Mauricio Pochettino named new Chelsea head coach

In search of a way out of the deep crisis, Chelsea, as expected, appointed Mauricio Pochettino, who once managed well another well-known London club, Tottenham Hotspur, as the new head coach. Experts do not rule out that Pochettino came to the English team at a good moment for himself. Apparently, the new owners of Chelsea, who have survived a nightmare season and lost the trust of the fans, will have no choice but to agree to full control of the club of his mentor, which the Argentine was used to and was deprived of at his previous job – in French PSG.

The day after the end of the championship of England, Chelsea announced the appointment of 51-year-old Mauricio Pochettino as the new head coach. He signed a two-year contract with the club with the option of a season-long extension. The agreement will enter into force on July 1. IN official press release Chelsea called the Argentine “a world-class coach with an amazing track record.” And a statement from the club’s two sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Lawrence Stewart, mentions his “experience,” “leadership,” “character,” and even his command of a variety of foreign languages ​​that will help Chelsea “move forward.”

In fact, of course, the exact wording would not be about “moving forward”, which nevertheless implies a transition from good to better, but about the desire, with the help of Mauricio Pochettino, to crawl out of a deep hole.

His appearance is an attempt to correct the nightmarish situation in which the club found itself after last summer it changed its owner – Roman Abramovich, who sold the team to a consortium of entrepreneurs led by American Todd Beuly. The new owners invested huge amounts of money in the club, spending a record amount of about £ 550 million on staffing within two transfer windows. However, instead of taking off, Chelsea suffered a disaster on all fronts, turning into the undisputed number one loser among all continental giants. He flew out of the FA Cup and the English League Cup early enough, lost to Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, and managed to take 12th place in the national championship.

In fact, the whole season was a nightmare, which was accompanied by an unprecedented coaching leapfrog.

Chelsea started it with Thomas Tuchel, whom retired after the first misfires, back in September. Graham Potter, Tuchel’s successor, held out at the club until April. After that, for several days, Chelsea were coached by Potter’s assistant Bruno Saltor, and then the team entrusted her former legend Frank Lampard, who also has nothing worthwhile to do with the line-up that he inherited, luxurious in terms of cost and sonority of names – with Enzo Fernandez and Mason Mount, Kalidou Koulibaly and Christian Pulisic, Kai Havertz and Raheem Sterling, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mark Cucurella, Hakim Ziyech and Cesar Azpilicueta did not work out.

Why, in search of an “anti-crisis” mentor, the choice of the Chelsea owners fell on Mauricio Pochettino is quite simple to explain. In principle, he has long been included in the category of unconditionally top players from all points of view – knowledge of tactical trends, the ability to motivate players – coaches, and besides, he worked quite a long time and effectively in the English Premier League (EPL). In 2014, Pochettino moved from Southampton to Tottenham, who were going through something like a crisis, or at least stagnation. With the Argentine, he added sharply. In 2016 and 2017, the Londoners participated in the “golden race” of the championship, in the second case they won silver, and in 2019 they broke through to the Champions League final, losing to Liverpool in it. Pochettino was sacked the following season, a move that was seen by many analysts as a mistake.

True, the next stage of Mauricio Pochettino’s career was much more ambiguous, or something. The coach returns to the Premier League after a break of three and a half years. He spent most of this period of his life managing the French football giant PSG, with whom he did not achieve impressive results in a season and a half. The Parisians habitually stumbled in the playoffs of the Champions League, and in 2021 they even managed to give the gold of the national championship to Lille, which has very modest compared to their own capabilities.

But the BBC, in a column on Mauricio Pochettino’s arrival at Chelsea, still insists that this is a promising alliance, in large part because this arrival took place at a good time for the Argentine. At Tottenham, he showed himself first of all as a master of debugging a mechanism consisting of high-quality parts, but for some reason creaking mechanism, as well as “revitalizing” sour players – both young and already seasoned.

But in order for these specific qualities of Pochettino to manifest themselves, he needed almost complete, without the intervention of top management, control over the team and the ability to make any, albeit at first glance controversial and unpopular, decisions.

He had problems at PSG because in the Parisian club the coach traditionally has a subordinate rather than a main role. The BBC is convinced that after a terrible season, Todd Buhley and his business partners who have lost the trust of the fans have no choice but to give Mauricio Pochettino that absolute control, the opportunity to experiment without looking at short-term results and, thus, ensure his long-term stay in the “comfort zone”.

Alexey Dospekhov