Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has lifted the lid on Thomas Tuchel’s bombshell sacking by revealing the German did not share his vision for the future of the club.
The American billionaire spoke candidly about their shock decision to axe the 49-year-old just seven days after the transfer window.
The 48-year-old, along with co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano, made the shock decision to sack Tuchel just seven days after the transfer window had ended, and the club had spent a record £272m.
Boehly on disconnect with ex-manager Thomas Tuchel said, “Our vision for the club was finding a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us… to bring a team together with the academy, first team and incremental clubs we want to acquire.”
Tuchel’s departure came hours after a 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.
But the American businessman said the decision was not down to the defeat and that the club’s senior management had already decided to replace Tuchel just five months after completing their £4.25bn takeover in May.
“When you take over any business, You have to make sure you are aligned with the people in the business, and Tuchel is obviously extremely talented and obviously someone who had great success with Chelsea,” Boehly said, speaking at the SALT Conference in the United States.
“Our vision for the club was to find a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us, a coach who really wanted to collaborate.
“There are a lot of walls to break down at Chelsea. Before, the first team and academy didn’t really share data, didn’t share information about where the top players were coming from. Our goal is to bring a team together; all of that needs to be a well-oiled machine.
“The reality of our decision was that we weren’t sure that Thomas saw it the same way we saw it. No one is right or wrong, we just didn’t have a shared vision for the future. It wasn’t about Zagreb, it was about the shared vision for what we wanted Chelsea to look like.