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Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has detailed his plan to install a “multi-club” model with Chelsea, highlighting the success that Red Bull and Manchester City have had with the formula.
The Blues boss financed a significant spending spree in the transfer window after taking over from Roman Abramovich, then making a big call last week to axe Thomas Tuchel and bring in Graham Potter from Brighton and Hove Albion.
Boehly’s rebuild is not done yet, though, with reports indicating the club are looking to bring in Luis Campos as their sporting director, which would see the highly-rated transfer guru snatched from his advisor role with French champions Paris Saint-Germain.
In the long-term, more clubs could join the Chelsea family as Boehly has made it clear he wants to establish a network of clubs and will seek to follow the model of Red Bull and Premier League rivals City.
“We know people, we know human capital. I think we understand game plans and strategies. We’re not expecting to be the football experts, to find the best talent, we’re going to put those people in place,” he told the SALT Conference in New York.
“It’s not different from running any human capital business, it’s all about getting the right resources, making them collaborate, getting them organised, thinking about how you have a global business at a local level.
“We’re going to be continually adding resources. We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I would love to continue to build out the footprint. There are different countries where there are advantages to having a club.
“Red Bull does a really good job. They’ve got Leipzig and they’ve got Salzburg, both of which are playing in the Champions League, so they’ve figured out how to make that work. You have Man City, which has a very big network of clubs.”
Boehly is keen to use such a network to develop the young players in the squad, having shown a commitment to the future amongst the club’s vast spending spree to bring in Carney Chukwuemeka, Gabriel Slonina and Cesare Casadei.
“The challenge that Chelsea have now, one of them, is when you have 18, 19-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to other clubs but you put their development into someone else’s hands,” he explained.
“Our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch, while getting them real game time. For me, the way to do that is with another club in a really competitive league in Europe.”
