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Andre Villas-Boas makes first Chelsea move as Paul Clement leaves
Andre Villas-Boas has made his first significant move since his appointment as Carlo Ancelotti’s successor as Chelsea manager, sanctioning the departure of Paul Clement, Stamford Bridge’s long-serving assistant first team coach.
The 33 year-old Portuguese, appointed this week after Roman Abramovich agreed to pay the world-record £13.2 million release clause in his FC Porto contract, insisted upon his arrival that he did not intend to make wholesale changes to a club which he felt required evolution more than revolution.
But the departure of Clement, on the staff at Stamford Bridge for 17 years – punctuated only by a brief interlude at Fulham – and the only man to have worked under all of Abramovich’s managerial appointments, suggests that Villas-Boas is determined to stamp his authority on his new side.
Clement started working with the club’s schoolboys in 1994, returning in 2005 to work with Chelsea’s youth teams and, in 2008, reserves. He was initially appointed to first-team duties on a temporary basis under Guus Hiddink before that position was made permanent by Ancelotti.
It is a measure of Villas-Boas’s influence with Abramovich that he has been able to begin his behind-the-scenes revolution so quickly and ruthlessly, especially since quite how keen the Russian is only to employ staff he deems suitable was made clear when it emerged that he appointed the Portuguese ahead of Hiddink because of the Dutchman’s request for Ray Wilkins, the former first-team coach, to return.
The club’s former opposition scout, awarded a £5 million-a-year contract at Stamford Bridge for the next three seasons, is expected to announce that his fitness coach, Jose Mario Rocha, and his scout, Daniel Sousa will both follow him from Portugal in the coming days. He will, though, retain Michael Emenalo on his staff, after Abramovich recommended the Nigerian coach’s services.
His overhaul of his coaches is likely to be followed by a sustained campaign of recruitment. Falcao, the 26-year-old Colombian striker so central to Villas-Boas’s success in Portugal, is thought to be his first priority, though it remains unclear what his arrival would mean for both Fernando Torres and Didier Drogba.
Porto’s president, Pinto da Costa, is so enraged at Chelsea’s poaching of Villas-Boas that he is expected to refuse to negotiate with the Premier League club over any of his players, meaning Abramovich must pay the £30 million release clause in Falcao’s deal if he is to tempt the forward to England.
Villas-Boas is also thought to be keen on his former charge Joao Moutinho – whose contract contains a £40 million release clause – which may impact Chelsea’s high-profile pursuit of Luka Modric, the Tottenham playmaker and a player cast in the same mould as the Portuguese international.