Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has explained his controversial sacking of Thomas Tuchel, saying he did not ‘share his vision for the future’ of the club.
Tuchel won the Champions League for Chelsea in 2021 but he was given his marching orders after a 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the same competition earlier this month.
However, multiple reports claimed that the decision to sack the German was actually taken a lot earlier than that and the result in Croatia had no bearing on Boehly’s decision.
The Blues owner has now confirmed that, explaining that Tuchel did not back his plans for Chelsea to follow the likes of Manchester City in becoming the head of a group of affiliated clubs around the world.
Speaking at the SALT Conference, Boehly said: “We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I want to continue building out the footprint. I think there’s different countries where there’s advantages to having a club.
#ChelseaFC chairman Todd Boehly on disconnect with ex-manager Thomas Tuchel:
“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.”#𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗧𝗡𝗬 pic.twitter.com/2CkZaRlc3C
— SALT 🇺🇦 (@SALTConference) September 13, 2022
“I think Tuchel is obviously extremely talented. He is someone who has had great success at Chelsea. Our vision for the club was finding a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us. There’s a lot of walls to break down at Chelsea.
“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 a shared vision of what we wanted for Chelsea Football Club to look like.”
Chelsea moved quickly to replace Tuchel with Brighton boss Graham Potter, with him set to take charge of the Blues for the first time against RB Salzburg in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday.