Pochettino out at Chelsea After Single Season

Mauricio Pochettino, manager of Chelsea looks on during the Premier League match between Aston Villa and Chelsea FC at Villa Park in Birmingham, England on April 27, 2024. Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Chelsea F.C. has parted ways with the manager, Mauricio Pochettino, after just one season, which means the historic club will be looking for its sixth manager in two years under American owner Todd Boehly.

The 52-year-old Pochettino signed a two-year contract with an option for a third year with Chelsea on July 1. The club finished in sixth place in the English Premier League with 18 wins, 11 losses, and nine draws but ended the season with five consecutive wins and qualified for the Europa League.

This season, Chelsea was runners-up in the Carabao Cup and reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, which features Manchester City and Manchester and Manchester United in the final on Saturday. Pochettino appeared to find his footing as the manager but mutually decided to leave the club.

“Thank you to the Chelsea ownership group and Sporting Directors for the opportunity to be part of this football club’s history,” Pochettino said. “The Club is now well positioned to keep moving forward in the Premier League and Europe in the years to come.”

Some potential successors for Chelsea include Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna, Sporting CP’s Ruben Amorim, and Burnley’s Vincent Kompany.

However, Boehly and co-controlling owners Behdad Eghbali and Jose Feliciano are under scrutiny for how they have handled Chelsea since buying the club in May 2022. Under Boehly’s reign, Chelsea has parted ways with Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Bruno Saltor, Frank Lampard, and now Pochettino, who had the best winning percentage among those coaches.

Pochettino’s assistants, Chelsea Jesus Perez, Miguel d’Agostino, Toni Jimenez, and Sebastiano Pochettino, have also left the club.

“On behalf of everyone at Chelsea, we would like to express our gratitude to Mauricio for his service this season,” sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley said in a joint statement. “He will be welcome back to Stamford Bridge any time and we wish him all the very best in his future coaching career.”

Pochettino, who hails from Argentina, should have no shortage of suitors for a new position because of his experience as a manager. He was also in charge of Espanyol (2009–2012), Southampton (2013–2014), Tottenham Hotspur (2014–2019), Paris Saint-Germain (2021–2022 ), in addition to Chelsea.

American businessman Todd Boehly applauds during the English Premier League soccer match between Chelsea and Wolverhampton at Stamford Bridge stadium, in London, on May 7, 2022. Frank Augstein/AP Photo

‘Lot of Walls to Break Down’

Despite such a turnover, Boehly said in 2022 that he was confident the club could compete for titles in the short term and was not averse to spending millions of dollars to add players.

“Our vision for the club was to find a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us, a coach who really wanted to collaborate,” Boehly said in a statement after Tuchel was fired in September 2022.

“There are a lot of walls to break down at Chelsea. Before, the first team and academy didn’t really share data and didn’t share information about where the top players were coming from. Our goal is to bring a team together; all of that needs to be a well-oiled machine.

“The reality of our decision was that we weren’t sure that Thomas saw it the same way we saw it. No one is right or wrong, we just didn’t have a shared vision for the future. It wasn’t about Zagreb, it was about the shared vision for what we wanted Chelsea to look like.”

Boehly led a consortium to buy Chelsea in May 2022.