New Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has revealed the real reason Thomas Tuchel was sacked. The American businessman sat down in the US recently where he broke his silence regarding the dismissal of the German coach, and says it was due to a difference in how the two men viewed the Club’s long-term future.
Thomas Tuchel was sacked following Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat away to Dinamo Zagreb in the UEFA Champions League last week. The decision came as a shock to many Chelsea fans seeing that Tuchel was adored by the majority of the Blues’ faithful, as well as the Club backing the manager with close to £300million spent in the transfer window just past. However, the defeat in Croatia simply capped off what had been an extremely underwhelming start to the current campaign.
Speaking to the SALT Conference in America, Boehly justified his decision, claiming: “Our goal is to bring a team together that with the academy, first team, with the clubs we want to acquire and develop, all of that needs to be a well-oiled machine and the reality of our decision was that we just weren’t sure that Thomas felt the same way we thought.”
The American then went on to clarify that the decision to part ways with Tuchel was not solely based on the result in Zagreb: “No one is right or wrong, we just didn’t have a shared vision for the future and it wasn’t about Zagreb, it’s really about the shared vision for what we wanted for Chelsea FC to look like.
“It wasn’t a decision that was made about a single win or loss, it was made about what we thought was the right vision for the club.”
Chelsea moved swiftly to appoint now-former Brighton boss Graham Potter as the new manager. The deal was completed within a few days of Tuchel’s departure, which suggests Boehly had been planning for the ex-PSG boss’s exit for quite some time.
The American tycoon did nothing to hide his ideas for Chelsea’s long-term future whilst sending subtle digs at Tuchel, indicating that the coach was not in line with his plan.
“You have to make sure you are aligned with the people in the business, and Tuchel is obviously extremely talented and obviously someone who had great success with Chelsea.
“Our vision for the club was finding a manager who really wanted to collar with us and I think there’s a lot of walls to break down at Chelsea. Before the first team and the academy, they didn’t have the data or information about where those top players were coming from.” Boehly’s interview suggests he and Tuchel did not have a harmonious relationship as the two bumped heads through idea differences. The Chelsea owner will be under severe pressure to ensure his goal is achieved after taking over football operations off the back of having no knowledge of the sport, as well as firing a manager that was a firm fans favourite.