
August 14, 2007
Flavio Briatore's 2005 Perspective re Successful Management
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The Guardian - Martin Rose Tuesday October 4, 2005
Ecclestone wanted to buy Chelsea, says Briatore
"Chelsea may never have been purchased by Roman Abramovich had negotiations to sell the London club to the formula one pair Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore moved at a faster pace. The Italian Briatore has revealed that he and Ecclestone had lined up Chelsea until the Russian arrived on the scene.
"We had a big programme to take over the club when Abramovich arrive by boat," said Briatore, the team principal of Renault. "He buy Chelsea from under our noses while me and Bernie are in the middle of negotiations to do the deal. It is funny. Abramovich and Bernie are very big friends - and I meet him many times. We were on our way with Chelsea, me and Bernie, and Abramovich put a stop to it."
Abramovich has ploughed unprecedented millions into Chelsea, an investment that helped them win the Premiership last season. But Briatore is convinced they would have enjoyed similar success had he got his hands on the club.
"The techniques of management are the same whether you run a clothing company or a football club. Management is the way you produce your product - your efficiency, your creativity, and the people you choose to make the dream come true," he said. "Now I stick to what I love for the moment - formula one. When I no longer have that love maybe I try football again. Guardian
See Also: Donald McRae - The Guardian - October 4, 2005
The life, loves and loneliness of formula one's champion maker
Flavio Briatore reveals the secrets of Fernando Alonso's success, the 'family' he feels closest to and how he almost bought Chelsea Profile QPR Report
BRiatore's website
ECCLESTONE's PERSPECTIVE
April 2008 - Briatore and Ecclestone's QPR Success Story-
The Times/Kevin Eason - April 25, 2008 Insider: April 25 - Cristal and caviar at QPR
As Bernie Ecclestone surveys his domain today, he can be content that his business model is working at full power, no matter how many times it has almost been derailed by events away from the Formula One track. Ecclestone pioneered the concept of corporate hospitality with his Formula One Paddock Club, which attracts well-heeled patrons prepared to pay as much as £1,000 a head.
That idea could be translated to football and Queens Park Rangers, the club he co-owns with Flavio Briatore, the Renault Formula One team principal. If the Coca-Cola Championship club are to spin money like the top sides and push for promotion to the Barclays Premier League, the problem of Loftus Road, QPR's cramped home on and off for about 90 years, will have to be solved. Ecclestone has not identified a potential alternative ground and a capacity of fewer than 20,000 is too small for the top flight.
But Ecclestone and Briatore plan to drive the QPR audience upmarket with more and better corporate seats. There are rumours that the price of hospitality boxes will soar, but Ecclestone is anxious to get the product right first. “We are not going to drive out the existing fans, but we need to generate more income,” he said. “We did it in Formula One and we can do it in football.”
The QPR directors' box is already a repository for famous visitors such as Naomi Campbell, the supermodel. With Ecclestone (worth £2.5billion) bringing in Lakshmi Mittal (worth £14.5billion) as an investor, the pies and Oxo could soon be replaced by champagne and caviar. Kilburn Times
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