It is the largest shipwreck of a football liner. In just nine and a half months, Chelsea starred in a sporting collapse as unusual as it was dizzying, which distances it from any chance of success in the near future. The captain of this Titanic was not going from England to the United States but in the opposite direction. We do not remember a similar collapse in at least sixty years of football.
The economic losses are astronomical, but in the case of people well on the Forbes list, a thousand million more or a thousand less is an anecdote. Not for the fan. A club that was a stellar protagonist in the last two decades fell off the precipice of defeats.
(Luis Díaz helped Liverpool’s long-suffering victory over Brentford) (Shakira and Piqué, ‘Otra vez juntos’, protagonists of another success, video)
Powerful
Beyond the victims and the devastation of the invaded country, no one regretted the war in Russia and Ukraine more than the supporters of the London club. The reason…? The British Government, which already wanted it, took advantage of the circumstance to expel the Russian magnate Roman Abramovich from the country.
This, like so many powerful people, was covered with millions, but few knew of its existence. And, like others of his lineage, he entered soccer, which gives notoriety, fame. He is an expensive chiche, but he seduces.
Suddenly, one of these Forbesmans spends a billion or two billion, buys a club and becomes a popular figure in the media, signs contracts with world stars and invites princes, sheikhs, executives, politicians, champagne to his presidential box. colorful personalities. After express deportation, Abramovich was forced to sell his most precious toy: Chelsea FC.
There appeared an American group headed by Todd Bohley, owner of a vast business empire, whose fortune is valued at 6,000 million dollars. On a sporting level, Bohely is one of the owners of Los Angeles Dodgers (baseball), Los Angeles Sparks (women’s basketball) and Los Angeles Lakers (men’s basketball).
He was accompanied on the adventure by Mark Walter, also co-owner of the Dodgers (baseball), the Swiss millionaire Hansjorg Wyss and the US investment firm Clearlake Capital. Bohely and his partners bought the club for $5.312 million. The purchase was approved for them on May 25, 2022 and they took over Stamford Bridge a few days later. In such a short period of time, the nonsense was so many and on such a scale that Chelsea is today a football ruin with a very complex healing.
Chelsea was a traditional club, but it had managed only one league (in 1955) until the arrival of Abramovich on July 1, 2003. There it began an exceptional growth and became a planetary club, obtaining 21 titles, including 5 Premier League, 5 English Cup, 3 League Cup, 2 Champions League, 2 Europa League, 1 Club World Cup, 2 Community Shield, 1 European Super Cup. It has been phenomenal for his fans and for English football.
Almost identical to the Manchester City film, which after the arrival of the Emirati investment fund became a leading club in the world. Twenty-one crowns in 19 years of Abramovich. The blue of the shirt became universal, Chelsea entered the Bix Six of the Premier (the six big teams), its rivals became Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Juventus, Bayern Munich… He did something very well Abramovich.
As soon as they arrived at the club, the new bosses took urgent measures. The first was to do without the prestigious German coach Thomas Tuchel, who had to be compensated with 15 million euros.
Bohely wanted to sign Cristiano Ronaldo to exploit his figure commercially and Tuchel stood up with a resounding NO, he knew that he was not giving him solutions on the pitch. That and the responsive nature of Tuchel generated the break. Graham Potter, Brighton manager, was in fashion at that time.
They took. They paid €34 million to Las Gaviotas as a penalty to be able to get him out, in addition to his contract. In the meantime that Potter took over and developed his work, the new leadership hired a delusional number of 17 players, spending €628.5 million. Many of them at premiums such as the €68 million for Marc Cucurella, a discreet left-back, or the €70 million they paid for Mikhailo Mudryk, an unknown young Ukrainian, the crazy €121 million forr Enzo Fernández or the insane €80.4 M by Wesley Fofaná.
Such a batch of new ones brought the establishment to 32 members. “The dressing room had to be enlarged so that everyone could enter,” said Thiago Silva, team captain, sarcastically but very critical.. Didier Drogba, legend of Stamford Bridge, joined the condemnations and regrets: “I no longer recognize my club. I knew Chelsea had a certain class in the Abramovich era, but today something is missing. I have a hard time seeing how they got rid of certain people. They should go back to the principles and values they had.”
The football collapse began in the League Cup, where he played a single game as he fell in the first round against Manchester City 2-0. Exactly the same thing happened to him in the English Cup, in the first duel he was thrashed 4-0, also for the City. In the Premier, after years of fighting for the title every season, it is 11th, 40 points behind the leader, Manchester City.
And in the Champions League, that rubber boat that he had left to avoid being swallowed by the sea, punctured in the quarterfinals against Real Madrid, falling 0-2 and 0-2 in Madrid and London. They needed to turn the result around at home and went onto the field without forwards, with Havertz, an attacking midfielder, as the only striker.
“It’s one of the biggest mysteries of all time,” said Michael Owen, who became a commentator, like every former English player, ironically. How can you spend 600 million and not bring a scorer…?” Instead, he got rid of Timo Werner and Romelu Lukaku, who convert in Leipzig and Inter. Lukaku is a semifinalist with the Milan team. Chelsea accumulates 20 defeats so far in the 2022-2023 season, terrible.
Five months after taking over, Graham Potter was sacked for poor results. He forgave a €55m release clause, but still took €17m. He temporarily assumed his assistant Bruno Saltor for a few games until the old acquaintance arrived Frank Lampard, with such a bad leg that he lost his first six games, two of them against Madrid. Now a new strategist is being sought for the 2023-2024 season. The top trainers are already beginning to avoid him, fearful of new shipwrecks.
Chelsea is the first English club with losses that exceed 1,000 million euros. This does not worry its extremely rich owners too much, but the immediate future of the club is that next year it will only have internal competition ahead of it. Any coach that arrives will demand that they remove at least a dozen professionals from the squad, no one can train with 32 professionals. But they must give them away, nobody wants to leave until they collect the entire contract.
This disaster happens because of the usual thing: not knowing about the subject. In soccer, two plus two equals seven. There are no rules to understand it. A man graduated from Harvard can generate a colossal fortune in banking, industry or business and at the same time blow up a successful football project. And another man with minimal education, like alex ferguson, is capable of transforming a very good club of 80 employees like Manchester United into one of 800 and turning it into a world reference. It’s not just marketing, cheerleading and popcorn.
Jorge Barraza
For the time
@JorgeBarrazaOK
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