Remember in 2022 when Todd Boehly advised Tomas Tuchel to play a 4-4-3 formation?At the time, the Chelsea model was best described as a meme, a comedy of errors with players looking like headless chickens on the pitch.
Fast forward three years later, and the London club have somehow, chaotically fumbled into the top four of the Premier League, won the UEFA Conference League, and by luck of the draw, stormed into the Club World Cup final and shocked overwhelming favourites, PSG, to become world champions.
Softfootball looks into the living and breathing contradiction called Chelsea Football Club. To be fair to Todd Boehly and his business partners, this chaotic fumble to success did not start with them.
In another form, Roman Abramovich, the impeached former Chelsea owner, presided over a club whose logic is only defined by success, though how they did it most of the time leaves the most rational minds scratching their collective heads in awe.
However, Todd Boehly and, by extension, Clearlake Capital took the Abramovich model and multiplied it by a hundred. Already, the club is in its third regime of manager in just three years, and the Blues now appear to love a transfer window even more than when the Russian was calling the shots at the club.
There is a divergence between Clearlake Capital and Abramovich’s running of the club. While the previous owner was fueled by almost an insatiable hunger for trophies, the Americans, on the other hand, look to be driven by profit.
Clearlake Capital’s model looks to be focused on acquiring the best young players in the most in-demand position in football, attracting them with guaranteed, long and lucrative contracts for a long period of time, then selling them for profit in a few years, then repeating the process every transfer window.
They do this while walking on the fringes of financial restriction and coming up with creative ways to beat the system. BBC Sport reported how Chelsea sold their hotel and female teams to themselves for fees way above their market value.
Chelsea appear to have sold their women’s team to their own parent company, avoiding a £90m loss and turning it into £128m profit.
Logically, this system made the club a very lucrative talent development agency at best, winning major trophies shouldn’t be in the discuss, however, like we have all witnessed this season, they have somehow stumbled upon two major trophies, also earning the much needed million of pounds that will allow them escape financial scrutiny for at least another year.
There is logic to the madness. A team cannot spend millions recruiting some of the best young players in the world and not stay competitive to a large extent. They may not have the consistency to be major challenges for a long time, but they will be consistent enough to remain relevant.
There lies the genius of the Clearlake Capital model: do enough to keep the fans happy, make the club front-runners in the pursuit of the best talents in the world, but don’t keep them long enough to become a force; they have to move on, recycled to make room for others.
If you are thinking of starting a business, Clearlake Capital is best encapsulated by the popular warning, “Don’t Try This At Home”. It only works for Chelsea; it is in the club’s DNA.
