Invisible man of Omsk is missing their big moment

"For years this was my favourite team. But tickets nowadays are either very difficult to get or just too expensive. One ticket costs 400 roubles (£7.85) which is far beyond my pocket."

Yet Ivanilov admitted he understood why Abramovich invested so much - $100million (£53m) is one conservative estimate of Sibneft's backing of

Avangard since 1998. "It's a question of prestige," he said.

What could be more prestigious than winning the inaugural four-day European Champions Cup tournament, which begins today, featuring the league winners of Europe's six top hockey nations?

Abramovich has even bought one of the world's greatest players to make it happen. The NHL lockout put North American-based superstars on the market and Abramovich nabbed the biggest, the New York Rangers' Czech maestro Jaromir Jagr, on a $1.6m (£850,000) contract, making him the best-paid player in Russia. It was the equivalent of buying Ronaldo.

Omsk, where apparently the height of excitement is a day out at the prison that once housed novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, went Jagr-crazy. Even the player, who wears the No68 shirt in protest at the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, has apparently been seduced by Russia's snowy charms.

So Abramovich may seem a silent partner, but he is not an inactive one. The story goes that in December 2003, he invited captain Oleg Tverdovsky to his mansion outside Moscow to ask how his money might transform their fortunes. Within months, new signings helped make them champions.

Apparently, Abramovich last attended an Omsk away fixture two years ago, but, some claim, in the early days his face once betrayed all the anticipation it does now when watching Chelsea.

Cynics say his preference for the King's Road over frozen Omsk should surprise no one. For while owning a hockey team in Russia was seen as social responsibility for a tycoon - Avangard is nominally a not-for-profit organisation - running Chelsea was all about glamour.

Sovetski Sport newspaper columnist Yuri Tsibanyov has written about the semi-finals of the Russian hockey premiership of 2003, when Omsk played a team from the Vologda region. Tsibanyov claimed Abramovich rang the local governor and asked: "What was the result? My team lost? That's great. It will save me a lot of money."

This, reckoned Tsibanyov, would explain a lot about Abramovich. "Oligarchs have some investments that are like an obligatory burden," he wrote. "Chelsea is a different matter. It's an eternal monument to himself."