Chelsea appear ready to complete the signing of Christoph Freund from RB Salzburg as their new director of football (DOF).
I think this is a real statement of intent from the new owners, who have already been through a summer of massive changes to the club since they bought it at the beginning of the summer.
Todd Boehly and company could have made some decisions that haven’t been the most popular, in large part the firing of Thomas Tuchel. But his intentions are clear, and that is to build a club from top to bottom that is ready to compete at the top again and succeed at every level. And if they want to approach a club like Manchester City, they have a lot of work to do.
Ironically, Erling Haaland, who is currently scoring for fun for City, was a player found by Freund at RB Salzburg, and is just the tip of the iceberg of some of the great talent the Austrian manager is responsible for finding.
Some other great talents he found are Sadio Mane, Konrad Laimer, Dayot Upamecano, Karim Adeyemi, Marcel Sabitzer, Patson Daka, Naby Keita, Benjamin Sesko, Dominik Szoboszlai, and Enock Mwepu, just to name more.
It’s clear he’s the perfect kind of DOF Boehly is looking for, especially given the fact that he’s a heavy user of data and video analytics to scout players, something the old Chelsea regime didn’t do as much.
Freund is a true innovator in his field and an expert in what he does. This is great news for Chelsea fans, who can be excited by this new display of ambition from our new owners.
