43 or 44 players?
Pep student Maresca to solve Chelsea’s billion-dollar puzzle
In spring 2022, just one year after the Champions League triumph, Todd Boehly will take over Chelsea FC. Two turbulent years later, hardly any official or sports journalist knows how many players are in the Blues' squad. A Guardiola apprentice is supposed to bring success back in the midst of the chaos.
It's not easy to keep track. You never know who Chelsea FC are planning to buy, sell or loan. As of Wednesday afternoon, 42 players had a valid contract with the English Premier League club, others say it's 43. Not included is João Félix, who will join from Atlético Madrid for 50 million euros. And they don't even have room for him.
Whether 42, 43 or 44: Chelsea FC itself does its own math. As of Wednesday afternoon, the club listed 33 players for the first team on its website, and eleven more with a valid contract are currently on loan. That makes a total of 44 – ten of which are goalkeepers. But: Not included are such prominent personnel as Kepa Arrizabalaga, still the most expensive goalkeeper in history, or Romelu Lukaku.
“Where should he change?”
On the Internet, where pictures of Chelsea FC's overcrowded gym are circulating, people are now making fun of the monstrous squad – with “memes” of a four-story team bus or of team meetings in which players pile up to form human towers. Jamie Carragher, a former England international and now a TV pundit, asks himself: If João Félix comes now, “where is he going to change?” And he stressed: “I'm dead serious about that.”
The man responsible for all of this is Todd Boehly. He is already the majority owner of the Dodgers (baseball) and the Lakers (basketball) from Los Angeles, and he also heads the Clearlake consortium, which has owned Chelsea FC since the summer of 2022. Since then, Boehly has apparently signed 39 players at random – for a total sum equivalent to more than 1.3 billion euros. In the process, he used up five coaches, and Thomas Tuchel had to pack his bags as soon as Boehly took office – despite having won the Champions League.
Only one victory in preparation
In parallel to the chaotic squad policy, Chelsea has plummeted to positions in the table in recent years that former coaches such as José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti or the same Thomas Tuchel only know from hearsay. At the end of the 22/23 season, they are in a catastrophic 12th place. Last year, the team somehow managed to climb to sixth place, but as a thank you, coach Mauricio Pochettino has to go.
Since the start of the season, Enzo Maresca, who was replaced by Premier League newcomers Leicester City for almost twelve million euros after Mauricio Pochettino left the club, has been struggling with this XXXL squad. When he took office, coach Maresca was the glimmer of hope in the opaque London player salad. But even during the pre-season, the personnel on the sidelines had at least a bitter aftertaste. The Blues drew 2:2 with AFC Wrexham, a third division club that has become a cult thanks to owner Ryan Reynolds. A little later, they even suffered a 1:4 defeat against Celtic Glasgow. During the pre-season, Chelsea won just one game – a 3:0 win against Mexican CF America.
In addition to meeting sporting goals, Maresca also has to moderate the incomparably bloated squad. This leads to hardships. In the 0-2 defeat at the start of the season against champions Manchester City, where he was still assisting Pep Guardiola two years ago, Maresca saw no use for national player Raheem Sterling: he was not even in the matchday squad. Kepa (most recently loaned to Real Madrid), Lukaku (most recently loaned to Inter Milan) and Axel Disasi, who was only signed from Monaco in 2023 for a transfer fee of 45 million euros, are also said to be able to leave.
“Players must stop signing with Chelsea”
There is no end in sight in terms of new signings. Chelsea have already signed nine players this summer, Felix would be the tenth. He is expected to sign a six-year contract with an option for a further one. He would not be the only one with such a contract. Cole Palmer, voted the best young player in the Premier League last season, recently extended his contract until 2033. A total of 17 players in the squad have contracts that run until at least 2030.
“Chelsea must stop buying players. And the players must stop signing with Chelsea,” exclaims former Liverpool player Carragher, who also says he really cannot understand “how a player can sign a seven-year contract.” The noticeably long contracts were a financial trick at the start of the Boehly era. The Blues can write off the transfer fee for the players over the years of the contract. The Premier League has now put a stop to this practice and limited the period for the write-off of transfer fees to five years. Chelsea itself is now experiencing the downside of the practice. Guaranteeing players a princely salary over a period of seven years does not make it easier to sell them again.
