The Daily Mail today have a story about Hakim Ziyech taking a trip to Moscow to party with his old teammate Quincy Promes.
Promes plays for Spartak Moscow now, and following the conclusion of Chelsea’s season Ziyech headed to the Russian capital for an event run by betting company Winline.
Russia are in the middle of an invasion of Ukraine, and that shocking news story has had direct influence on Chelsea, whose Russian former owner had to sell the club after being sanctioned by the British government.
There is nothing illegal about Ziyech’s trip, but it’s certainly distasteful given the situation and the sacrifices that others are making to try and bring down Vladimir Putin’s regime there. Plenty of Ukrainian football fans have taken to social media to deplore Ziyech’s complicity in some level of sports-washing.
The whole thing is made all the more juicy by the fact that Promes has been charged with smuggling 1,370 kilograms of cocaine into Holland when he was playing at Ajax.
He has since made the conveniently times transfer to Russia, where he can feel safe from Dutch prosecutors.
Ziyech looks likely to leave Chelsea this summer, and in all probability has played his last game for the club. All this bad PR will soon be somebody else’s problem.
