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| Photo Credit: AP. |
(AP) - Chelsea’s new American owners are proving to be just as ruthless as the man they replaced.
Thomas
Tuchel was fired by the Premier League club on Wednesday, only one month into
the season and just days after Chelsea’s recently installed ownership — fronted
by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly — concluded a Europe-high
spending spree of nearly $300 million in the transfer window.
Chelsea was
renowned for regularly changing managers in the 19-year tenure of Roman
Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who had to sell the London club after being
sanctioned by the British government for what it called his enabling of Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s “brutal and barbaric invasion” of Ukraine.
Boehly was
the face of the consortium that bought Chelsea for 2.5 billion pounds ($3.1
billion) in May and, despite having little soccer experience, quickly made
himself chairman as well as interim sporting director in charge of transfers.
Not only has
he overseen a record splurge on new players, Boehly has now decided Tuchel —
the coach who led Chelsea to the Champions League title last year — is no
longer the right person to lead the team in the new era.
The decision
to fire Tuchel, who was manager for 20 months, came a day after Chelsea
surprisingly lost to Dinamo Zagreb 1-0 in its first group match of the
Champions League. Chelsea has also lost two of its first six games — to Leeds
and Southampton — in an underwhelming start to the Premier League that has seen
the team’s new signings fail to gel.
Tuchel has
been a frustrated and prickly figure after matches this season. In interviews
after the loss to Dinamo, he said “everything is missing” when asked to sum up
Chelsea’s performance and complained that his players “lacked hunger.”
In a feisty
Premier League game against Tottenham, Tuchel was sent off — along with rival
manager Antonio Conte — and later fined after they went head-to-head in a
post-match scuffle because Tuchel failed to let go of his grip in the
traditional handshake.
“As the new
ownership group reaches 100 days since taking over the club, and as it
continues its hard work to take the club forward, the new owners believe it is
the right time to make this transition,” Chelsea said in a statement, which
also said Tuchel “will rightly have a place” in the club’s history.
After all,
the 49-year-old German guided Chelsea to the Champions League title less than
six months after taking over as manager in January 2021, as the replacement for
Frank Lampard. Tuchel only had one full season at the helm and that saw Chelsea
eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Champions League — to eventual champion
Real Madrid — before finishing third in the Premier League, 19 points behind
champion Manchester City.
A big reason
why Chelsea faded in the second half of last season was the turbulence caused
by the change of ownership and it was a wild offseason at Stamford Bridge, too,
with dozens of players — including Cristiano Ronaldo — linked with a move to
the London club as Boehly looked to make his presence felt in the transfer
market.
Raheem
Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella came in for big fees, before the
final days of the transfer window saw Chelsea spend 75 million pounds ($87
million) on French center back Wesley Fofana and then bring in Pierre-Emerick
Aubameyang from Barcelona to plug a gap in its striker options.
Aubameyang
cited playing under Tuchel before — at Borussia Dortmund — as a benefit of the
move and was handed a debut against Dinamo. That proved to be Tuchel’s last
game in charge, perhaps leaving Aubameyang’s long-term status uncertain.
That will
depend who comes in to replace Tuchel. British media has already linked Graham
Potter, currently manager of in-form Premier League club Brighton, and Mauricio
Pochettino, with the vacancy.
Potter has
no real experience of handling a squad of star players but is highly regarded
for his tactical astuteness and entertaining style of play. Pochettino has
experience of overseeing a locker room of egos — he was recently coach of a
Paris Saint-Germain team containing Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Neymar —
and has been out of work since parting ways with the French champions in July.
More AP
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Steve
Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80