The Good, The Bad and The Boehly – American Businessman Sells Chelsea Stake After 4 Years
The Good, The Bad and The Boehly – American Businessman Sells Chelsea Stake After 4 Years
We’ve all seen the news – Chelsea chairman and ex-shareholder Todd Boehly has sold his stake in the football club to a majority ownership group Clearlake, marking the end of a controversial and incident-filled stint at the top of the Stamford Bridge hierarchy.
The American cut a divisive figure in the VIP box since negotiating a takeover of the club, along with Clearlake owner Bahdad Egbhali, back in 2023, when the Ukraine-Russia conflict resulted in previous owner Roman Abramovich being forced to give up his stake in the club.
🚨🔵 OFFICIAL: Todd Boehly exits Chelsea.
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) September 16, 2026
“It has been an honour to serve as Chairman of Chelsea Football Club. I would like to thank the many who helped secure a bright future for the Club, including the English Premier League, the coaches and players, the talented leadership… pic.twitter.com/6fHSnTQfgh
Director Mark Walter and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss sold their stakes in the club alongside Boehly, with each share worth around 12.8%. The sale of their respective stakes, which amounts to a deal worth around £1 billion, hands Clearlake, Egbhali and co-owner Jose Feliciano complete control over the club, with 100% of the club now falling under their ownership.
So was Boehly’s four-year spell as chairman a success or failure?
Blue-Collared Boys
Taking over during the 2022 summer off-season as chairman of Clearlake Capital and Eldridge Industries, Boehly wasted no time in trying to make Chelsea the team to beat again. This was for good reason, as the American arrived just a year after the Blues' unlikely second Champions League victory, and bringing an influx of cash with him, the Blues splashed out.
Bringing Wesley Fofana, Mykhaylo Mudryk and Enzo Fernandez for fees in excess of £60 million, and the additional pricey acquisitions of Raheem Sterling, Marc Cucurella and the managerial signing of the highly rated Graham Potter, it was clear that he meant business.
However, he immediately vilified himself by firing UCL winning coach and fan favourite Thomas Tuchel to make space for Potter, and there was another major issue. Assigning the duty of identifying signings to sporting directors Paul Winstanley, Joe Sheilds and Lawrence Stewart rather than Potter, this strategy resulted in Potter being brought extremely young, inexperienced players that didn’t necessarily match his system and style. Described as scattergun spending, fans and pundits alike were dubious to say the least.
These owners really sacked a CL winning manager of a group that looked and felt like the beginning of something special, tore the team apart from management to players trying to build their version of Chelsea and went ahead to appoint pure losers of managers. #PochOut #BoehlyOut pic.twitter.com/i1x1V0HD7Z
— Uncle°Joe (@Sir_Joe_7) February 4, 2024
They were proven right – Chelsea were 10th by April, and Potter was quickly sacked. However, bringing in Frank Lampard as interim until the end of the season as Chelsea finished 12th, failing to qualify for any form of European football, as Boehly and Clearlake’s first season in charge went down like a limp balloon.
The strategyless spending continued the next summer and was accompanied by the appointment of Mauricio Pochettino, and while Chelsea did bring in two true quality players in Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo, a lot more deadwood was brought in with them for significant cost, including Robert Sanchez, Axel Disasi and Lesley Ugochukwu.
Under Poch, the Blues looked better organised but still lacked that x factor and killer instinct – it was only the superstar breakout of Cole Palmer that took Chelsea to sixth place, securing Europa Conference League on the final day of the season.
It wasn’t all positive though – working desperately hard to find success in the cup competitions, Chelsea did all the hard work in reaching the Carabao Cup final only to lose to a bunch of college students, as Jurgen Klopp somehow lifted the trophy with a squad filled with academy graduates thanks to an injury crisis.
Pochettino was sacked at the end of the season despite European qualification, and Championship-winning Leicester manager was brought in, advertised as Chelsea's first long-term project coach under Boehly’s tenure.
On The Up
2024/25 was the first season in which it felt like the Chelsea project was starting to push in the right direction. The transfer business was still infuriatingly scatter-gun, with the club signing no fewer than six players who are no longer at the club two years later, but with a slowly growing team core, Maresca was given the best tools for the job of any manager so far.
It was a coming-of-age season for much of the young squad – the Blues waltzed their way to the Conference League trophy, qualified for the following season's Champions League through a fourth-placed league finish, and best of all, won the inaugural revamped FIFA Club World Cup, beating the dominant European champions PSG in the final.
🚨 Chelsea say there will be no changes to the day-to-day operations, leadership or strategy at the club now that Todd Boehly has left the club.
— Chelsea Dodgers (@TheBlueDodger) September 16, 2026
(@ChelseaFC) #CFC pic.twitter.com/WhqymTGQSQ
Many thought 25/26 would be the year Chelsea finally sustained a title push again, and with the signings of Joao Pedro, Willian Estevao and Jorell Hato, this proved to be true in the first half of the season.
However, by December, Chelsea were out of form, and Maresca had repeatedly asked the club's ownership to allow him to negotiate with Manchester City in order to succeed Pep Guardiola at the Etihad. Still under contract at Chelsea, Boehly and co. weren’t having any of it and sacked the Italian on New Year’s Day, letting him know that professional infidelity would not be tolerated.
Chelsea’s season capitulated after that – hiring Liam Rosenior, results deteriorated fast, and the former Strasbourg coach lasted just three months before being shown the door. Chelsea finished 10th, once again missing out on Europe, and some fans, turning on the ownership, believed their experiment had failed and that they should cut their losses before the club was run into mid-table mediocrity.
Yet somehow, Boehly and his cohorts managed to convince ex-Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen invincible Xabi Alonso to take the helm in the dugout, highlighting that, despite their underperformance for a number of years, the Blues still have pulling power.
Alonso’s arrival was accompanied by a change in philosophy – the Sporting Directors were finally stripped of their roles in recruitment, and the responsibility of shortlisting players was left up to Alonso himself, a far more sustainable way for a club to go about their transfer business; if the players don’t fit the team, then what’s the point?
Alonso promptly signed Morgan Rogers, Marco Palestra, Maxence Lacroix and a whole host of other exciting talents, and for once, there was very little to be negative about when looking at Chelsea’s transfer business. It looks as if the ownership has finally learnt its lesson.
Bye-Bye, Boehly
Boehly’s departure from his role of chairman hasn’t exactly come as a shock – it was reported in the latter stages of last season that the Virginia-born businessman was looking to split from the club – but it does leave Chelsea at an interesting crossroads.
Boehly, for all of his money-throwing and deeply American interviews, always seemed like the voice of reason and wisdom within the Chelsea hierarchy, while Egbhali seems a little more like a loose cannon.
He brought a calm energy, an entrepreneur’s steely resolve to transfer talks and, though it wasn’t necessarily achieved, a desire for success, traits that I’m sure will be missed over the coming year or so.
However, Clearlake have a unique opportunity here – they have the chance to blame the last four years of mixed success on Boehly, and if they grasp this fresh start with both hands, they could reincarnate the club as a serial trophy-winning entity.
🚨🔵 3 DECISIONS FROM THE TODD BOEHLY ERA CHELSEA FANS STILL CAN’T FORGET
— Trinity (@Trinityter77) September 17, 2026
Todd Boehly’s time at Chelsea has brought plenty of changes, but some decisions still leave fans wondering what could have been.
1. Sacking Thomas Tuchel
Tuchel had already delivered the Champions… pic.twitter.com/17YvfNkdfG
There is also the risk that the opposite happens and that it was only Boehly’s presence that was keeping the club vaguely competitive – Chelsea has been such an unstable club in recent years that no one would be surprised if their fortunes swung either way.
Regardless of the strange hierarchy, dodgy transfer strategy, and general impatience for managers, Boehly certainly oversaw improvement between taking over the club and selling his share, and though he did things in an unorthodox way, the Blues likely wouldn’t be where they are today.
An impossible club to predict, there is no telling how Chelsea will do moving forward under Clearlake ownership, but it sure will be fascinating to watch…
Joe Ryan 
