2023-05-30 11:20:45
Tuesday, May 30, 2023 – 3:18 PM
ABU DHABI, 30 May / WAM / After a season that witnessed a noticeable decline in Chelsea’s results in the English Football League, and the team’s empty-handed exit from all tournaments locally and in Europe, Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, the new coach of the team, faces many challenges in his mission with the team.
Yesterday, Chelsea announced that it had signed Pochettino to lead the team next season, with a contract that extends for two seasons, and can be extended for a third season.
And the technical management of the team changed more than once during the last season, as the club dismissed German coach Thomas Tokhi on September 7, despite winning the European Champions League title with the team in the 2020-2021 season, a few months following he took over, and the management appointed coach Graham Potter as his successor. .
In early April, and amid the team’s declining results in the past season, Potter was sacked and replaced by Bruno Salter on a temporary basis, and only 4 days later Frank Lampard took over the job on a temporary basis as well.
However, the team’s declining results continued until the end of its career in the last season, by occupying the 12th place in the English Premier League, prompting the club’s management to quickly announce the identity of the new coach, who will undertake the task of returning the team to the competition circle locally and in Europe.
Pochettino returns to the English football arena with great ambitions consistent with his counterpart at Chelsea, where the Argentine coach previously coached Southampton and Tottenham, and achieved with the latter a breakthrough in results that wrote history for this coach in the English football record.
And with the many deals concluded by Chelsea in the past season, whether during the summer transfer period or last January, the club aspires to take advantage of the experience of Pochettino, who also took over training Paris Saint-Germain, to compete strongly next season.
“Pochettino’s experience, leadership and personality will help take Chelsea forward,” Lawrence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, Chelsea’s director of football, said on the club’s website. “His tactical approach and commitment to development make him an exceptional candidate.”
Chelsea faces Pochettino with more than one difficult challenge in the coming period, foremost among which is the extent to which the Argentine coach is able to make the most of the deals concluded by the team in the past season, among which was the contract with Argentine Enzo Fernandez, winner of the Best Young Player award in the 2022 World Cup, who He became the most expensive deal for any player to move to the Premier League.
Fernandez moved from Benfica to Chelsea at the end of last January, just two weeks following celebrating his 22nd birthday, for 121 million euros.
In the past season, Chelsea also included prominent players such as Ukrainian Mykhailo Modric, Frenchmen Benoit Badiaschelli, Wesley Fofana, English striker Raheem Sterling and German defender Antonio Rudiger.
Chelsea acquired 5 of the 10 most expensive deals concluded by English clubs during the Winter Mercato last January.
And with these deals, another challenge for Pochettino will be the need to compete strongly for the English Premier League title despite the clear power and great brilliance of Manchester City, which crowned the title for the third season in a row and the fifth in the last 6 seasons, and Liverpool’s expected attempts to return to the competition circle next season, and the distinguished level. For Arsenal, Newcastle and Manchester United revival.
Pochettino will also face another challenge, which is to return the team to the Champions League in the 2024-2025 season and build a team capable of competing for the continental championship title.
The global “Transfer Market” website, for statistics and numbers of players and teams, asked whether Pochettino is the most suitable option for Chelsea, bearing in mind that he previously led Tottenham to second place in the English Premier League, and he also achieved third place in the competition in two other seasons.
During his training at Southampton, he averaged 1.47 points per game with the team, but he rose to 2.26 points in the 2016-2017 season, his best season with Tottenham.
And Pochettino needs to raise this percentage further if he wants to return Chelsea to the podiums.
Emad Al-Ali / Ahmed Zahran
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