Profile: Roman Abramovich is as shy as his latest acquisition, Damien Duff, but facing the attention of mafia, government and demanding Chelsea fans, he may now find it increasingly harder to avoid the limelight, writes Chris Stephen from Moscow.
Damien Duff is in for a surprise when he finally meets Chelsea's new tycoon owner: they are kindred spirits. Both men inhabit worlds where flamboyance and hyperbole is not just common but expected. But both shun the limelight.
Duff (24) leaves 40,000 screaming fans for a bath, dinner with his mum and a chance to sleep late. Roman Abramovich (36) spends his days juggling billions with his oil and aluminium companies, then slips home to dinner with the wife and four kids.
More bizarrely still, the two men have led parallel lives - each rising to greatness from humble beginnings.
Duff's modest but happy upbringing is well documented. His ambition came from a soccer-mad dad always encouraging his son to push that extra mile with a series of teams around Ballyboden in Dublin.
Abramovich's early years were less rosy. His mother died suddenly when he was just 18 months old and his father was killed in a construction accident when Abramovich was four years-of-age. The child moved north to be raised by his grandparents in Ukhta, Siberia, which roughly matches the description "middle of nowhere". But ambition burned bright in his soul.
After education in a forestry institute and national service, he jumped straight into business. These were the Gorbachev years, when the Soviet Union first experimented with private enterprise.
Abramovich joined a co-operative making plastic toys, but soon tired of this and moved into the big time. In Siberia, this meant one thing: oil. Russia holds the second largest reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia.
The timing of Abramovich's move to Omsk, a frontier town in Russia's wild east, was brilliant. In 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Suddenly the whole state oil industry was up for grabs.
Abramovich quickly made a name for himself as a sharp trader of oil commodities. It earned him the attention of Boris Berezovsky, one of Russia's rising tycoons, and a man who had already made a fortune in the auto industry. Berezovsky was part of the "Family," a clan of businessmen clustered around president Boris Yeltsin who were so powerful they were labelled oligarchs.
1995 was the year Abramovich, like Duff, made the jump to the big time. For Duff it was a case of hard work bringing its own reward when he was signed by Blackburn Rovers.
Abramovich, meanwhile, took the gamble of his life. With Berezovsky, he raised $100 million to buy a mass of state-owned oil businesses and turn them into one company, Sibneft.
This was at the height of Russia's runaway capitalism era. The mafia were attacking anyone with money. Worse, Yeltsin was on the ropes. An election the following year could return the Communists to power and they would certainly re-nationalise oil companies and Abramovich's fortune would disappear.
A year later, Yeltsin was re-elected and business breathed a sigh of relief. A valuation found Sibneft to be worth $2 billion. Quite why Yeltin's government had signed away an asset so cheaply is yet to be explained. But it made Abramovich a player in Russia's own premier league of the super-rich.
Abramovich began to flex his muscles. With his billions, he joined forces with another tycoon to buy two aluminium companies and turn them into a single concern, Russian Aluminium. Just for fun, he also took a stake in the state airline Aeroflot and in the ultimate status-symbol for a self-respecting Oligarch, a TV station.
The economy took off. Other tycoons paraded their wealth in ever more disgusting fashion. Just as state enterprises collapsed, millions lost their jobs and pensioners were forced to beg in the streets. Meanwhile, the Oligarchs lived the high life with rich cars, fast women, and wild parties featuring models jumping from huge birthday cakes.
Not Roman. He met a girl. Got married. And bought a place outside Moscow.
In 1998 the economy crashed. Abramovich's companies survived - the world will always need oil. But the ailing Yeltsin and the Family were plunged into crisis.
In 2000, the KGB moved in to tidy up, with Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin taking over the presidency. Straight away things changed. Putin liked sober suits and quiet family life. He liked Abramovich.
Putin went to war with the Oligarchs. When Berezovsky boldly announced he was the boss, Putin sent investigators to look at how Berezovsky made his billions. Berazovsky fled to London, where he is now fighting a Moscow extradition warrant.
Abramovich was smarter. He took control of Berezovsky's TV station, then gave it, for free, to the Kremlin. In return, he was allowed to run for election in distant Chukotka province near the Arctic Circle.
Abramovich threw some money around there, spending on such essentials as a five-star hotel and a reindeer sanctuary. The locals loved him. Meanwhile his oil rigs moved into the adjacent Bering Strait.
Putin soon wrapped up his crusade against the oligarchs by striking a deal - if they kept out of politics, he would stop asking questions about how they made billions through questionable 1990s privatisations.
Then, this summer, a new crisis came out of the blue. For reasons best known to itself, the Kremlin suddenly launched a new attack on the Oligarchs. Prosecutors jumped on oil baron Vladimir Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, sending stock market prices tumbling. Russia's second richest man worried that he might be next.
The reasons for this new attack on the tycoons is unclear; the most likely is that Putin knows the Oligarchs are hated and bashing them will be popular ahead of December's elections.
Things have become precarious for Russia's super-rich. The contract killings of the 1990s are back in fashion. Last October Valentyn Tsvetkov, governor of the mineral-rich Magadan province, next door to Chukotka, was murdered in an elaborate contract killing. Nobody is safe.
Abramovich seems to have anticipated trouble. He had already begun cashing-in some of his assets this spring. Then, the day before the Kremlin launched its new war on the tycoons, Abramovich made the shock announcement - he had bought Chelsea FC.
Many Russians think Abramovich plans to jump ship. He wants to educate his children in Britain, and pundits think that having made his fortune, he has decided to leave Russia behind for the more comfortable West.
Abramovich hit London with an open cheque-book and dragged his wife along to a recent practice match, albeit in sunny Rome. The Duff signing was the icing on the cake.
But here's the surprise: Chelsea FC is the very opposite of Abramovich. If Abramovich, like Duff, is a home boy, then Chelsea is the original football wild child.
As a Chelsea fan, I am qualified to say that the Blues have kept up a swagger and poise throughout their history always slightly ahead of their achievements. In the 1960s, the boys in blue led the party set down the newly fashionable Kings Road. Victories in the FA Cup and European Cup Winners Cup led them to buy the most advanced stand any stadium had ever seen, just in time for the 1970s recession. They would have gone bust, but bearded tycoon Ken Bates stepped in, buying the club for a pound and spending considerably more paying off the debts. He used the 1990s boom to redevelop the site and buy European players.
Opponents complained that if the Blues won the Premiership, it would be the first time the honour was held by a foreign team. But the fans loved it: Stamford Bridge was full, the pulse was spinning, two FA cup victories and the Cup Winner's Cup followed.
Bates kept on spending - just as a recession arrived. Suddenly the team was in debt and in danger of going under. But in the nick of time it has been saved, once again by a tycoon emerging from nowhere to snap it up.
What happens next, nobody knows. The wild team, the billionaire tycoon and the star winger who just keeps getting better and better have joined arms and jumped through the looking glass.
Only one prediction seems safe - the future will not be boring.