Chelsea strike agreement for the new arrival as Boehly rebuild continues
Chelsea strike agreement to appoint Laurence Stewart as Boehly rebuilds the club continues.
Chelsea are set to appoint Monaco technical director Laurence Stewart as part of plans to build a new-look transfer ‘think tank’ to oversee player recruitment.
Todd Boehly and Clearlake, the club’s new co-owners, are revamping the club, and Stewart will be a member of the committee that chooses the transfer policy.
Chelsea is in discussions with Brighton’s head of recruitment, Paul Winstanley, as part of the new system.
The Blues have already hired Brighton’s Kyle Macaulay as Graham Potter’s recruiting analyst, and they are also hiring Southampton’s Joe Shields as director of recruitment.
Stewart, Macaulay, Shields, and Winstanley will form part of the ‘think tank’, which is part of a strategy to implement a collaborative structure instead of having a big-name sporting director.
Former RB Leipzig technical director Christopher Vivell has been heavily linked with a move to Stamford Bridge but the club have played down suggestions he could join.
Boehly is currently interim sporting director and, with Clearlake Capital co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Jose Feliciano, oversaw a world-record transfer spend of more than £270million in the summer.
They will remain heavily involved at Chelsea but plan to take a step back on transfers to allow the specialists to do their work.
The American wants to build his own multi-club network which would help the Blues give their young players top-level experience elsewhere in Europe and help get around work permit issues.
Chelsea’s new transfer structure is coming together as planned ahead of the World Cup and they are working to hire two more senior football executives in the coming weeks.
Boehly also wants to press ahead with plans to build a satellite of clubs and has tried to buy French sides Lyon and Sochaux, and Portuguese first-division club Portimonense.
Speaking ahead of tonight’s game against Salzburg, new Chelsea head coach Potter believes the Red Bull model could be successfully replicated in England.
“Essentially it is an idea and everybody is aligned toward that idea,” he said. “Whatever the name is, you can certainly replicate the philosophical idea behind it.”
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