Chelsea sacking Tuchel is one of football's all-time bad decisions
Paul Macdonald
- Updated: 7 Sept 2022 11:18 BST
- 4 min read
Football is its own worst enemy at times and there are business decisions made that simply defy logic.
But Chelsea’s snap call to relieve Thomas Tuchel of his duties after 18 tumultuous months at Stamford Bridge is nothing short of staggering, and a seemingly deliberate attempt at self-sabotage.
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Tuchel won the Champions League 12 months ago and helped drive the club through the departure of Roman Abramovich. The owner’s swift exit from the Blues left Tuchel marooned as the club’s sole spokesperson, and he handled the questions - the ones he could answer, at least - with immense dignity and poise.
His seeming reward in the reshuffle was a level of autonomy that no manager has had since Jose Mourinho. Under Todd Boehly’s new structure, the German has oversight on transfers, who should come in, who should leave, and what his team for the season should look like.
Chelsea Football Club part company with Thomas Tuchel.
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) September 7, 2022
In turn he was rewarded with the single biggest spend in any transfer window in history, to the tune of over €280m. The turnover has been vast, assets like Romelu Lukaku and Timo Werner moved out at huge losses to make way for the team Tuchel wanted to build.
Tuchel has admitted he was uncomfortable with the power afforded to him but he was still able to wield it in an unprecedented way; Kalidou Koulibaly, Wesley Fofana, Raheem Sterling, Dennis Zakaria, Marc Cucurella, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
If there were any doubts regarding Tuchel’s ability to lead the club forward - and clearly there were, given reports of a strained relationship with the owners as well as members of the squad - this decision could and should have been taken sooner.
The transfer window closed LAST WEEK, with Chelsea continuing to do business under a manager which they were uncertain over. They have shaped a squad for which Financial Fair Play will make it incredibly difficult to totally rebuild again after this spending in the image of a man who is now no longer there. Whoever comes next, will be required to adapt to players built for a system they will, in all likelihood, not want.
Boehly and his backers, Clearlake, were hyped as being shrewd operators who understood the business game well enough that they could adapt their thinking to football and transition with ease.
But football is in many ways the most utterly dysfunctional industry there is, one which prompts overreactions and a decision-making process which in any other functioning company would lead to mass sackings at corporate level.
And yet that’s what has just happened. Boehly has sanctioned over a quarter of a billion pounds being splurged on a team, at the behest of a single man, who is then summarily sacked shortly after. There can be no rhyme nor reason applied to this.
And Tuchel’s not changed who he is or how he thinks. He has always been an abrasive character, one who is confrontational by design. It happened at Dortmund, and at PSG. So either you’re all in with him, or you’re not.
And from the old ‘back me, or sack me’ adage, Chelsea have incomprehensibly decided to do both.
Chelsea fans were dismayed by the worrying form of late, some of which is a runover from last season. Tuchel didn’t know his best team nor get the best out of the players the club spent heavily on last time around, such as Werner and Lukaku.
That’s fair. Perhaps Tuchel’s time was up. But nothing has changed from this week to a few weeks ago, when this huge sum of money was shipped out of the door.
The Aubameyang signing sums it all up. The duo ‘reunited’ after their time at Dortmund. Well, for 59 minutes at least. Tuchel’s now gone and Auba is left to wonder what happens for him now.
Chelsea have executed one of the worst business decisions football has ever seen.
Read more about: Premier League, Chelsea
