Chelsea

Chelsea have sacked head coach Thomas Tuchel six matches into the Premier League season.

Thomas will rightly have a place in Chelsea's history after winning the Champions League, the Super Cup and Club World Cup in his time here. Todd Boehly has axed Tuchel just three months after completing his takeover of the club. Chelsea are expected to approach Brighton later on Wednesday for permission to speak to Graham Potter about their manager vacancy.

We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chelsea FC PLC news every morning. The new US owners of Chelsea Football Club have sacked head ...

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Graham Potter, currently manager of Premier League team Brighton, was set to hold talks with Chelsea with a view to replacing Tuchel. ADVERTISEMENT. Chelsea was ...

It was a wild offseason at Stamford Bridge, too, with dozens of players — including Cristiano Ronaldo — linked with a move to the London club as Boehly looked to make his presence felt in the transfer market. The 47-year-old Potter has no real experience of handling a squad of star players but is highly regarded for his tactical astuteness and entertaining style of play and is widely viewed as one of the most talented young English coaches. After all, the 49-year-old German guided Chelsea to the Champions League title less than six months after taking over as manager in January 2021, as the replacement for Frank Lampard. Chelsea has also lost two of its first six games — to Leeds and Southampton — in an underwhelming start to the Premier League that has seen the team’s new signings fail to gel. The decision to fire Tuchel, who was manager for 20 months, came a day after Chelsea surprisingly lost to Dinamo Zagreb 1-0 in its first group match of the Champions League. Chelsea also reached both domestic cup finals, losing each of them to Liverpool in penalty shootouts.

Football powerhouse Chelsea have shocked the world on Wednesday night by sensationally axing manager Thomas Tuchel only six games into the season. Chelsea.

They state that his future at Chelsea would have been in doubt even if they had claimed three points against Zagreb. It is not enough individually, it is not enough as a team and that is why we lose this game today." "Thomas will rightly have a place in Chelsea's history after winning the Champions League, the Super Cup and Club World Cup in his time here. "On behalf of everyone at Chelsea FC, the Club would like to place on record its gratitude to Thomas and his staff for all their efforts during their time with the Club. "This is a huge underperformance from all of us. It's not precise enough, it's not clinical enough, not aggressive enough.

Thomas Tuchel was sacked after Chelseas 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb on Tuesday; Brighton boss Graham Potter will meet Chelsea owner Todd Boehly for talks; ...

"Of course, that runs through until 2025, but crucially he also acknowledged just a few weeks ago that it is not impossible for Brighton to lose Potter within the context of this contract, without going into individual contract details. And yet Tuesday's game showed the issues that have dogged them for so long, a lack of understanding and ruthlessness, had only become more pronounced. Tuchel was speaking in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's embarrassing defeat to Dinamo Zagreb, a side with only two wins from their previous 33 Champions League games. He had the look of a man out of ideas. "It's a huge step up in his managerial career and Chelsea are still one of the top clubs. "So, it's an interesting development in terms of Chelsea showing that interest. Thomas will rightly have a place in Chelsea's history after winning the Champions League, the Super Cup and Club World Cup in his time here. "We told them to play tougher," he said of his half-time team talk. "But I did feel as if it might have been a different type of regime, so it's a huge shock. "It's the same story, like always," shrugged Thomas Tuchel. Chelsea invested a one-window Premier League record of £273m to revamp Tuchel's squad this summer, bringing in Wesley Fofana, Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. It is thought Chelsea have made it clear they are prepared to meet Brighton's exit clause figure.

The decision by Chelsea's new ownership, fronted by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly, came a day after the team surprisingly lost to Dinamo Zagreb 1-0 ...

Tuchel was in charge for a year and a half, winning the Champions League only six months into his tenure. That came in a period where Chelsea were changing ownership after Roman Abramovich was forced to put the London club on the market after being sanctioned by the British government for what it called his enabling of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "brutal and barbaric invasion" of Ukraine. "As the new ownership group reaches 100 days since taking over the club, and as it continues its hard work to take the club forward, the new owners believe it is the right time to make this transition," Chelsea said in a statement.

Some continuity, finally, at Chelsea Football Club. Sacking your manager seven games into the season, with more than £250m spent on players and a couple of ...

His appointment would be a victory for rewarding talent and earning your step up, just as it is hard to imagine even Brighton’s supporters would begrudge him the chance, if only for the intrigue of watching him adapt and learn. Perhaps Tuchel himself will now be placed in escrow and donated to victims of war around the world. Tuchel was hired by an entirely different group of people, and there have been whispers of tension. In the general silence and confusion it seemed for a while that Tuchel was basically explaining the Ukrainian war to the people of Britain via a series of unforthcoming post-match interviews. Here was a man in a beanie hat and a tracksuit who could at least offer some kind of gravitas and plain speaking, the sense of being good in a crisis, like the neighbour who comes knocking at your door two days into the collapse of all human society wearing a hunting cap and a cagoule and offering to build you a bivouac. And really Tuchel was never going to match that high, always seemed to be running to catch up with himself from that point. The proceeds from the sale of the club are still sitting in the bank account of a man described by the British government as “a pro-Kremlin oligarch”. Little wonder there might be some bumps, a little drop in the levels. He led two different clubs to the final of the Champions League in the past three seasons. Judged by purely sporting standards this is a careless, undeserving, arguably quite flaky move by an owner who has zero inside knowledge of the industry (is this an issue? [Sacking your manager](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/sep/07/chelsea-sack-thomas-tuchel-as-manager-after-defeat-at-zagreb-champions-league) seven games into the season, with more than £250m spent on players and a couple of whispered wobbles behind the scenes. But it seems Graham Potter just might, if Chelsea really do feel like taking a punt on talent, brains and method over having actually spent a single minute of your professional career at the level the club hope to operate at.

Premier League giants Chelsea have made the bombshell decision to sack manager Thomas Tuchel, just days after a record-breaking transfer window came to a ...

Thomas will rightly have a place in Chelsea’s history after winning the Champions League, the Super Cup and Club World Cup in his time here. Tuchel guided the Blues to Champions League glory in his first season, in addition to two other minor trophies, but was axed following a dismal 1-0 defeat in the opening group stage match of this year’s Champions League competition. The Blues sit sixth in the Premier League, having won three games and drawn once from their six outings – but already five points behind early leaders Arsenal. A massive clash with Liverpool follows. It was by far the biggest spend of any club in Europe. A club statement announcing Tuchel’s axing read: “As the new ownership group reaches 100 days since taking over the Club, and as it continues its hard work to take the club forward, the new owners believe it is the right time to make this transition.”

Despite what they're saying publicly, Chelsea's decision to fire Thomas Tuchel feels like exactly what they claim it isn't: a rash decision.

And the sort that can come back to haunt you. [Denis Zakaria](https://www.espn.com/soccer/player/_/id/222628/Denis-Zakaria) and [Carney Chukwuemeka](https://www.espn.com/soccer/player/_/id/294317/Carney-Chukwuemeka)) haven't played a single minute. So now, Chelsea have to reload on the fly. And because contrary to popular belief, there is no endless supply of cash; whoever comes in will be working with more limited resources than he would have otherwise, which will only make the rebuild trickier. You don't need to be a body language expert to note how his gaunt, praying mantis-like frame looked even more stressed over the past few weeks. They couldn't hang on to Granovskaia, Cech and McLachlan, and they wanted to bring in the right experts to replace them. There's a reason nobody has successfully worked this way since the days of Sir Alex Ferguson: It doesn't work at the highest level. 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 really was the guy flying around Europe, talking to agents and intermediaries and negotiating contracts with input from Tuchel. 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. [Chelsea](/soccer/team?id=363)'s 1-0 defeat in their Champions League opener at [Dinamo Zagreb](/soccer/team?id=597), 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. It's about reality."