Todd Boehly became a Premier League laughing stock at Chelsea – and leaves behind a lesson for future football club owners
Boehly’s four-year stay at Chelsea was officially brought to an end last Wednesday, with the Blues revealing that Clearlake had acquired the 53-year-old’s minority stake in the club, as well as that of his long-time business partner Mark Walter. In truth, though, Boehly’s reign ended a long time ago.
As the official statement pointed out, the ‘ownership transition’ would not have any impact on “day-to-day operations, leadership or strategy” – and that’s because Boehly’s role had diminished significantly over the previous two years, when the cracks in his relationship with Clearlake co-founder Behdad Eghbali had first appeared.
By that stage, Boehly, as the public face of the BlueCo consortium, had already become a lightning rod for the fans’ frustration over the way in which their club was being run, as his reputation had suffered what proved irreparable damage during a disastrous debut campaign.
When Boehly first arrived in west London, he acknowledged that he and his partners weren’t “football experts” but argued that the situation was “no different to running any human capital business where it’s all about getting the right resources, making them collaborate getting them organised, and thinking about how you have a global business at a local level.”
“We want to find the best talent and we’re going to put those people in place,” Boehly declared, sounding a lot like Roman Roy from ‘Succession’, who was “too dumb to know how to fix our whole company” but “smart enough to know what needs changing, and spot the people who can help us.”
Unfortunately for Chelsea, neither Boehly nor those around him came off looking like “serious people” after going through four managers in their very first season in charge, with the dismissal of incumbent coach Thomas Tuchel proving the calamitous call absolutely everyone but the club’s owners knew it was at the time.
