Over the past two decades, Chelsea have established themselves as a club with top-notch managers. However, often those managers had to be paid dearly. Since the beginning of the century, there have been 19 managers on the Blues’ bench, noting that three of them had two spells with the club from Stamford Bridge – Jose Mourinho, Guus Hiddink and Frank Lampard. The fact that out of those 19 names, 13 joined the club for free sounds frugal on Chelsea’s part. However, the club spent an astounding amount of more than 65 million euros on the remaining six managers! Chelsea splashed out £10million in compensation for Enzo Maresca, taking their total spend on managers to £55.5m from 2000 to the present day and Maresca became the fourth most-expensive managerial acquisition of all-time in the process.{Dailymail} pic.twitter.com/Eve6rzKLRm— Vince™ (@Blue_Footy) June 4, 2024 The first coach for whom Chelsea paid the compensation fee was – who else could it be?! – The Special One, Jose Mourinho. He joined the club after winning the Champions League with Porto for around 2 million euros and turned out to be worth every cent since he won two Premier Leagues in a row. The next manager for whom Chelsea had to pay the compensation fee came from Porto as well. Andre Villas-Boas arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2011, and the Blues had to pay the Dragons as much as 15 million euros. Unfortunately for the London side, this money was spent in vain since the club didn’t win a single trophy under the Portuguese.It is official: Stamford Bridge welcomes Enzo MarescaIn 2018, Maurizio Sarri moved to Chelsea from Napoli for almost 6 million euros. The Italian was not as successful as expected in domestic competitions, but managed to win the Europa League trophy before leaving for Juventus. Right after Sarri’s departure, Chelsea brought the club legend Frank Lampard from Derby County for 4.7 million euros, which is the second lowest amount the club paid for a manager in this century. Lampard’s inexperience, however, prevailed and he didn’t justify the invested money. Chelsea’s perfect transfer scenario: a talented, league-experienced defender for freeThe tactician for whom Chelsea paid an absolutely staggering 25 million euros is Graham Potter. Excellent results with Brighton recommended the Englishman, but he spent only seven months with the club, and his spell was rather disappointing. Compared to Potter’s acquisition, 11.7 million euros for the new manager, Enzo Maresca, does not seem like much. Especially if the Italian turns out to be the right choice. Lastly, it has to be mentioned that the club from Stamford Bridge managed to be frugal a number of times during this century since, among the 13 managers that joined the club for free, there were some serious names such as Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez, Thomas Tuchel, Antonio Conte and Mauricio Pochettino.##NAJAVA_MECA_8143848##
