SOCCER:Most of the debilitating bout of infighting that threatens to derail Chelsea's season can be traced to Frank Arnesen's appearance on Roman Abramovich's super-yacht Pelarus 18 months ago.

Abramovich had already invested much time talking football with Piet de Visser, the chief scout at PSV Eindhoven and a septuagenarian survivor of multiple heart bypasses and cancer. Though De Visser became a trusted confidant of the Russian oligarch, it was only when £8 million was invested to recruit Arnesen from a reluctant Tottenham that the nexus was formalised.

With that came the challenge to Jose Mourinho's authority that has riled the Chelsea manager ever since.

In the initial exchanges, Mourinho tried to banish Arnesen from the Chelsea training ground as he jealously sought to protect his first-team territory. The Dane responded by making it clear that he had no role in the acquisition of senior players, that his remit surrounded only the scouting and purchase of youth prospects, not the ready-made versions.

But Mourinho's intuition told him that, since De Visser had a direct line to Abramovich, it would not be long before Arnesen too was consulted on the players the manager called for. His suspicions were well founded.

Abramovich began to lose faith in the Portuguese's ability to recruit players. There had been expensive failures: Asier del Horno and Tiago Mendes were £8 million purchases, and even Paulo Ferreira's contribution has been mixed for the £13.2 million spent.

Though it is alien to most English clubs, Arnesen is used to working in a continental structure in which he is the technical director with responsibility for all the ins and outs at the club.

"It's about the structure when it's like this," Arnesen said of his relationship with the Tottenham manager, Martin Jol, in an interview with the Guardian in March 2005, three months before he agreed to join Chelsea. "He doesn't need to be, like me, up until half past one at night because I have to talk to agents; he has to be fit for the first team.

"All the communications are between me and him on a daily basis, sometimes we talk two or three times a day. We talk about everything. I prefer to see that the coach assists in the situation, and on top of that to see that it is better to be two to run such a big club in this department than to do it all alone."

But that role, as shown by his reaction to Arnesen's first day at Stamford Bridge, is anathema to Mourinho. His resentment has festered, and it was a key issue that arose in meetings at Chelsea last week.

Indeed, although the club have tried to placate their manager with the promise of at least one signing, the board's decision to defer serious discussion of the issue to the summer suggests Mourinho's power is waning.

The Portuguese, who retains the support of the chief executive, Peter Kenyon, will seek in the close season to have complete control of transfer matters restored to him on pain of his resignation. Whether Abramovich will capitulate is another question.

Mourinho is banking on his capacity to deliver trophies, but, having dropped six points over the Christmas period, Chelsea are now six points adrift of Manchester United. It has not gone unnoticed that, while Mourinho was wailing for a new centre half, he overlooked Michael Essien's ability in the position, one he often occupied at his former club, Lyon.

Yet for too long he persisted with Ferreira as his stop-gap centre-half at the cost of many goals.

That has hardly increased Mourinho's currency at Chelsea; maybe he has recognised this, since he has bought in to the concept of a temporary peace pact before season's end.

Arnesen will no doubt agree, but he will always be a fan of the structure Mourinho so despises. "The owner of the club has to say, 'We would like it this way'," he said back in 2005. "I think it is all about people. You can have all the structures that you like, and that is very important, but you have to have the right people. It's about egos."

With Mourinho, it usually is.

And that could have implications at Real Madrid, where Ramon Calderon's presidency hangs in the balance. He won an election last summer on the narrowest of margins after postal votes were suspended by a court ruling because of serious irregularities. However, the embargo on those thousands of votes will soon be lifted by a Madrid judge.

For the time being Calderon has to stand by manager Fabio Capello, so wedded to the Italian was his election campaign. But stories that Mourinho could take over do him no harm. For Calderon to be seen as capable of getting Mourinho adds to his credibility. The fans would love his Barca-baiting and he would be the popular choice. And for Calderon popularity is all.

Guardian Service