Thomas Tuchel was fired by Chelsea on Wednesday only one month into the season.
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. -AP
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