Paulo Ferreira has decided to leave his role at Chelsea during the tumultuous time at the club.
Chelsea are currently being rocked by Roman Abramovich’s decision to sell the club he has owned for 19 years.
Abramovich is seeking a quick sale of the west London club amid increased scrutiny on his position following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Reports suggest the Russian billionaire could complete a sale as early as Monday, with a Swiss-American consortium confident of agreeing a deal over the weekend.
According to football.london, Ferreira has now decided to quit his job as a technical coach at Chelsea in order to head back to his native Portugal and be closer to his family.
The 43-year-old, who is also a club ambassador, has worked with Chelsea’s loan players ever since retiring from playing in 2013.
Alongside his work for Chelsea, he has been studying for his coaching badges and has now decided to leave the club he has been associated with since 2004.
His decision is understood not to be connected to Abramovich’s pending sale of Chelsea.
Ferreira joined the Blues from Porto 18 years ago for a fee of £13.2million and went on to make 217 appearances over the following nine years.
The versatile defender won 11 major honours, including three Premier League titles, the Europa League and the Champions League, during his time with the club.
Since retiring from playing he has been part of a group of former Chelsea players tasked with developing the next generation in the club’s Cobham academy.
HAVE YOUR SAY! What are your fondest memories of Paulo Ferreira at Chelsea? Comment below.
Claude Makelele and Carlo Cudicini remain part of the backroom set-up at Chelsea, while Tore Andre Flo was also involved for 10 years before departing in January.
Ferreira was the second person hired by Chelsea to run the club’s loan programme under former technical director Michael Emenalo.
Eddie Newton was the first person tasked with managing Chelsea’s army of loan players and was responsible for Ferreira’s arrival.
"The department began with just me and an analyst,” Newton told Goal last year.
“We were working and going to watch games. Then, the list of players on my rota was getting too big and I couldn’t do it anymore.
"I told Emenalo that I needed to build a proper department, so I hired Paulo Ferriera next. He lived around the corner, had just retired and was good with languages, so we agreed he was perfect. We also got another analyst.”
He added: "We built a world-class programme that I know a lot of other people are copying today. A lot of clubs came to us and asked us for a little bit of help, we helped them up their game and that’s fine. You can only have the secret for a little bit!"
