Chelsea made official this Monday what was an open secret for weeks. Mauricio Pochettino will take over the reins of the Stamford Bridge club with the mission of refloating a giant that has come down. The Argentine coach signs until 2025, although the London entity reserves the option of extending the contract for another additional campaign if the results live up to the high expectations of Todd Boehly, the North American magnate who bought Chelsea from Roman Abramóvich after that the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced the oligarch to abandon the property of the two-time European champion.
“Chelsea are pleased to confirm that Mauricio Pochettino will become manager of the men’s team from the start of the 2023/24 season. The Argentine will begin his new position on July 1, 2023 with a two-year contract, with the club’s option for one more year,” says the statement released by Chelsea that opens a new stage for the ‘blues’ after a 2022 course. -2023 calamitous.
Chelsea burst the market by investing more than 600 million euros in the last two transfer windows, but their performance in the Premier League has been embarrassing. The ‘blues’ closed the championship in twelfth position and will remain without playing European competitions for the first time since the 2016-2017 campaign.
The 44 points with which they signed the regularity tournament left them closer to the relegation zone than to the aristocratic part of the table in a campaign in which the lack of punch was the main ballast for a team that saw parade four coaches for his bench: Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, the interim Bruno Saltor and Frank Lampard, a legend the club turned to to operate as a temporary figure while completing the casting for the bench for the coming season.
Names like Luis Enrique or Julian Nagelsmann were on Todd Boehly’s agenda, who met with the former Spanish coach but ended up ruling out the Asturian. Finally, Pochettino has been chosen by the American businessman, also owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and shareholder of the Lakers, to straighten out Chelsea. A decision in which he has weighed the extensive experience in difficult benches of the coach born 51 years ago in the Argentine province of Santa Fe, as well as his deep knowledge of the Premier League.
tough decisions
Pochettino, who made his coaching debut directing his beloved Espanyol between the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2012, made a name for himself in British football directing Southampton, before taking charge of Tottenham, a club where he spent five and a half seasons and whom he catapulted to the Champions League final of the 2018-2019 campaign, played at the Metropolitano and in which the ‘spurs’ succumbed to Liverpool.
In January 2021, Pochettino accepted PSG’s proposal to take over from Thomas Tuchel as coach of the Parisian team. In the city of light he reaped a Ligue 1, a Cup and a French Super Cup, but internal tensions and a double failure in the Champions League ended up blowing up the Argentine project and motivating his departure at the end of the 2021 campaign. 2022.
Now Pochettino will have to sit down with Boehly to sift through a squad made up of 33 footballers, not counting the many loaned out that the ‘blues’ have, and issue his verdict on players like Joao Félix, Aubameyang or Lukaku. Tricky decisions that will mark another hot summer for a Chelsea that entrusts itself to the management of the Argentine with the hope of ceasing to be a giant with feet of clay.
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