This is my team, my money, my players

Initially, he was known as a firebrand rent-a-quote ("My name is Jesus Gil, not Jesus Christ", on his inability to resist temptation; "He's bad news, like a piranha when you're sitting on the bidet" on Mexican striker Hugo Sanchez; "I'll just machine gun the lot of them" after a disappointing Atletico loss) but he soon descended into self-parody.

When Atletico's debts spun out of control, he engaged in Enron-style shenanigans to cook the books. First, he founded a new political party and got himself elected Mayor of Marbella with a platform based on turning the whole southern part of Spain into a giant tax haven. One of the first things he did when he got into office was decree that the city of Marbella should become Atletico's shirt sponsors to the tune of £20m a year - at a time when Manchester United got £5m from their shirt sponsors. His other favourite trick was finding young men, usually African construction workers from his building sites, registering them as professional footballers and then slapping multi-million pound valuations on them to improve the balance sheet.

FLAVIANO TONELLOTTO When this architect-turned-realtor took control of Triestina in the summer of 2005, nobody had heard of him, so he decided to set off with a bang: "This is my team, my money, my players... any manager who works for me has got to understand this. It's all mine. Sure, I'll keep a manager around for a few months, but then that's it. Why should I keep paying a guy to set out a few cones and fill out a team sheet?"

As hard as he was on managers, he was worse on players. Fifteen of the 18 senior professionals on the books were fined or suspended or both within the first month, for offences as disparate as being seen out on the town having a glass of wine at 6pm two days before a match to questioning the revolving door managerial policy, which saw three coaches employed in the space of a month. "Players and managers are ignorant, overpaid oafs... you don't see idiots like that making decisions in other businesses, why should football be any different?" he said.

Fortunately, the courts agreed. Within six months he was arrested for fraud and he has been in prison ever since.

DMITRY PITERMAN This Ukrainian born, American passport holding former Soviet Olympic triple jumper caused consternation when he took over Racing Santander and named himself as the manager. When the Spanish FA politely explained that he didn't have the necessary badges and would therefore not be allowed at pitch-side, he bought a camera and a bib and named himself as the official team photographer, just so he could decide subsitutions and line-ups directly.

He soon moved on to Alaves, where he went through four managers in less than a year. Each was let go for not being solicitious enough in following his instructions. "I operate by consensus," he said. "Consensus means everyone agreeing with me. If they don't agree, they will be sacked."

He has banned all his employees from speaking to the press, posed naked for a magazine, called his players "mercenaries" and said that "most managers are idiots who just waste your money."

LUCIANO GAUCCI This former chef and bus conductor built up one of Italy's biggest commercial cleaning ventures, before rolling over the profits into horse-racing and stud farms (legend has it that he used to collect sperm in marmalade jars). By the time he moved into football, he had a well-earned reputation as a loose cannon.

At one point he owned three different clubs at the same time - Viterbese, Catania and Perugia - while maintaining minority shares in three other teams. In 1998 he appointed the first and only woman manager in a major league when he called upon Carolina Morace to coach Viterbese. He sacked her after four games in charge. A few years later, he tried to to sign a woman footballer for Perugia. When he was rebuffed he came back and threatened to field a horse in his starting XI ("A male horse", he proudly specified).

Unhappy with refereeing decisions, he twice tried to withdraw Perugia from Serie A, attempting to register them in the Israeli league instead. He also kept the whole team under lock and key in a remote hotel for 10 days in the build-up to a crucial relegation six-pointer.

A harmless eccentric? Possibly... until you consider that he bankrupted all his clubs and fled to the Dominican Republic leaving behind seven arrest warrants for fraud and unpaid debts in excess of £30m. He now lives in a beach house with his new girlfriend: the 20-year-old former fiancee of his son Riccardo, who is now in prison for his father's crimes.

KIRSAN ILYUMZHINOV The best thing you can say about his foray into football was that it was brief. Ilyumzhinov is the president of the semi-independent Russian republic of Kalmykia and, in 1995, he became president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) largely on the strength of the tens of millions of dollars of public money which he has thrown at the game.

In the late 1990s he decided to turn his attention to football, taking over the local side, Uralan, and making the usual raft of promises, such as winning the Champions League by 2010 and coaxing Diego Maradona out of retirement. They gained promotion to the top-flight, but the next season they were relegated.

He quickly lost interest to the point that he stopped paying the club's bills. The lucky players were released, the others were made to continue on a shoestring. And I do mean "shoestring". On a number of occasions, he sent squads of just 11 players and the manager on away trips to save on plane tickets. Once, he sent just eight men, one of whom had been promoted player-manager overnight. And when that wasn't enough, he made them take the train or bus, even to places like St Petersburg, a hefty six-day round trip.

Uralan folded in 2004 and Ilyumzhinov has since focused on other priorities, like chess and his autobiography, "The President's Crown of Thorns". It narrates how the young Kirsan was taught to play chess by "a black masked ghost", how he was abducted by aliens while on a business trip to Moscow ("I flew on their air ship to a distant star") and how much the people of Kalmykia love him (Chapter seven is entitled: "Without Me The People Are Incomplete").