Chelsea owner Todd Boehly admits he only pursued Marc Cucurella in his first summer at the club because Manchester City wanted to sign him first.
The Blues have spent an incredible £1.5billion on 37 first-team players since a Boehly-led consortium bought the club in 2022.
There have not been too many roaring successes, but £62million signing Cucurella has performed very well after a difficult start.
Chelsea fans were initially skeptical of the Spanish left-back, as the club’s first managerial appointment under Boehly, Graham Potter, noted in November 2024.
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Potter said he felt the Blues fan base had a “real dislike” for Cucurella, explaining: “He came in with a high fee at a time when the team wasn’t functioning as well as what he was used to.
“He had to take some stick here at Stamford Bridge; it was quite hostile at times. Credit to him.
“There was a period of time when…if results weren’t going so well, you want to do as much as you can to have the crowd with you but it was obvious that there was a real dislike for Marc here.
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“It goes into your thinking about whether to put him in. I remember we played him against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League and he was amazing, man of the match, so it’s a credit to him.
“He’s got the character. You’re not going to get a person in terms of how he is with his teammates, how good he is around the club, around the place, and how he fights every single day.”
Cucurella was one of nine signings in the 2022 summer transfer window – Boehly’s first at Stamford Bridge, in which he acted as interim sporting director.
In Chelsea’s first couple of transfer windows post-Roman Abramovich, it was a running joke that the Blues only signed players their rivals wanted first.
Boehly has humorously admitted that this was the logic behind signing Cucurella: if Man City wanted him, Chelsea wanted him too.
“Having taken over in the circumstances that we did, basically the whole management team left,” Boehly told iConnections (via Absolute Chelsea on X).
“I was stuck being interim Sporting Director for a summer, having no idea what made a good football player.
“But knowing that Marc Cucurella, if Man City wanted him, I want him. It was really simple that way.”
It’s not the worst logic in the world, to be fair. There are certainly worse clubs to copy.
Chelsea take on Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday, and a win would put them back above Liverpool into the Champions League places.
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