Chelsea look set to complete the signing of Christoph Freund from RB Salzburg as their new director of football (DOF).
I believe this is a real statement of intent from the new owners, who have already gone through a summer of massive changes at the club since buying it at the start of the summer.
Todd Boehly and co might have made some decisions that haven’t been the most popular, largely the sacking of Thomas Tuchel. But their intentions are clear, and that is to build a club from top to bottom who are ready to compete at the very top again and succeed on all levels. And if they want to get anywhere near a club such as Manchester City, they have a lot of work to do.
Ironically, Erling Haaland, who is scoring for fun for City right now, was a player found by Freund at RB Salzburg, and he is just the tip of the iceberg of some of the huge talents that the Austrian director is responsible for finding.
Some other big 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 is clear that he is the perfect kind of DOF that Boehly is looking for, especially the fact that he is a keen user of data and video analysis to scout players, something that the old Chelsea regime did not do so much.
Freund is a real innovator in his field and an expert at what he does. This is great news for Chelsea fans, who can be excited for this further show of ambition from our new owners.
