Sounds like Behdad Eghbali was the true chad who recognized Tuchel being a fraud.
Chelsea officially announced Tuchel’s departure shortly after 10am UK time. The news broke as Brighton head coach Graham Potter was having breakfast with his players ahead of a training session at the Amex Stadium. Less than half an hour later, Boehly called Brighton CEO Paul Barber to seek permission to talk to Potter about the new vacancy, making clear that the buyout clause in the 47-year-old’s contract — understood to be worth up to £20million ($23m) — would not be a problem.
High-profile free agent Mauricio Pochettino was also contacted, but Potter was the clear first choice. Understanding how Chelsea’s new owners settled on this drastic and ruthless course of action requires a closer look at the sequence of events that led to this point — a remarkable story that includes:
-Tuchel delegating some recruitment meetings to his agent owing to tensions with owners
-“Slapstick” moments as new owners got used to soccer, including a 4-4-3 formation Chelsea deny happened
-Tuchel feeling he wasn’t given the signings he asked for
-Too many players left feeling isolated or even ignored, with separate pre-season meetings
-Tuchel believing he had verbally agreed a new contract with Chelsea
-Tuchel feeling he was close to sack on pre-season over tensions with Behdad Eghbali
-Boehly displaying detailed knowledge of Potter’s career in Cucurella meeting
-How communication from owners dried up after Leeds defeat
-Tuchel is out only 16 months after leading Chelsea to Champions League glory, and the new ownership group led by Boehly and Clearlake Capital have made their most divisive decision yet.
During a summer sit-down interview with journalists as Chelsea prepared for the new season in Los Angeles, Tuchel provided a pointed assessment of his additional recruitment responsibilities under the club’s new ownership following the departures of director Marina Granovskaia and technical and performance advisor Petr Cech in June.
“I am in contact with Todd directly on a daily basis, and sometimes more than once on a daily basis (about transfers),” he said. “My concern is for the team to be competitive. This is where my focus is and has to be. For this we have to invest a lot of time and we need to be hands-on. There is no other way.
“I am very glad I have the staff, not only my staff but also the football staff and we have a certain routine that I can rely on. It is very time-consuming (the recruitment conversations). 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. But at the moment, of course, my help is needed and wanted. It is of course necessary that I step up and take the responsibility.”
Boehly’s appointment as interim sporting director made for a slightly awkward dynamic with Tuchel. It is one thing having a difference of opinion with your club’s sporting director over a particular player, but it is very different when the sporting director also happens to be the co-owner of your club.
By the end of pre-season, Tuchel felt the meetings were endless, with different owners demanding his time at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Tuchel did not in fact, perhaps understandably, always step up himself, instead sending his agent to recruitment meetings so he could focus on coaching the team. This is understood to have been an early source of tension with Chelsea’s new owners, who were seeking more direct communication with and input from their head coach as part of the process of identifying transfer targets.
A source close to Tuchel, who does not wish to be named to protect his job, counters that the former head coach was involved in every signing other than deadline day addition Denis Zakaria. When he did participate, Chelsea sources claimed his guidance was inconsistent.
Some of the owners advocated a potential move for Gabriel Jesus early in the summer but Tuchel, perhaps scarred by the Romelu Lukaku experience, insisted he did not want a No 9. He later reversed his position but then felt frustrated when Chelsea’s owners did not pursue the deal and Jesus, who was very keen to move to Stamford Bridge, joined Arsenal instead. Eventually, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang arrived on deadline day.
The conversation about signing another midfielder followed a similar course, with Tuchel’s initial reticence discarded after N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic were sidelined by foreseeable injury problems. Chelsea’s sudden urgency late in the window manifested in large, failed bids for Edson Alvarez and Romeo Lavia before the loan signing of Zakaria from Juventus.
When Boehly was intrigued by the possibility of signing Cristiano Ronaldo after meeting Jorge Mendes in Portugal, Chelsea’s head coach made his opposition to the potential deal known in no uncertain terms on several occasions. His opinion was informed by the problems he encountered managing Neymar and Kylian Mbappe at Paris Saint-Germain and from his own reservations about the player.
Boehly backed his head coach’s stance and abandoned the possibility, but relations were further strained by Tuchel publicly criticising Chelsea’s lack of transfer progress following a 4-0 pre-season humbling at the hands of Arsenal in Orlando.
Boehly openly described Tuchel as a “nightmare” to deal with on recruitment to a fellow Premier League executive and, in recent weeks, there has been a greater desire within the Chelsea hierarchy to present the nine players purchased for a total outlay in excess of £250million ($287m) this summer as club signings, rather than at the behest of the head coach. That even extends to Aubameyang, whose much-anticipated reunion with the man who unlocked him at Borussia Dortmund lasted a grand total of 59 minutes in Zagreb.
Tuchel argued that the harmony of his squad would be damaged by Ronaldo and helped by Aubameyang. The problem, however, was that any notion of harmony had already been lost.
Tensions grew outside of recruitment too. Tuchel was unhappy at being asked to feed back to Eghbali about his team meetings and felt he was likely to be sacked during pre-season because of it, only for Boehly to smooth things over. After Chelsea had lost away to Leeds a few games into the season, Tuchel and the owners stopped talking.
…
But in the second half of his tenure, that approach shifted dramatically. Tuchel did not initiate a single conversation with one first-team player for more than a year, offering no guidance on how the player could get back into his team whenever they fell out of the starting XI. Others who found themselves on the bench or left out of matchday squads entirely for stretches felt they were left similarly isolated, rather than being given advice on how to improve their situations. Despite this, most of the squad sent Tuchel messages to say thank you and good luck when he was dismissed.
btw only just saw the Zagreb match highlights. Koulibaly truly is as shocking as you could fear. Completely brain dead defending. Rudiger is missed.
Edu might be shit at selling players but he knows what he's doing when it comes to buying Brazillian players.
By Esch Go To PostGabriel always got a boneheaded mistake in himThink that's why he's starting, pretty telling that Saliba and White are the ones getting rested tonight.
By Fergie Go To PostShe's dead. Buckingham Palace confirms.
Didn't even want to wait for Aaron Ramsey.
Didnt realize how badly Costa dropped off after Chelsea
Against stats arent everything though. This doesnt account for banter, which I am sure he will still get double digits in.
Against stats arent everything though. This doesnt account for banter, which I am sure he will still get double digits in.
By Fergie Go To PostShe's dead. Buckingham Palace confirms.
Potter sacked already?
