The problem with modern clubs pitching themselves as content producers is that you can never quite be sure whether what you are watching is real. Take, for example, Chelsea. Are they a football club or a slightly heavy-handed sitcom?
You have a brash American owner certain he has spotted a way to do things beyond the comprehension of the unambitious Brits who have been running clubs hitherto (in reality, most of them are also American). You have a coachload of superstars and overexcited young talents all desperate to play. In charge of them you place the epitome of English reserve, a polite and thoughtful man who responds to setbacks by pointing out the xG of what’s just gone wrong is pretty low so it probably isn’t going to happen again and ends up reduced to answering questions about whether he’s angry enough to manage Chelsea.
That modesty is something that dogged Graham Potter. Football isn’t, in any sense, a rational game. A large constituency of fans just want to be entertained, if not by the football itself, then at least by the machiavellian histrionics of the managers. Potter may be emotionally intelligent, somebody who has adapted wherever he has been, from the ninth tier of the English game to semi-pro football in Sweden via the Ghana women’s team, but his one concession to managing Chelsea was to buy a new rollneck. The result of which was that he looked quite smart standing in his technical area like Ahab on the bridge, desperately scanning the horizon for the quarry he has hunted all these years: a centre-forward who can score.
Nice understated men don’t win titles. Manuel Pellegrini was aggressively boring in press conferences, but there was a darkness in his eyes as befits a man who once faced down rioters after a superclásico at El Monumental. Bob Paisley was taciturn, but his cardigan covered a ruthless soul. But perhaps that was the Great Disruptor’s greatest masterstroke: nobody expected him to place his project in the hands of somebody with the demeanour of a polite manager of a mid-range hotel.
Potter was doubted from the start by those who wanted a starrier name. Some supposedly found themselves Googling the bloke from Brighton to see what else he’d done. Overseas players, unfamiliar with Potter as a surname and apparently unaware of Phoenix Nights, made the obvious Hogwarts jokes and started suggesting Mykhailo Mudryk struggled for playing time because he looks like Draco Malfoy.
If anything went wrong, critics were always going to say Potter couldn’t cut it at elite level. Which may or may not turn out to be true; it’s just that this Chelsea isn’t really a fair test. What manager is a fit for a club with a vast squad assembled at such great expense a third of them may have to be sold in the summer, with a co-owner who demands to be involved, but seems to have little understanding and, worst of all, probably with very little room to bring in a couple of his own players to add to the fleets of prospects?
Julian Nagelsmann, sacked by Bayern last week, is an obvious candidate. His footballing principles are at least vaguely similar to those of Thomas Tuchel, who was sacked by Chelsea in September and succeeded Nagelsmann at Bayern. In as much as continuity is possible given the flux at Chelsea, he would be aiming at a similar style. But Nagelsmann will also be under consideration for the Real Madrid and Tottenham jobs. Taking on a role as uncertain as Chelsea after a perceived failure at Bayern, especially if there is no Champions League football, may not seem that attractive.
Mauricio Pochettino’s return to the Premier League has been long-awaited and the worse Tottenham fare the less culpable he looks for the poor run that led to his dismissal. He has a proven record of improving young players and probably needs to return to management soon.
Luis Enrique has also worked successfully with younger players and if Chelsea are a club in search of a philosophy he certainly has one to import, even if goal-shy, possession-based ultra-passing feels a little like a Spanish version of what they just had, albeit with the addition of a Champions League with Barcelona in 2015 and therefore fewer doubts about level. There has been talk of Zinedine Zidane, although whether the horse-whispering that inspired Real Madrid’s elite to three successive Champions Leagues would work also with Chelsea’s teenagers is debatable.
Then there are the rising talents: Rúben Amorim, Oliver Glasner and Roberto De Zerbi. It would take a sharper football brain than Todd Boehly’s to determine whether any of them prove to be anything more than Potter with a different passport. A year ago, Brendan Rodgers would have seemed a plausible candidate. In another year, it is entirely possible any of them may seem as unlikely a suggestion as Rodgers does now. Or any one of them could be what Pochettino was in 2014: a highly gifted manager on the way up, just looking for the big club to give him his break.
Experience means little here. Nobody has ever experienced a club like Chelsea at the moment. None of the usual rules apply. Which is testament to just how disruptive Boehly has been. At sitcom Chelsea, nobody has a clue what’s going on any more.
