Chelsea’s new American owners took a gamble with the first managerial appointment of their tenure, hiring Graham Potter from Premier League rival Brighton on Thursday despite his lack of experience coaching at soccer’s highest level.
The 47-year-old Potter agreed to a five-year deal as the
replacement for Thomas Tuchel, who was fired on Wednesday after an apparent
breakdown in his relationship with Chelsea’s recently installed ownership team
fronted by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly.
While Tuchel won the Champions League with Chelsea last year
and previously ran a locker room of soccer superstars — such as Kylian Mbappé
and Neymar — at Paris Saint-Germain, Potter has a more obscure coaching past
and has won only one trophy, the Swedish Cup in 2017.
That came during a seven-year stint at remote Swedish club
Ostersund (2011-18), which he led from the country’s fourth tier to the first
division and then into the Europa League for the first time.
Since then, he has coached Swansea for one season in English
soccer’s second division, guiding the team to the FA Cup quarterfinals, before
taking over at Brighton in 2019. Brighton is currently in fourth place in the
Premier League, having finished last season in ninth — the highest in the
club’s history.
Chelsea said Potter would bring “progressive football and
innovative coaching” to the club, while Boehly said the new coach “fits our
vision.”
“Not only is he extremely talented on the pitch,” Boehly
said of Potter, “he has skills and capabilities that extend beyond the pitch
which will make Chelsea a more successful club.”
Potter, who played mostly for lower-league English teams in
an undistinguished career from 1992-2005 before retiring at the age of 30 and
going into higher education, is widely admired as one of the country’s best
tacticians and has a brave, entertaining style of play that has won plaudits if
not trophies. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has said he is a “big fan”
of Potter because of the way his “players move with freedom and ... have the
courage to play everywhere.”
And Boehly, the face of Chelsea’s ownership, has been
convinced that Potter is the man to instill a long-term soccer ethos and
identity throughout the club at the start of the new era.
The demands Potter will face at Chelsea will contrast
sharply with those at his previous clubs, however, unlikely giving him as much
time to cultivate a team as he has had so far in his career.
“He’ll be expected to win every week, to challenge for
trophies,” said former Chelsea player and assistant coach Jody Morris. “It’s
totally different to being in a club where you are expected to be midtable and
can go a couple of months without winning a game. You go a couple of games
without winning at Chelsea and it’ll be totally different.”
Potter’s time in Sweden offers an interesting insight into
why he is lauded as a good man-manager and a thinker of the game.
Under Potter, Ostersund, which prides itself on developing
its players as people before sportsmen, started what it called a “Culture
Academy” where squad members and coaches were faced with challenges to their
mental process and decision-making under pressure.
After achieving promotion one year, Potter and his players
put on a modern-dance production in the city’s theater, set to music from Swan
Lake. -AP
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