By Simon Evans
MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Chelsea just spent over 250 million pounds ($285.50 million) on new players – and sold around ten of their first-team squad members – during a busy transfer window but six days after the deadline for deals closed, they have sacked coach Thomas Tuchel.
The decision, from new club owner Todd Boehly who took over the club three months ago, came the morning after a defeat by Dinamo Zagreb in their opening Champions League game but it is unlikely that the move was prompted purely by short term form.
The club’s statement gave no reason for the decision and made no reference to recent results.
“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,” read the statement.
Tuchel is widely respected as a tactician and coach and has an impressive list of trophies won in his time with Borussia Dortmund, Paris St Germain and Chelsea.
But the intensity that he visibly brings to the job of coaching a team, which often leads him to remonstrate with referees and his players, also makes him a high maintenance manager.
“Thomas is a difficult person, but a fantastic coach,” Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke said after his departure from the Bundesliga club in 2017, adding that the coach and club hierarchy “just didn’t fit”.
When Tuchel left PSG, on Christmas Eve in 2020, the club’s then sporting director, Brazilian Leonardo had a similar explanation.
“The separation was natural. The year before, there had been complicated situations that destabilised the environment. It’s human that the points of view were different; it was difficult to establish a relationship between us,” Leonardo said.
Tuchel has been able to inspire players to higher levels of performance but also has frequently run into conflict with them.
“In terms of sports, Tuchel is something. His training was incredible,” said former Dortmund keeper Roman Weidenfeller.
“He is a true visionary. But in terms of human relations with him it is difficult,” he added.
Former Mainz goalkeeper Heinz Mueller went further saying “At some point he became a real dictator. He was unforgiving”.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
There is nothing new, of course, about football managers who are difficult to work with, demanding, single-minded, even authoritarian.
Indeed, the history of the game is full of such characters, including some of the most successful like Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho.
But that style works best when the club owner is happy to sit back and cede control of all football matters to the manager — an approach which is increasingly rare in the modern game — or where the coach is left simply to coach.
Neither appear to have been the case at Chelsea.
Boehly is not just the club’s owner but with the departure of the club’s long serving contracts chief Marina Granovskaia and technical advisor Petr Cech, he has taken on the role of ‘sporting director’.
Tuchel said in July that he and Boehly were working together on the transfer recruitment. “We are in a very intense and close relationship to get the signings done and get the team better,” he said.
But he also suggested he had some discomfort with being taken away from the training field to deal with transfers.
“It’s not my favourite thing to do and in the long run the focus has to be on coaching because it is why I am here,” he said during the pre-season tour of the United States.
The money was spent — Raheem Sterling, Marc Cucurella, Wesley Fofana, Kalidou Koulibaly and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang all brought in but now it will be another man who has the task of turning them into a successful team.
Tuchel will be back — he is a man who led Chelsea to the Champions League title after just half a season at the club after all — and when the next opening emerges at one of Europe’s top clubs, difficult man or not, he will be in contention.
($1 = 0.8757 pounds)
(Reporting by Simon Evans; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
