Ex-Portsmouth, Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday owner Mandaric dies

Milan Mandaric, the former Portsmouth, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday owner, has died at the age of 87.

Mandaric’s family released a statement which said he passed away at a hospital in the Serbian capital of Belgrade on Saturday following a short illness.

The Serbian-American businessman, whose first involvement in English football was in 1999 when he bought Portsmouth, was most recently the vice-president of Serbian team Vojvodina who are based in the city of Novi Sad where he grew up.

“His love for football was only surpassed by that for his family. He will be sadly missed by his two daughters and three grandchildren”, said a family statement.

Mandaric took control of his father’s engineering business in the Serbian city of Novi Sad at the age of 21.

Five years later it was one of the largest firms in Yugoslavia and on a collision course with Marshal Tito, country’s communist dictator.

Tito denounced Mandaric as a “capitalist traitor” when the entrepreneur took his family to Switzerland.

Mandaric spent a year there, desperately trying to get his cash out of the Balkans, then moved to United States where he founded a computer-components firm and an electronics business.

He acquired US citizenship and signed George Best to play for the first professional sports team in Silicon Valley, the San Jose Earthquakes.

Frustrated by the slow progress of the game in the US, Mandaric bought Belgian club Charleroi and then moved on to Nice.

Portsmouth were on the brink of bankruptcy when he bought them in 1999 before being revived under his stewardship in a pattern which would earn him a reputation as football’s ‘ Mr Fixit’.

There would be the wobbly start as owner and club got acquainted, a few spins of the managerial merry-go-round, investment in the squad, improvement, promotion, consolidation, sale.

With Harry Redknapp appointed as manager, Mandaric’s Portsmouth won the Championship in 2003 before he sold the club to French-Israeli businessman Alexandre Gaydamak for £32m in 2006.

Mandaric bought Leicester City for £6m in 2007. The Foxes were relegated to League One in 2007-08 but returned as champions in 08-09 and lost in the Championship play-off semi-finals in 09-10.

He sold Leicester to Thailand’s Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha for £40m later that year and bought a heavily indebted Sheffield Wednesday for £1.

Before Mandaric sold them to another Thai, Dejphon Chansiri, for $ 37.50 million, the Owls moved from League One in 2012.

Manadaric and Redknapp were also eminently involved in a corruption case that began with a BBC Panorama investigation in 2006 and ended with their convictions for tax evasion in 2012.

Mandaric looked into buying back Wednesday earlier this year to prevent the current club from being “destroyed” by Chansiri.