Chelsea confirmed on Wednesday morning that Laurence Stewart would be joining the club from Monaco as technical director to "focus on football globally".
After reports broke late on Sunday night about Stewart's advanced talks to join from the Ligue 1 club this announcement came as little surprise. The statement noted that Stewart had previously worked as global head of scouting at Red Bull Soccer International, also mentioning his time at Manchester City, Everton and the FA.
"I’m delighted to be joining Chelsea and excited about the vision and direction of the club under the new ownership group," Steward said. "I am excited to join them to help them build a world-class global sporting organisation to consistently win on the pitch at the highest levels and provide player pathways to help develop our talent."
READ MORE: Who is Laurence Stewart: Chelsea director search, working with Guardiola, World Cup experience
Stewart is the first of several appointments expected to be confirmed by the club in the behind-the-scenes restructuring. football.london understands technical director Christopher Vivell is expected to join the club after leaving RB Leipzig earlier this month. In addition to that, Joe Shields is expected to come in as director of recruitment from Southampton and Paul Winstanley via Brighton who was head of recruitment for The Seagulls.
Stewart's appointment seems to be focused on Todd Boehly's ambition to form a multi-club model akin to that of Red Bull and Manchester City in the past decade. Boehly spoke frankly about that idea at the Salt Conference in New York, where he expressed how it could aid player development in the future.
"We want to find the best talent and we’re going to put those people in place," Boehly said. "It’s 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’re going to be continuously adding resources. We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I would love to continue to build out the footprint. There is different countries where there are advantages to having a club - Red Bull does a really good job with Leipzig and Salzburg, both of which are playing in the Champions League. So they’ve figured out how to make that work.
“You have Man City that also has a big network of clubs. The challenge that Chelsea has right now, or at least one of them, is when you have 18/19/20-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to clubs, but you put their development in someone else’s hands."
Chelsea have reportedly already had talks over acquiring Portuguese club Portimonense as of last month, which may now be sped up with this appointment in a role focusing on this area.
The technical director has previously given his thoughts on the multi-club model in an extensive interview with Training Ground Guru where he pinpoints how it can work in relation to player development. Monaco have owned the Belgian club Cercle Brugge since 2017 and Stewart has helped oversee that process.
"Cercle Brugge give a good opportunity for player development and growth and we see a lot of high-value players coming out of the Belgian league. We have a number of players on loan there this season and they’re the second-youngest team in Belgium in terms of on-pitch minutes.
"It’s the beauty of a multi-club model - you can put those principles in all your clubs and speed up the learning of your players if they move between clubs."
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