Its been just over 100 days since American billionaire Todd Boehly took over Chelsea Football Club, and already quite a things have been altered at the club. Most notably of them is the change of managerial guard from Thomas Tuchel To Graham Potter. It was an unexpected decision from Boehly to sack the German, despite the Blues enduring a run of poor results which saw them lose against Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.
Moreover, after the American had provided Tuchel with signings worth £272 million in the summer transfer market nobody saw the axe coming. But Boehly fired Tuchel after Chelsea managed just 3 wins from from their first 7 games of the season. The billionaire has now finally opened up on the sacking of their Champions League wining coach.
Boehly suggests ‘vision’ shared by the owners and Thomas Tuchel for the club differed
Thomas Tuchel had already established his legacy at Stamford Bridge after steering the Blues to Champions League glory within five months on his appointment in January 2021. A UEFA Super Cup and the club’s first ever Club World Cup followed which elevated the joy of the Chelsea hierarchy who extended the German’s stay at the club.
However, a change in the ownership from Roman Abramovich to Todd Boehly apparently didn’t go down well with Thomas Tuchel. Reports suggested the Blues’ manager was at constant conflict with the new owner and that the two disagreed over a lot of issues. Most recent was the potential signing of Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo. While Boehly was keen on landing the 37-year-old who was available, Tuchel was against the idea and the owners had to give in to their coach’s wish.
However, Boehly and Tuchel have now parted ways and the owner has given an insight on what happened behind the closed doors. The American has suggested his consortium of which also includes co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano had different ideas and plans for Chelsea as compared to Tuchel. Boehly while speaking at SALT Conference in his native country said:
“When you take over any business, You have to make sure you are aligned with the people in the business, and Tuchel is obviously extremely talented and obviously someone who had great success with Chelsea. Our vision for the club was to find a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us, a coach who really wanted to collaborate.
“There are a lot of walls to break down at Chelsea. Before, the first team and academy didn’t really share data, didn’t share information about where the top players were coming from. Our goal is to bring a team together; all of that needs to be a well-oiled machine.
“The reality of our decision was that we weren’t sure that Thomas saw it the same way we saw it. No one is right or wrong, we just didn’t have a shared vision for the future. It wasn’t about Zagreb, it was about the shared vision for what we wanted Chelsea to look like. It wasn’t a decision that was made because of a single win or loss. It was a decision that we thought was the right vision for the club.”
Chelsea have now brought in Brighton’s Graham Potter to lead their long term project on a five-year deal. Potter’s first game in charge of the Blues will be the Champions League game against RB Salzburg. The new boss will now look to rectify his predecessor’s mistakes to clinch Chelsea’s first win the European competition.