Marina Granovskaia, Saif Rubie and a trial revealing ‘the difficult and ugly side of football’

The confetti is falling as Marina Granovskaia walks onto the pitch after the Champions League final. It is May 29, 2021 and Chelsea’s director of football, rarely seen publicly, sits on the trophy rostrum, laughing with captain Cesar Azplilicueta. Granovskaia will be gone just over one year later, stepping down as part of the regime change at Chelsea after former owner Roman Abramovich was forced to sell the club due to sanctions levied by the UK government after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. She has never spoken publicly, neither during her near two decades at Chelsea nor since...