Chelsea set to buy team in Portugal to start multi-club empire

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly spoke at a conference yesterday where he openly mentioned his admiration for the Red Bull group’s multiple club model, and those quotes have been followed up by Matt Law of the Telegraph today.

He writes that Chelsea are interested in buying a club in Portugal to start their empire, with the country having traditionally served as a great stepping stone to top European leagues for young talent.

Boehly’s quotes point to exactly something like that:

“We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I would love to continue to build out the footprint. There’s different countries where there are advantages to having a club. Red Bull does a really good job at Leipzig and they’ve got Salzburg, both of which are playing in the Champions League so they’ve figured out how to make that work. You have Man City which has a very big network of clubs,” the Chelsea owner said.

“The challenge Chelsea has, when you have 18, 19, 20-year-old stars, you can loan them out to clubs but you hand their development to someone else. Our goal is to ensure we show pathways for our young stars to get on to the Chelsea pitch —while getting them real game time. The way to do that is through another club in a really competitive league in Europe.”

It’s claimed in Law’s piece that the idea was raised earlier this summer, when Boehly met Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes to talk transfers. Mendes’ connections in Portugal would make him the perfect go-between for Boehly’s group as they search for a feeder club in the Liga NOS.

We had an informal agreement with Vitesse in place under Roman – is this the next step?