BlueCo: Chelsea’s Misunderstood Owners | OneFootball

Origin of BlueCo

In May 2022, a Todd Boehly-led consortium completed a $5.65B (billion) takeover of Chelsea Football Club, ending Roman Abramovich’s 19-year ownership. Boehly was joined by majority shareholder Clearlake Capital (Behdad Eghbali & José E. Feliciano) with a 61.5% stake, Mark Walter (Guggenheim Partners), and Hansjörg Wyss, who hold equal, smaller shares.

The billionaires created one umbrella body called BlueCo, who added French Ligue 1 side Strasbourg into their list of teams in the summer of 2023.

Speaking at the SALT conference in August 2022, Boehly said: “We are not expecting to be the football experts to find the best talent. We are going to put those people in place… We have talked about having a multi-club model, and I would love to build out the footprint.”

He went on to explain how the multi-club system would benefit Chelsea.

“You have Man City, which has a big network of clubs. The challenge that Chelsea has right now is that when you have 18 to 20 year-old superstars, you can loan them out to other clubs but you put their development in someone else’s hands. Our goal is to make sure we can develop pathways for our Chelsea superstars to get onto the pitch while getting game-time. For me, the way to do that is to get another club in a very competitive league, maybe somewhere in Europe.”

BlueCo’s Journey

If BlueCo’s plan was to hire experts and buy another club that would aid players’ development, they didn’t waste time setting the wheels in motion.

Chelsea lured Paul Winstanley, Brighton & Hove Albion’s Head of Recruitment, in November 2022. He was soon joined by Laurence Stewart from AS Monaco (where he was technical director). Together they became one of soccer’s rarest creatures: a two-person Sporting Director team.

On the recruiting side, BlueCo followed a similar blueprint. Joe Shields joined from Southampton in October 2022, and another Brighton alum, Sam Jewell,  joined him in February 2023. Together they share the Director of Recruitment title.

BlueCo’s Awkward First Steps

While that team of experts was coming together, Todd Boehly made himself the Sporting Director. The club reportedly spent around $400M (£300m) on the following players:

Additionally, three players arrived for the academy; Cesare Casadei from Inter Milan, Omari Hutchinson from Arsenal and Zak Sturge from Brighton.

The summer of 2022 is still seen by Chelsea fans as the worst season of transfer business in the club’s history. Not only was a LOT of money spent, the return on that investment was poor. Of the eleven players mentioned above, only Cucurella and Fofana are still with the team.

The Revival

The new structure with the Sporting Directors and the recruitment team took over and made a series of important changes that have become the heart and soul of Chelsea Football today. Wages for new signings reduced drastically, players on high wages sold, new signings given long-term contracts and recruitment focused on young players with potential to become world class players in the future. 

These changes are the polar opposite of how Roman Abramovich ran Chelsea, and it became a huge debate among fans, pundits, ex-Chelsea players, and the entire football community everywhere in the world. The question everyone was asking was whether it is possible to win titles with this model, especially in a competitive league like the Premier League.

The Project

Chelsea set out to make sure their Project was successfully implemented. The first few years were terrible and ultimately unbearable for a set of fans who were used winning big titles every single season under Roman Abramovich.

However, BlueCo were not entirely wrong or thoughtless to change direction despite the backlash they anticipated to come with making sure enormous changes in a short period. They wanted a more coherent and sustainable model. One that will make sure they can produce players instead of paying millions to sign them when they are already established. Not everyone was on board with that. 

Champions League winning manager Thomas Tuchel was sacked for what Boehly described as Tuchel’s unwillingness to buy into shared vision.

“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 was quoted 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. 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.” he concluded.

More Decline

However, things got worse after Tuchel’s departure. His successor, Graham Potter was sacked the same season for poor performances and replaced by Frank Lampard on interim basis, which didn’t yield better results.

Chelsea finished 22/23 season 12th in the Premier League table.

The new owners’ first impression in the eyes of the fans was as bad as anyone could imagine. It was hard to defend the changes and the manner in which they were carried out. Football fans care about the present and not about the future. To buy time, the first impression needed to be solid, but unfortunately, it was unexplainably bad.

Progress At Last

But the bad start is getting better every season. The Blues finished the 23-24 Premier League season in 6th under Mauricio Pochettino, reaching the FA Cup semi-final, EPL Cup final, and securing European play with UEFA Conference League qualification. But no trophies and frequent clashes with Stewart and Winstanley led to Pochettino’s departure after one season.

He was replaced by Enzo Maresca, who led Chelsea to 4th in the 24-25 Premier League season. That finish earned the club Champions League qualification for the first time under the new owners. Maresca’s achievements didn’t end there. Chelsea also won the UEFA Conference League and the newly expanded FIFA Club World Cup. Both became the first major titles under BlueCo’s ownership. 

Still So Young

Chelsea should only get better as the club has one of the youngest teams in Europe’s top 5 leagues. In fact, only another BlueCo owned club, Strasbourg, can boast of a younger squad.

“You have to think both short and long-term. We’re focused on a combination of both and seeking the best possible way to execute that. It’s a balancing act to figure that out,” Todd Boehly said recently. “You have to have a plan and exercise it, accept that things are not linear and that the thing that matters is that the trend is in the right direction. Yes, it’s been a steep learning curve. We’ve been here for less than three years and that’s been a whirling dervish of activity. Nothing is a straight line, ever and sport is so humbling.”

Of course, they have been humbled in many ways but the progress made since they took over in 2022 can not be denied. It’s true that Chelsea are not yet competing to win the league, but they are not far off the best teams. In one-off games, they can challenge and compete well against top teams, as we saw in the Club World Cup final against PSG. The big problem is their lack of consistency.

Inconsistency is normal with young, inexperienced players. One of the BlueCo’s criticisms is the inability to sign a few quality, experienced players to help their young squad. No doubt, the youngsters are getting more experienced everyday but the process would have been quick if they had experienced players in the squad to guide them through difficult times. 

A Bright Future

However, the future looks extremely bright for this young Chelsea squad. If kept together they are going to become a force in the Premier League and Europe for years to come. The likes of Palmer, Caicedo, Fernández, James, Colwill, Estévão are all world class talents. One can’t say that BlueCo have not put together a good team even though they have had a few poor transfers in the midst of the transfer spending spree since they took over.

There are always issues to fine-tune in every process. They have navigated through the worse period and are on their way to the top. Chelsea are currently still in the FA Cup, 5th in the Premier League and into the last 16 of the Champions League this season. The multi-club system has also been fruitful too. They have used their sister club, Strasbourg to develop the likes of Andrey Santos, who is currently a starter in the main team. 

It’s safe to say that the process is going according to plan for BlueCo at the moment and the future promises to be even better.