An Tuesday evening, Chelsea FC lost their Champions League group game at Dinamo Zagreb, on Wednesday morning the senior management of the London football club gave coach Thomas Tuchel the notice of termination. The chronological sequence of these two events suggests that the separation has primarily sporting reasons.
In reality, however, things are said to have been crunching behind the scenes for much longer; According to a BBC report, Tuchel’s expulsion was certain even before the unsuccessful European Cup trip to Croatia. In any case, as a farewell, the club dedicated a statement to the coach with four short paragraphs that were noticeably distanced in terms of content.
Start of the season not a disaster
In January 2021, Tuchel took over Chelsea in the middle of the Premier League table and immediately put them back on track. At the end of the season, the club sensationally won the Champions League. About a year and a half after taking office, it’s already over for Tuchel, who has seemed increasingly tense in recent weeks – for example when he fought on the sidelines with Tottenham Hotspur coach Antonio Conte.
Chelsea sit sixth in the table after six games, which certainly doesn’t live up to their own standards, but it’s not a total disaster this early in the season. The defeat at the start of the Champions League group stage doesn’t have to make anyone nervous. But that’s apparently not the point.
Tuchel had to go because Chelsea’s new co-owner and chairman, US entrepreneur and investor Todd Boehly, allegedly wanted to get rid of him after the takeover at the end of May. Among other things, there was apparently disagreement about Tuchel’s responsibilities at the club after important figures such as the powerful board member Marina Granovskaya – a close confidant of the previous owner Roman Abramovich – left the club. Every major decision at Chelsea went through her desk, especially when it came to player transfers and contract negotiations.
Disagree with transfers
According to information from the Guardian, the working relationship between Tuchel and Boehly was so bad that they hardly spoke to each other. Given the sums that Chelsea invested in new players in the summer, this is quite explosive.
Chelsea are estimated to have spent the equivalent of over 280 million euros, more than any other Premier League club. But not all additions are said to have been committed on Tuchel’s initiative; the coach is said to have partially resisted acquisitions that Boehly wanted to enforce against his will.
Some players are also said to have spoken out against Tuchel because they no longer agreed with the coach’s tactics. In the defeats against Leeds and Southampton Chelsea were extremely weak and in some situations seemed insufficiently organized, and the performance against Zagreb was now more than disappointing. Tuchel then went on the offensive and openly criticized the team.
New club management wants different hierarchies
“At the moment everything is missing, there is too much to analyze,” he told the broadcaster “BT Sport” – he himself also played a role. “We have to be much better. We’re not done, we’re not satisfied, but I thought we were on the right track. I’m surprised by this performance.” No coach who clings to his job with all his might speaks like that.
Even at his former clubs Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain, Tuchel had been at odds because he had fallen out with the club management in both places. BVB managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke thanked Tuchel for what he had achieved, but also criticized him sharply: When it came to things like trust, respect, teamwork and loyalty, we couldn’t find each other anymore. The fact that Tuchel has no future at Chelsea is more likely due to the fact that the new club management around Boehly wants to form its own internal hierarchies – and Tuchel was once part of the “old” Chelsea FC.
According to the club, they now want to quickly present a successor. According to media reports, Brighton manager Graham Potter is at the top of Boehly’s list, but the names of Mauricio Pochettino, Zinedine Zidane and Brendan Rodgers are also being traded. For Tuchel, on the other hand, what is probably the most successful chapter of his coaching career so far ends abruptly and unhappily, even if nobody can take his Champions League triumph away from him.
