In the US, Kenyon has just forged an alliance with AEG, a company that owns four Major League Soccer franchises, and out here he has come up with an Olympic angle in an effort to curry Chinese favour.

The world's largest gathering of football fans would be nice work if he could get it, but that's easier dreamt than done. When it comes to the Premiership, Chinese fans see red - with Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool the passions of choice. Teams like Everton and Manchester City get a boost when their Chinese imports get a run, but Chelsea barely flicker on the radar.

With his oligarch's billions and Jose Mourinho's coaching flair Kenyon thinks he can turn this around by taking China's Olympics soccer team under the club's wing.

This week Kenyon offered the Chinese Football Association a home from home in their new luxury training ground at Cobham in Surrey. Under Mourinho's tutelage, the clubs coaching staff will put the Chinese through their paces in the run up to the games. Some financial backing, tied in with heaps of tactical advice and backroom management support, should help the young team blossom, he told officials. Bringing some clout to the table, he was backed up by London mayor Ken Livingstone and 2012 Games chief Sebastian Coe, himself a life-long Chelsea supporter.

Beijing officials, by this stage well used to foreigners throwing themselves at their feet, are being coy about the advances, but it seems they're suitably impressed. Chelsea are also trying to involve themselves at the grassroots level by funding the 'Vision China' project, an initiative aimed at setting up amateur city-based leagues around the country to provide some kind of stepping stone between under-age football and the professional leagues.

On the sports front there is no bigger deal in China these days than the Olympics, so any leg-up Chelsea could give the national team would be gratefully received in official quarters. But would that appreciation rub off on the millions of fans around the country? Not a hope - certainly that's the view of Chen Xiaochen, for one, who runs Soccer Fans, an official merchandise store in Beijing.

'Chelsea are despised in China by most football fans,' Chen said. 'In China's society we have a vulgar generation of nouveau riche. They were peasants until recently, now they are very rich. Who knows how they got their money? You don't ask. But now they behave very badly, throw tantrums and think their money can buy them everything. That's what Chelsea is always compared to in China,' he said. His sentiments are echoed in numerous Chinese blogs and chatrooms.

In the US Chelsea have about 200,000 supporters compared to United's four million, according to recent market research Kenyon cited, but he said figures he had seen suggested Chelsea were now as popular as United in China.

Comments like these make Chen and other football industry folk chuckle. All last season he sold about 10 Chelsea shirts, compared to several hundred United, Liverpool and Arsenal kits. Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan and other continental European teams are also way more popular than the boys from Stamford Bridge.

What they all have that Chelsea still lacks is an established history at the helm, with teeming trophy rooms to prove their long-term pedigree. Fickle though Asian football fans can be, most need to see more than a couple of seasons of domestic dominance before they become devotees.

Mourinho would no doubt love to be seen as the maestro conductor if China's under-23s could make a miraculous surge and take a football medal at the Olympics - and sexy PR for his club it would no doubt be. But for Chinese football fans to be converted to the blue movement he'll need to do a lot more than just impress at the Olympic Games.