BlueCo’s experiment: How multi-club ownership is failing Chelsea and Strasbourg | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s departure from Chelsea may have been framed as a pragmatic reset, but it was, in truth, the latest manifestation of an ownership model that has prioritised control over continuity. Under BlueCo, Chelsea have become a club in permanent transition, ambitious, expensively assembled, and perpetually unstable.

Since the Clearlake Capital-led consortium completed its takeover in 2022, Chelsea have appointed and dismissed managers with unsettling regularity. Maresca was the fifth permanent head coach of the era, and his removal followed a familiar pattern: short-term turbulence met with decisive, almost reflexive, intervention from above. Results offered a convenient justification, one win in seven league matches, yet the deeper causes lay elsewhere.

Maresca’s exit cannot be separated from the structural reality of Chelsea under BlueCo: a rigid executive hierarchy in which sporting directors retain authority while head coaches are granted limited tolerance for deviation. Mauricio Pochettino’s dismissal after a season of tangible progress remains the clearest example of a regime unwilling to invest time in managerial stewardship, even when evidence suggests it is beginning to bear fruit.

A club managed by profits, not patience

On paper, Maresca’s record merited restraint. A top-four finish, Conference League success, and a Club World Cup triumph constituted a return to relevance after years of drift. Yet by December 2025, relationships between manager and ownership had frayed. Disputes over autonomy, communication, and public messaging mirrored the experiences of his predecessors.

Chelsea’s ownership insists upon a long-term, data-driven strategy built around youth, asset value, and squad scalability. The contradiction lies in its execution. Managers are tasked with developing one of Europe’s youngest squads while simultaneously delivering immediate results. When poor form inevitably strikes, the response has been removal rather than reinforcement.

The constancy of sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, surviving every managerial upheaval, has sharpened the perception that head coaches are expendable components in a tightly controlled corporate framework.

Strasbourg: success without sovereignty

If Chelsea’s predicament reflects instability at the top of the food chain, Strasbourg’s experience exposes the deeper inequities of multi-club ownership.

Initially, BlueCo’s acquisition of the Ligue 1 side appeared mutually beneficial. Investment surged, the Stade de la Meinau was redeveloped, and an ambitious recruitment strategy propelled Strasbourg into European contention. Under Liam Rosenior, the football was progressive, coherent and widely admired.

Yet Rosenior’s mid-season departure to Chelsea shattered the illusion of parity within the ownership structure. His move was not merely a career step; it was an internal promotion.

The optics were troubling enough. More damaging still was the revelation that Chelsea’s succession planning appeared contingent on Strasbourg’s ability to appoint a replacement, an arrangement that blurred priorities and exposed the transactional nature of the relationship.

For Strasbourg supporters, the message was unmistakable: progress came at the cost of autonomy.

The fan backlash and the loss of identity

Protests followed swiftly. Ultras fell silent for the opening minutes of matches. Banners condemned the club’s subservience. The supporters’ federation was unequivocal: “This is a destructive logic that transforms historic clubs into interchangeable parts of a globalised portfolio,” read one statement. “Racing is no longer a club that makes decisions in its own interest.”

Alexandre, a spokesperson for the Strasbourg supporters’ federation said that Rosenior’s decision to “jump on the Chelsea bandwagon is a symbol of everything that is wrong with modern football, and especially with multi-club ownership.” 

Such resistance has placed Strasbourg president Marc Keller, once hailed for rescuing the club from financial ruin, in an unenviable position. His insistence that Strasbourg are not Chelsea’s feeder club has been undermined by events. Eleven players have moved between the clubs. Emmanuel Emegha, captain and top scorer, is bound for Stamford Bridge. Rosenior has already gone.

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has described BlueCo’s approach as more akin to a hedge fund than a traditional ownership group: acquiring undervalued assets, developing them, and retaining strategic optionality.

In that context, Strasbourg functions as a development environment, a holding space for talent, managerial or playing, until Chelsea require it. The model may be efficient. It is also profoundly alienating.

While other multi-club groups operate on a broader scale, rarely do they sanction mid-season managerial transfers between entities. That line, once crossed, has altered the perception of legitimacy.

The broader cost of multi-club ownership

Across Europe, similar unrest is growing. Troyes supporters protested against City Football Group ownership. Crystal Palace were demoted from Europe due to multi-club rules. UEFA is tightening regulations, but enforcement remains limited. The system persists because it benefits owners far more than it benefits football.

Chelsea, meanwhile, have not reaped the promised rewards. Heavy expenditure has yielded little coherence. Squad churn remains high. Supporter frustration is increasingly directed not at managers, but at ownership and governance.

Control without clarity

Maresca’s departure was not an isolated incident. It was another symptom of a governance structure that prioritises control over clarity, strategy over stability, and assets over identity. Strasbourg’s unrest is not collateral damage; it is a warning.

Multi-club ownership promises efficiency and synergy. What it delivers, increasingly, is distrust, detachment, and disillusionment.

For Chelsea, the cycle will likely continue until authority, accountability, and footballing autonomy are restored. For Strasbourg, the fight is more existential, a battle to remain a club with agency, rather than a subsidiary.

Football clubs are not subsidiaries. They are social institutions, bound to place and people. In treating them otherwise, BlueCo risk proving the critics right: that multi-club ownership may be efficient, modern, and lucrative, but ultimately, it is anti-football.

GFN | Finn Entwistle