Chelsea new Sugar Daddy won’t buy players at any price
Chelsea were renowned for significant spending during the 19 years Roman Abramovich was owner
The new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has said the club will not be able to buy players at any price because “Financial Fair Play is starting to get some teeth”.
Chelsea were renowned for significant spending during the 19 years Roman Abramovich was owner, including a world record £72 million for the goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga before a club-record £97.5 million for the striker Romelu Lukaku last summer.
Boehly and the priva
te equity firm, Clearlake Capital, paid £4.25 billion to buy Chelsea from Abramovich last month and the American businessman has spoken about their intention to adopt the US model of data analysis for player recruitment and selection.
“Financial Fair Play is starting to get some teeth and that will limit ability to acquire players at any price,” Boehly told Bloomberg. “Uefa takes it seriously and will continue to take it seriously. [More teeth] means financial penalties and disqualification from competitions.
“If you look at the models that are very successful, Liverpool is a great model. Liverpool generates a couple of hundred million more revenue than Chelsea and they generate earnings, so there is an opportunity to compete.”
As reported by The Times last month, the new Chelsea ownership intends to provide a transfer budget of about £200 million for the head coach, Thomas Tuchel, this summer.
Chelsea need to replace Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen, the central defenders who departed for free this summer at the end of their contracts, before Tuchel can improve last season’s squad. Boehly believes competition for European places will be even greater next season, with Newcastle United’s takeover by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia transforming the club’s chances.
“The ‘big six’ will become the ‘big seven’ with the Saudi deal for Newcastle,” Boehly said. “We believe there is going to be opportunity for everyone to win. The opportunity to turn this into a really more valuable asset is available.”
But Boehly, the co-owner of the LA Dodgers baseball team and LA Lakers basketball team, also believes the financial potential within football is yet to be unlocked.
“They don’t realise how big their opportunity is,” Boehly said. “We think the way those clubs go to market is years behind the US model. We think the global footprint of this sport is really undeveloped. There are four billion fans of European football. There are 170 million fans of NFL. The NFL generates $15 billion [£12 billion] of media money every year. Global club football is a fraction of the NFL media money.”
One of Boehly’s first acts as Chelsea owner has been to sanction talks over a season-long loan deal for Lukaku to return to Inter Milan. Alessandro Antonello, Inter’s chief executive, confirmed the talks and the fact an agreement had not been reached on a loan fee and the wage structure.
“There is a great desire on the part of Lukaku to return,” Antonello said. “What needs to be verified are the economic and financial feasibility and the resolution of some technical problems.”
