Milan Mandaric: Mr Pompey the Mandaric for all seasons

'If Leeds go bankrupt it will be an embarrassment... if you can't manage a club with £40m a year, you shouldn't be in this business'

There are four kinds of tycoons in football. There is the kind, such as John Magnier at Manchester United, who have no particular interest in the game but see it as a worthwhile investment. There are those, such as the late Jack Walker at Blackburn Rovers and Sir Jack Hayward at Wolves, who are local boys made very good indeed, whose interest is not in making a buck but revitalising their home-town club. Then there are those who are not remotely local, but are nevertheless able to indulge a lifelong passion for a particular club by buying into it, to wit Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa, potential saviour of Leeds United.

And finally, there is the most intriguing kind of all, the tycoons who love football but shop around for a club as they would for a yacht. Into this category come Roman Abramovich of Chelsea, David Sullivan of Birmingham City and the man alongside me in the plush lounge of London's Carlton Tower hotel, 65-year-old Milan Mandaric.

The Serb, who made his multi-millions in California's Silicon Valley, used to own, or part-own, San Jose Earthquake in the United States, Standard Liege in Belgium, and the French club Nice. He is now the 100 per cent owner of Portsmouth FC. That 100 per cent is a matter of pride to him. "I am probably the only man who owns 100 per cent of a British football club," he says. "Not 97 or 82 per cent."

He is a charming fellow with old world manners, as befits someone brought up in the former Austro-Hungarian empire. In business, however, there is an iron fist inside the velvet glove. Two seasons ago, when Portsmouth succumbed 5-0 to West Bromwich Albion, Mandaric refused to pay the players' wages.

I invite him to recall the episode in his own strongly-accented words, which I transcribe here verbatim, linguistic quirks and all. He leans forward in his chair. The recollection still inflames him. "I came back from 12 hours flying, tired as hell, to see the match at West Brom. I see the players walking on the field, they seem to have no interest. They lose 5-0 and afterwards hug like nothing happened. But then I see disappointed supporters who have paid maybe £50, for the ticket and gasoline.

"Then I get e-mail from a soldier in Afghanistan. He tells me that he wears a blue Pompey shirt under his uniform, and that he has just read we lost 5-0 at West Brom and the players didn't try. He says, 'when I go on a mission, I don't know if I'm going back. But I'm committed to my mission. Are you committed to your mission, Mr Chairman?' I almost cry. Some of these players are earning £10,000 a week, far more than soldiers, and that's fine, that's what football salaries are, but win or lose, they've got to show me commitment.

"So the following Tuesday was the first of the month, payroll day. I think 'how can I pay people not earning their money?' So I call my controller and say 'no releases on the salary'. I told the manager, Graham Rix, 'I'm not going to pay you, the coaching staff or any players.' They were good lads, don't take me wrong, but I don't like it when people take money and give nothing back. I got my money the old-fashioned way. I earnt it."

I resist the urge to jump to my feet and applaud, not least because I don't wholly approve. Thin ends and wedges come to mind. But most football fans did approve, and Mandaric says now that he regrets not challenging the Professional Footballers' Association, who quickly forced him to retreat, for a little longer.

Whatever, it is all water down the Solent, on which subject, Mandaric is disappointed but not surprised by the fierce enmity between Portsmouth and Southampton supporters, manifest at Tuesday night's Carling Cup match between the two sides at St Mary's.

"There is definitely no lost love there," he says with a sigh. "We have fantastic supporters and I will never forget the FA Cup game at Man U last season, 10,000 people singing and enjoying the day. But with Southampton, something triggers them well before my time. When we played against Leeds they remembered that Peter Reid had played a short time at Southampton. They called him all kinds of names."

There is, of course, nothing he can realistically do about the Pompey-Saints loathing, which will erupt again later this month when the two sides play each other in the league for the first time in 15 years. Yet in a way he is responsible for bringing it back to the boil, for it is he, albeit with the considerable help of manager Harry Redknapp and the players, who has returned Portsmouth to the top division.

The pressing question is: can Portsmouth stay there? After a wonderful start to the season the team has suddenly gone into freefall. Is Mandaric worried, I wonder, by the spectre of a speedy return to the Nationwide League?

"Well, we knew at the beginning of season that we would lose a lot of games. Our reason to open champagne at end of the season will be to finish in the 17th place, and to do that we will lose a lot of games, so let's not get carried away. We had a tremendously good start, but it was maybe too good too soon, to be honest with you, because we start to think we are good enough.

"No disrespect, I love my players, but they have to play at 100 per cent every game, because at 70 per cent we don't have a chance. For Chelsea, Arsenal or Man U, 70 per cent is usually good enough. So will we stay up? Harry thought we had the players to stay up, but we have lost seven or eight key guys through injury lately. We are going to have to bring in a couple more at least." In doing so, however, Mandaric will keep a keen eye on the balance sheet. Like Reggie Perrin's boss CJ, he did not get where he is today without keeping a keen eye on the balance sheet.

"A lot of clubs are run on an emotional basis," he says. "I love football but I don't do it that way. I have invested so far well over £20m out of my pocket, but it is investment in future, because when we accomplish what we are trying to do, this club will be worth at least that much and maybe more.

"We are building a beautiful project, a 35,000-seat stadium and around it a futuristic city of the 21st century, the Pompey Village, with luxury apartments, the shoppings, restaurants, tennis. People say it will be like the Chelsea Village, but you can't compare. There are lots of places like that in London. This will be unique."

For his vision, and what he has achieved already, he has been awarded the freedom of Portsmouth. But the club's fans should be delighted to know that the freeman feels shackled by business considerations.

"If it is done right, football can be viable business," he says. "But there is too much financial irresponsibility, money coming in too easy, and going out too easy. Players' salaries are out of control, agents' demands are out of control. And there is problem when the manager brings in a player on big salary and after two months decides he doesn't want to work with this player. So he brings a new player, and the first one ends up earning fortune playing for reserve team. So the manager must have fiscal responsibility, but so must the board, and so must Premier League. All clubs should give budgets to League.

"If you say you are going to spend £40m, but are only bringing in £35m, the League should ask questions. If Leeds go bankrupt it will be the biggest embarrassment for all of English football with these millions coming from TV. We bring in £30m to £40m a year at Portsmouth. Our wages are about £20m. If you can't manage a football club with £40m a year, you shouldn't be in this business." For all that he occasionally drops a definite or indefinite article, and gets the odd phrase mixed up, Mandaric speaks impeccable sense.

It is said that in business he is a bobber and weaver, so it is no surprise that he gets on so well with Redknapp, perhaps football's best-known ducker and diver. But what they also have in common is a disabling charm.

When they fix you with a gaze, you believe what they say. So I believe Mandaric when he rubbishes the rumours that he is preparing to sell Pompey.

He insists he is there at least for the medium-term, while admitting that Mrs Mandaric thinks he devotes too much time to football, at the expense of family.

They were married when he was just beginning to show his flair for capitalism; inconveniently for him, communism was more the thing in Yugoslavia. He had converted his father's modest mechanical shop into one of the country's biggest businesses, only for Marshall Tito to declare that no company should have more than 10 employees. So he left for Switzerland, and then for America.

"To make a long story short," he says, "in my fourth year in America I was building my seventh factory. I've got to be honest, I got some breaks, but I took those breaks very firmly."

Having been a semi-pro footballer himself, and with his developing fortune, he was, in 1973, the ideal man to buy one of the West Coast franchises in the fledgling North American Soccer League. He set up San Jose Earthquake and "did in Rome what Romans do. I hired a marketing manager from an American football franchise to be my general manager. He did things we wouldn't do here, the pom-pom girls and other stuffs." And the club duly thrived. Even George Best signed up. "On the field, fantastic," Mandaric says of Best. "Off the field, nightmare, sometimes. I wanted to strangle him. But he always said 'boss, I'll make it up to you, I'll win game for you tonight'. And he always did. I knew Pele well, he's a special guy, but George was the best on the field. He's still a friend."

Did Mandaric feel saddened when Best recently put his most cherished medals up for sale? "I told him I'd like to put my hands on some of that stuff. But I think he's doing alright. I don't think he is selling the medals because he has no money. If he ever needed help I'd be there. He's a special guy."

Despite the lure of those special guys Best and Pele, the NASL eventually imploded. "We tried to buy tradition," Mandaric explains. "The Americans have a tendency to do that, but... Portsmouth goes back 103 years. You can't buy that."

So he returned to Europe and bought tradition in the form of 50 per cent of Standard Liege. Then he sold up and bought Nice, but around the same time his company "went big-time public" and the shareholders didn't want the boss away running a football club.

Finally, having eased himself out of the day-to-day running of his company, he decided to buy British. He had admired British football since he watched Manchester United at Red Star Belgrade on the eve of the Munich Air Disaster.

"I first looked at Sunderland. I was very much interested and Bob Murray wanted to sell, but changed his mind when he got permission for the new stadium. Manchester City was another one, but I could only buy 42 per cent. It wasn't a clean deal. To make a long story short I ended up buying Portsmouth, and the longer I have stayed the more I love the club."

And Redknapp? "Harry is a special guy, we all know that. I knew him in America a little and he has huge experience. If you want to turn around a struggling company, you need experience. At first I tried Harry as director of football, with Graham Rix as manager. I thought that was my dream team, but their relationship didn't work. All Harry was doing was driving me to matches." A huge smile. "He was most highest-paid chauffeur in the whole world."

And Mandaric emphatically did not get where he is today conveyed by the highest-paid chauffeur in the world.

Milan Mandaric The Life And Times

Born: 5 October 1938, in the village of Vrebac in Yugoslavia. The family move to Novi Sad in the mid-1940s.

Graduates: From Novi Sad Mechanical Engineering Facility and begins working with his coppersmith father.

1960s: Opens workshop making tools for producing car spare parts.

1966: Marries Gordana, from Novi Sad.

1967: The couple move to Switzerland, where their daughter Alexandra is born.

1969: The family moves to the United States, Mandaric becoming a US citizen in 1970. Starts company making computer circuit boards in San Jose and buys San Jose Earthquakes soccer team. Later acquires indoor soccer team Florida Thundercats.

1998: Buys French club Nice. Has also owned Charleroi and Standard Liège in Belgium.

December 1998: Sells Nice for £12m.

June 1999: Buys Portsmouth from administrators for £5m.

9 December 1999: Sacks Alan Ball as manager.

January 2000: Appoints Tony Pulis in Ball's place.

10 October 2000: Gives Pulis "full backing". Suspends him the next day for alleged misconduct, appoints Steve Claridge.

3 January 2001: Cancels Pulis's contract.

24 February 2001: Dismisses Claridge and appoints Graham Rix.

21 June 2001: Appoints Harry Redknapp Director of Football.

25 March 2002: Sacks Rix, appoints Redknapp. Average tenure of office under him has been eight months.

They say: "I knew I would be fine when I met Mr Mandaric." Alan Ball, then Portsmouth manager, in September 1999. He was sacked at Christmas.

He says: "The easiest thing is to be the nice guy, but I don't just do this job for a glass of wine and the big chair in the boardroom."