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Mauricio Pochettino has left Chelsea Football Club, as its US owners Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly part ways with a third manager just two years after they bought the team for £2.5bn from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Pochettino, who previously managed Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur, would leave the football club by mutual agreement after less than 11 months in the role, Chelsea said on Tuesday.
The decision follows the conclusion of another disappointing season, in which the 52-year-old led the west London club to sixth place in the Premier League table.
Chelsea’s finish meant the club did not qualify for the Uefa Champions League, the elite and lucrative competition for European teams. Chelsea reached the final of the Carabao Cup, a domestic competition in the UK, but lost to Liverpool.
Private investment group Clearlake Capital, which is led by Behdad Eghbali and José Feliciano, and US financier Boehly led the acquisition of Chelsea from Abramovich after Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The new owners fired former head coach Thomas Tuchel, who had guided the club to victory in the Champions League, within months of the takeover. They sacked former Brighton & Hove Albion coach Graham Potter, Tuchel’s replacement, in April 2023.
Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert at the University of Liverpool, suggested the club could be preparing an early move for a younger manager who could cost “three or four times as much in 12 months time”.
Under Clearlake and Boehly, Chelsea has spent heavily on acquiring players, but the overhaul of the squad is yet to pay off in terms of trophies.
Chelsea reported a pre-tax loss of £90mn in the year to the end of June 2023. Losses would have been worse without the sale of hotel buildings to another entity within the ownership group. Revenue increased by 6 per cent to £512mn that season.
“The club is now well positioned to keep moving forward in the Premier League and Europe in the years to come,” Pochettino said in a statement.
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