After a 0-1 defeat against West Bromwich Albion, manager Andre Villas-Boas was sacked by the Stanford Bridge Blues, Chelsea. The manager had been hanging on by a thread and the defeat on Saturday, March 3rd, was clearly the final straw for the club.
Of course after one manager leaves, another must take his place. Several European managers have been linked to the open Chelsea bench opportunity. Among those is Pep Guardiola, manager for FC Barcelona. The Catalan coach has been dwelling on when or if he will renew his contract with the blaugranas, which naturally allowed for rumors to surface after the news of Villas-Boas' exit. Carles Rexach, a great influence at FC Barcelona, however, claimed today that Guardiola's renewal is soon to become official.
[caption id="attachment_115" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Rafael Benitez, former Liverpool FC manager"]
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Another coach being linked to the job is former Liverpool manager, Rafael Benitez. Benitez already knows that if he takes this job, criticisms former club fans, Liverpool FC, will not be shy in voicing their opinions. The Spanish manager spoke up today and said, "If Liverpool fans love me, they will let me join Chelsea." But predicting the fans reactions is difficult, as their beloved Fernando Torres signed with the Blues, which stirred up extreme controversy.
[caption id="attachment_116" align="alignleft" width="211" caption="Mourinho, current Real Madrid manager linked to possible Chelsea job."]
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According to former Real Madrid and Barcelona player, Michael Laudrup, former Blues manager and current Real Madrid manager, Jose Mourinho, will not take the open managing job at Chelsea. After Mourinho claimed that he was going to leave the Bernabeu bench in June and questions arose asking whether he was going to return to his former clubs Chelsea or Inter Milan. However, Mourinho has not been open about whether or not he will for sure leave Real Madrid, or what team he would like to manage. Uncertainty still weighs on the Portuguese manager, so it is difficult to determine whether or not he will leave his current club for his former club.
Assistant manager, Roberto Di Matteo, has been temporarily promoted to caretaker of the managing position. However, speculations about Di Matteo's possibility of staying as a permanent manager have surfaced. Would it be smarter to hire a new coach? Or simply let Di Matteo manage the team he knows better than a lot at the moment?
The decision of sacking Villas-Boas was foreseen as Chelsea slumped in the ranking and potential silverware slipped through his fingers, but no one could
have predicted this at the beginning of the season. Villas-Boas is a young coach who has been known as an intelligent manager all through his career. Could these possibly be signs for a struggling Chelsea rather than a struggling manager?
Clubs these days seem to think that sacking their current manager is the smartest thing to do. Before doing so, however, directors of the team should probably observe what is really wrong with the team. Did Torres joining Chelsea only make the team chemistry worse? It is hard to put your finger on the problem when a team is struggling. On the other hand, I do not think that sacking your manager in the middle of the season is necessarily the correct thing to do. Sacking your coach as a scapegoat has not ended in positive results for many teams as more stress is added in the remaining question of who is next.
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