Tuesday night, following Chelsea‘s 1-0 defeat in their Champions League opener at Dinamo Zagreb, Thomas Tuchel faced the cameras looking a little bit like Dennis Hopper’s character in “True Romance” after he gets the kiss of death from Christopher Walken and takes a drag of his cigarette. He knows what’s coming, and he knows it’s not good.
At least that’s how it looks in hindsight, which is always 20/20. Asked if he was worried about Chelsea’s start to the season — three defeats in seven games in all competitions — he said: “It’s not about worry. It’s about reality.”
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In these situations, clubs are always keen to get their version of events across, so it was no coincidence that they let it be known that there had been concerns for some time and that this was not a “knee-jerk” reaction to the defeat Tuesday night.
I’m not sure to what degree that explanation passes the smell test.
It’s not because they didn’t have reason to be concerned. Apart from the home game against Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea really haven’t played well all season. But if you’re concerned to the point that you’re thinking of firing your manager, you don’t normally go on a massive spending spree over the summer, when Chelsea were the biggest-spending side in Europe, both in gross terms (more than a quarter of a billion pounds, close to $300 million) and net terms (a record £200m or $230m). That is especially the case when you’re acquiring players and signing contracts essentially without a front office, since the previous regime of managing director Marina Granovskaia, sporting director Petr Cech and scouting and recruitment guru Scott McLachlan had all either left or were leaving.
The joke was that Todd Boehly, who leads the ownership group, was the de facto “interim sporting director” of the club, except it wasn’t a joke. He really was the guy flying around Europe, talking to agents and intermediaries and negotiating contracts with input from Tuchel.
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Boehly, who wrestled in college and still has that stocky, amateur grappler look, is no doubt a very bright man and has plenty of experience owning a sports team. (He is co-owner of Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers.) But this is a different sport, a different role, and one that wasn’t even on his radar until just over six months ago when Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, setting off the chain of events that led to Roman Abramovich’s departure.
And so Chelsea operated this past summer the way most English clubs used to operate two decades ago: with a manager deciding which players he wanted to bring in and which ones he wanted to let go while the club, in the form of Boehly, fulfilled his wishes.
