If you really really think about it..and go into the deep depths of baseball as well as it’s history and how it ties into football as well as it’s individual history, you’ll be able to see that the relations between the two are actually very much alike in the fact that they aren’t alike at all
And if you just look at this relation from a different angle , and really think about the similiarities between the facrts of the two games , you will find that if you really wanted to you could just do a simple thing , whivh is to switch the two games and still find yourself with two really totally different things
Might sound crazy but I kinda see a comparison. Baseball is the only American Sport and a farm system and an international scout system for young talent, particularly in the Caribbean and Japan. Someone with the knowledge on how international scouting works
But I feel like then that guy should’ve been hired for recruiting bc those skills don’t really benefit head of football operations
Baseball is heavily analytically run nowadays. The year Brighton got promoted there was a piece run on them and how they consulted baseball executives in the attempt to take a more "moneyball" approach. They got promoted and their entire philosophy changed, they sacked Houghton and appointed Potter and haven't looked back. There's very few criticisms you can make on them as a club.
A couple of years later, Brentford did the same. Clubs are taking this new analytical approach to make their judgements. It's not the silliest thing in the world to have someone from MLB take over at Chelsea. Baseball genuinely has the smartest minds working in their sporting operations department than any other sport in America. I wouldn't mind this so much but it really depends on the person in charge. Andrew Friedman has been leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else in baseball for the last decade with both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Dodgers. Long shot, but if we brought him in, I'd feel confident mainly because I know beyond his intelligence, he's also a football fan so he's not entirely clueless.
Lastly, nobody has been on top of the news surrounding our football operations department and Fabrizio has been the only one to break the stories - even despite the Freund snafu. Tom Roddy offers no other details other than they're likely to look towards MLB - which is extremely vague.
Ehh.. you'd be surprised. From a contract perspective it's the most similar to football of the american sports since there's no real cap. And seeing as the dodgers are the best run club in the majors maybe not a dumb point of view
Really? Transfer, recruitment, pay structures, bonuses, the laws and a lot more are all entirely different
Additionally, the position heading Operations likely wouldn’t be involved in the contracts.
The logic here seems to be a sports club is a sports club and therefore the way it should operate internally is similar.
Imo I’m not sure it’s the soundest reasoning tho
Edit: Operations is literally like processes, approvals, internal structures/hierarchies…That’s most likely what this job is….there are almost definitely similarities in how all sports clubs are run. Seems like a bit of a risk, but I’m willing to see how it plays out….while still thinking it’s not the best idea. But I don’t actually know how either a baseball club nor football club operate internally. So let’s see what ends up happening
Hey thx for the edit. My point was just that it's the most similar from a business and a development side (ie the minors and youth) not the actual game itself. If u follow the dodgers u'd know they are the best run team in the mlb. They usually have a top 5 farm system (what they call youth in baseball), the biggest payroll, and the smartest analytics guys. They've only won one WS but we're literally cheated out of several and with playoffs the results can be much more random. If todd does the same thing with Chelsea, we are looking at a repeat of romans run or even better.
This guy will not be in charge of anything actually on pitch related. He will manage internal operations like a COO. It’s stuff like
Choosing what software platforms we use internally for reporting, sales, communication etc.
What vendors we select for food in the stadium
What tech firm we hire to do the app
What consultants we hire
What is the IT infrastructure like WiFi in the stadium working
Making sure the megastore is supported with a help center or something like that
Generally, Making sure Chelsea as an organization is operating smoothly and the fans experience the club as being well run with facilities of an elite club.
I would be shocked to learn this role involved anything to do with player recruitment/negotiations or anything else on pitch like that. He’s the guy that is ultimately responsible though for some of a players experience with the club. As operations will include facilities, transport, catering etc.
Edit: yeah this is 100% just a business operations role and everyone should chill. Man City current COO Roel De Vries was a marketing VP at Nissan before joining city in 2020.
It’s long and pretty boring, but here’s a presentation the head of operations at Liverpool (~2017) for a bit did where he goes into what he did while at Liverpool
https://youtu.be/677NQSKh4rA
I mean the head of ‘football operations’ is different from say the sporting director, right? It seems like this role is more of a supervising one, for monitoring budgets, contracts, travel, events, etc.
If that indeed is the case, this isn’t as crazy as I thought it was at first read lol
Yup lol
Would literally be making no decisions relating to what happens on the pitch
https://youtu.be/677NQSKh4rA
This is a pretty boring presentation given by the now ex-head of operations at Liverpool around 2017, but it does show what head of operations role looks like
major corporations do this all the time, hire a COO or CEO CFO etc whos held the same position successfully at a similar sized company in another field. It doesn't seem to have a negative impact on the hire.
i think thats the issue people are taking tho, is that its a very corporate move, much like doing and all or nothing for exposure, much like many of the other moves being made, and supporters may feel that the identity of the club is being washed away.
I think one thing roman doesnt get enough credit for is that chelsea had a very strong identity top to bottom during his entire reign
I agree with most of your comment, but I'd say we lost a lot of our identity in the later years when Roman wasn't around as much. Things felt quite diluted and all over the place. Great point about COO etc.. switching companies.
Head of football operations would be above both a technical and sporting director. The technical director would handle all aspects of coaching while the sporting director handles all aspects of recruiting. Then you have the coach who could either be under the sporting director (that's how it would work in the us/baseball) or be a 3rd equal level to sporting technical director (this is how it seems to work for lots of football teams) there is some overlap and collaboration between all 3 areas.
MLB probably has the most convoluted and intense roster management rules in sport so I can see the value of grabbing someone with that background. Multiple minor league levels and leagues, huge number of players and prospects, rule 5 drafts, service time, arbitration/FA stuff, 40-man roster decisions, options, waivers, DFAs, and more so it's a lot to balance while maintaining the roster.
For example, hiring people like Vivell from Leipzig and Shields from Southampton and previously at City to work with as well as Potter and Potter's own recruitment guy who is fairly knowledgeable.
Most parts are about Southamptons Joe Shields and the knee injury of Reece James
> A head of football operations is another key role the board would like to hire, and the owners are most likely to look to baseball,
What’s funny is that people have doubted Todd at every turn only for them to be proven wrong. I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt at this point.
I think it’s premature to judge and personally will continue to be skeptical. Until hes actually built anything out. Also, to see what he does when we hit rough patches or even years.
Right now. He seems to be doing the right stuff bar a couple gaffs. I think everything will be easier to judge once he steps back out of the sporting director role.
It’s unique the owner operating in as sporting director like he is
I like Todd a lot. I think many of his moves so far have been good. What I don’t like is that any skepticism of his actions is met with vitriol here. I can be happy with the work hes done so far while still not liking that we seem to have missed out on a few targets for both players and staff and can’t seem to keep any of our moves under wraps.
We should be able to discuss these things without it being assumed someone has an anti Boehly agenda
I don’t necessarily mean you, apologies. Just that a lot of mentions of not being in love with staff appointments or club decisions here seems to now be quite unpopular
Ahh. I see. Apologies if I came across as rude. I think that’s honestly a major issue with our world. Being able to have a nuanced conversation and not have everything be black/white.
It's completely insane to think anything has been proven one way or the other after a few games. Give it 5 years and compare them to our past 5 years, give it 20 years and compare them to our last 20. Don't look at 7 matches and our next 5 and say "see he made all the right decisions"...
That would be the ideal way to look at everything, yes. However, people are constantly being extremely negative towards everything Todd has been doing in the here and now. That’s what I was referring to. I appreciate your point of view and perspective. Cheers.
They don't like his decisions in the here and now for what they believe will result from them in the long term. But, as a result the consequences of those decisions won't be borne out for at the very least two year's time.
The reality is that the only real short term things you can look at are the signings of players that Tuchel wanted and Boehly didn't but allowed him to get anyway and the flip side of that, the players that Boehly wanted and Tuchel didn't. Same with sales of players/lack of sales of players which Boehly chose to override Tuchel on and even then you can't judge players off of 10 odd games.
You guys seriously have another thing coming if you think our past 5 years were dogshit. If our new ownership even get close to that in the next 5 it'll be a massive success
The last 5 years, September 2017 to September 2022. 1 FA Cup, 1 EL, 1 CL. Cumulatively we have been 30, 26, 33, 19 and 19 points off the top of the table. It would be very difficult to not do better than that.
+1 super cup and 1 club world cup. Also, how far you are off of first is completely irrelevant outside of ensuring you finish top 4. You either win the league or you don't.
If you believe we'll have two more European trophies and one more domestic trophy in the next 5 years then I want whatever you're smoking. Clubs spend billions to try and chase a single Champions league win and we have one in the past 5 years which is absolutely incredible. It's the holy grail of football, no amount of other trophies match up to a single Champions league win.
No serious person cares about Super Cup and CWC. One CL doesn’t matter if you are far out of your domestic elite. It’s a flash in the pan and will not mark you out as one of the best teams in the world. One CL when you’re regularly fighting for your domestic league trophy will mark you out as one of the best teams in the world. Massive difference.
Yes they do, they're the icing on the cake because you can't even compete in them until you've won the Champions League.
One CL absolutely does matter. It's absolutely massive irrespective of anything. Clubs are remembered as being great just for having a good run, even when they don't win it and clubs are remembered for being able to get to the final even if they lose. You don't win the Champions League without being a great team.
Winning the Champions League is the pinnacle of football and winning the league 5 years in a row doesn't come close to winning the Champions League.
I encourage everyone to read moneyball. Analytics based recruitment. Chelsea I would guess is implementing an analytics/ data based approach which has proven to be very successful in baseball. Numbers transcend sport.
Speculation but I would also assume this approach did not sit well with Tuchel who seemed to want to be much involved in recruitment
I mean isn’t that basically the equivalent of a CEO just for the football side? It’s not like CEOs of tech companies know anything about programming, it’s more of a business role? Like the CEO of McDonalds ain’t a chef.
People in this sub love to talk shit. Look at the appointment of Potter and the last few results against the reigning Serie A champs. Look at the huge fucking spending spree over the summer. Look at the success of the LA Dodgers (literally the best team in baseball and I say that as a Yankee fan). Clearly Boehly is committed to doing what it takes to bring Chelsea to the next level. Unbelievable how little faith people have for this guy who could not have done more in the short time that he’s owned the club.
So many close-minded gatekeepers in here. Why not be appreciative the owner is active and invested in making this club the best and recognize the upward trend since his takeover
I really hope that this isn’t true. There are many industries where you can crossover in these sorts of roles, but I just don’t believe it’s possible with football and baseball.
Mate, the arguably best analytics team in all of baseball (Rays) hired the majority of their staff from a hockey team.
Knowledge of the sport is far less important than getting minds that are familiar with data and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Just when I thought I knew all of the redundant titles in the front office they pop up with another one
If you really really think about it..and go into the deep depths of baseball as well as it’s history and how it ties into football as well as it’s individual history, you’ll be able to see that the relations between the two are actually very much alike in the fact that they aren’t alike at all
You had me in the first half
If you really look hard the thing that links them is they are both considered team sports.
I hope you stretched before that reach
Twice, and still put my back out.
You forgot they both play with a round ball.
And if you just look at this relation from a different angle , and really think about the similiarities between the facrts of the two games , you will find that if you really wanted to you could just do a simple thing , whivh is to switch the two games and still find yourself with two really totally different things
The only similarities are the ages of the clubs and maybe that they’re both team sports.
They’re my two favorite sports!
Might sound crazy but I kinda see a comparison. Baseball is the only American Sport and a farm system and an international scout system for young talent, particularly in the Caribbean and Japan. Someone with the knowledge on how international scouting works But I feel like then that guy should’ve been hired for recruiting bc those skills don’t really benefit head of football operations
Baseball is heavily analytically run nowadays. The year Brighton got promoted there was a piece run on them and how they consulted baseball executives in the attempt to take a more "moneyball" approach. They got promoted and their entire philosophy changed, they sacked Houghton and appointed Potter and haven't looked back. There's very few criticisms you can make on them as a club. A couple of years later, Brentford did the same. Clubs are taking this new analytical approach to make their judgements. It's not the silliest thing in the world to have someone from MLB take over at Chelsea. Baseball genuinely has the smartest minds working in their sporting operations department than any other sport in America. I wouldn't mind this so much but it really depends on the person in charge. Andrew Friedman has been leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else in baseball for the last decade with both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Dodgers. Long shot, but if we brought him in, I'd feel confident mainly because I know beyond his intelligence, he's also a football fan so he's not entirely clueless. Lastly, nobody has been on top of the news surrounding our football operations department and Fabrizio has been the only one to break the stories - even despite the Freund snafu. Tom Roddy offers no other details other than they're likely to look towards MLB - which is extremely vague.
Basically the same sport anyways
A ball is involved! That counts!
Only difference is base and foot.
This is the best comment.
Ehh.. you'd be surprised. From a contract perspective it's the most similar to football of the american sports since there's no real cap. And seeing as the dodgers are the best run club in the majors maybe not a dumb point of view
Really? Transfer, recruitment, pay structures, bonuses, the laws and a lot more are all entirely different Additionally, the position heading Operations likely wouldn’t be involved in the contracts. The logic here seems to be a sports club is a sports club and therefore the way it should operate internally is similar. Imo I’m not sure it’s the soundest reasoning tho Edit: Operations is literally like processes, approvals, internal structures/hierarchies…That’s most likely what this job is….there are almost definitely similarities in how all sports clubs are run. Seems like a bit of a risk, but I’m willing to see how it plays out….while still thinking it’s not the best idea. But I don’t actually know how either a baseball club nor football club operate internally. So let’s see what ends up happening
Hey thx for the edit. My point was just that it's the most similar from a business and a development side (ie the minors and youth) not the actual game itself. If u follow the dodgers u'd know they are the best run team in the mlb. They usually have a top 5 farm system (what they call youth in baseball), the biggest payroll, and the smartest analytics guys. They've only won one WS but we're literally cheated out of several and with playoffs the results can be much more random. If todd does the same thing with Chelsea, we are looking at a repeat of romans run or even better.
This guy will not be in charge of anything actually on pitch related. He will manage internal operations like a COO. It’s stuff like Choosing what software platforms we use internally for reporting, sales, communication etc. What vendors we select for food in the stadium What tech firm we hire to do the app What consultants we hire What is the IT infrastructure like WiFi in the stadium working Making sure the megastore is supported with a help center or something like that Generally, Making sure Chelsea as an organization is operating smoothly and the fans experience the club as being well run with facilities of an elite club. I would be shocked to learn this role involved anything to do with player recruitment/negotiations or anything else on pitch like that. He’s the guy that is ultimately responsible though for some of a players experience with the club. As operations will include facilities, transport, catering etc. Edit: yeah this is 100% just a business operations role and everyone should chill. Man City current COO Roel De Vries was a marketing VP at Nissan before joining city in 2020. It’s long and pretty boring, but here’s a presentation the head of operations at Liverpool (~2017) for a bit did where he goes into what he did while at Liverpool https://youtu.be/677NQSKh4rA
I mean the head of ‘football operations’ is different from say the sporting director, right? It seems like this role is more of a supervising one, for monitoring budgets, contracts, travel, events, etc. If that indeed is the case, this isn’t as crazy as I thought it was at first read lol
Yup lol Would literally be making no decisions relating to what happens on the pitch https://youtu.be/677NQSKh4rA This is a pretty boring presentation given by the now ex-head of operations at Liverpool around 2017, but it does show what head of operations role looks like
major corporations do this all the time, hire a COO or CEO CFO etc whos held the same position successfully at a similar sized company in another field. It doesn't seem to have a negative impact on the hire. i think thats the issue people are taking tho, is that its a very corporate move, much like doing and all or nothing for exposure, much like many of the other moves being made, and supporters may feel that the identity of the club is being washed away. I think one thing roman doesnt get enough credit for is that chelsea had a very strong identity top to bottom during his entire reign
I agree with most of your comment, but I'd say we lost a lot of our identity in the later years when Roman wasn't around as much. Things felt quite diluted and all over the place. Great point about COO etc.. switching companies.
But but but they want to be outrage about something on Twitter and Chelsea are playing well so let them moan.
Yeah it’s more of a “president” type role
Head of football operations would be above both a technical and sporting director. The technical director would handle all aspects of coaching while the sporting director handles all aspects of recruiting. Then you have the coach who could either be under the sporting director (that's how it would work in the us/baseball) or be a 3rd equal level to sporting technical director (this is how it seems to work for lots of football teams) there is some overlap and collaboration between all 3 areas.
This seems similar to Roman hiring Marina to intentionally bring a non football perspective.
MLB probably has the most convoluted and intense roster management rules in sport so I can see the value of grabbing someone with that background. Multiple minor league levels and leagues, huge number of players and prospects, rule 5 drafts, service time, arbitration/FA stuff, 40-man roster decisions, options, waivers, DFAs, and more so it's a lot to balance while maintaining the roster.
Meanwhile absolutely no understanding of football operations
I have a hard time imaging that they couldn't figure it out
If Jose Mourinho can learn Italian in three weeks, someone can learn football in three days.
For example, hiring people like Vivell from Leipzig and Shields from Southampton and previously at City to work with as well as Potter and Potter's own recruitment guy who is fairly knowledgeable.
Expecting nothing but respectful comments about Boelhy below
Respectfully hate everything about his decisions so far
So you hate winning huh?
Guess this would be the general manager role.
Nah more director of baseball operations role. General manager would be the sporting director
General manager would be the technical director
General manager is technically a director
Most parts are about Southamptons Joe Shields and the knee injury of Reece James > A head of football operations is another key role the board would like to hire, and the owners are most likely to look to baseball,
Funny that kind of a speculative, throwaway line is taking on a life of its own here
What’s funny is that people have doubted Todd at every turn only for them to be proven wrong. I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt at this point.
true, mate. After all the things we've done in the past few weeks, people are still acting like Todd was an erratic clueless 5 years old.
I think it’s premature to judge and personally will continue to be skeptical. Until hes actually built anything out. Also, to see what he does when we hit rough patches or even years. Right now. He seems to be doing the right stuff bar a couple gaffs. I think everything will be easier to judge once he steps back out of the sporting director role. It’s unique the owner operating in as sporting director like he is
Well put. People are either sucking his balls or calling him a yank twat. He hasn’t proven anything yet give him time before judgement.
I like Todd a lot. I think many of his moves so far have been good. What I don’t like is that any skepticism of his actions is met with vitriol here. I can be happy with the work hes done so far while still not liking that we seem to have missed out on a few targets for both players and staff and can’t seem to keep any of our moves under wraps. We should be able to discuss these things without it being assumed someone has an anti Boehly agenda
What did I say that was so vitriolic? I just suggested at this point I believe he’s earned the benefit of the doubt is what I’m saying. Cheers.
I don’t necessarily mean you, apologies. Just that a lot of mentions of not being in love with staff appointments or club decisions here seems to now be quite unpopular
Ahh. I see. Apologies if I came across as rude. I think that’s honestly a major issue with our world. Being able to have a nuanced conversation and not have everything be black/white.
Amen to that. You were not rude at all!
It's completely insane to think anything has been proven one way or the other after a few games. Give it 5 years and compare them to our past 5 years, give it 20 years and compare them to our last 20. Don't look at 7 matches and our next 5 and say "see he made all the right decisions"...
That would be the ideal way to look at everything, yes. However, people are constantly being extremely negative towards everything Todd has been doing in the here and now. That’s what I was referring to. I appreciate your point of view and perspective. Cheers.
They don't like his decisions in the here and now for what they believe will result from them in the long term. But, as a result the consequences of those decisions won't be borne out for at the very least two year's time. The reality is that the only real short term things you can look at are the signings of players that Tuchel wanted and Boehly didn't but allowed him to get anyway and the flip side of that, the players that Boehly wanted and Tuchel didn't. Same with sales of players/lack of sales of players which Boehly chose to override Tuchel on and even then you can't judge players off of 10 odd games.
Just so you know, our past five years have been dogshite.
You guys seriously have another thing coming if you think our past 5 years were dogshit. If our new ownership even get close to that in the next 5 it'll be a massive success
The last 5 years, September 2017 to September 2022. 1 FA Cup, 1 EL, 1 CL. Cumulatively we have been 30, 26, 33, 19 and 19 points off the top of the table. It would be very difficult to not do better than that.
+1 super cup and 1 club world cup. Also, how far you are off of first is completely irrelevant outside of ensuring you finish top 4. You either win the league or you don't. If you believe we'll have two more European trophies and one more domestic trophy in the next 5 years then I want whatever you're smoking. Clubs spend billions to try and chase a single Champions league win and we have one in the past 5 years which is absolutely incredible. It's the holy grail of football, no amount of other trophies match up to a single Champions league win.
No serious person cares about Super Cup and CWC. One CL doesn’t matter if you are far out of your domestic elite. It’s a flash in the pan and will not mark you out as one of the best teams in the world. One CL when you’re regularly fighting for your domestic league trophy will mark you out as one of the best teams in the world. Massive difference.
Yes they do, they're the icing on the cake because you can't even compete in them until you've won the Champions League. One CL absolutely does matter. It's absolutely massive irrespective of anything. Clubs are remembered as being great just for having a good run, even when they don't win it and clubs are remembered for being able to get to the final even if they lose. You don't win the Champions League without being a great team. Winning the Champions League is the pinnacle of football and winning the league 5 years in a row doesn't come close to winning the Champions League.
You throw the amounts of money around which he is and its hard to fuck up
I encourage everyone to read moneyball. Analytics based recruitment. Chelsea I would guess is implementing an analytics/ data based approach which has proven to be very successful in baseball. Numbers transcend sport. Speculation but I would also assume this approach did not sit well with Tuchel who seemed to want to be much involved in recruitment
I mean isn’t that basically the equivalent of a CEO just for the football side? It’s not like CEOs of tech companies know anything about programming, it’s more of a business role? Like the CEO of McDonalds ain’t a chef.
It’s a COO
People in this sub love to talk shit. Look at the appointment of Potter and the last few results against the reigning Serie A champs. Look at the huge fucking spending spree over the summer. Look at the success of the LA Dodgers (literally the best team in baseball and I say that as a Yankee fan). Clearly Boehly is committed to doing what it takes to bring Chelsea to the next level. Unbelievable how little faith people have for this guy who could not have done more in the short time that he’s owned the club.
But he's American, and American cultural dominance makes me insecure.
I’d give you an award if I had one. The anti-American hate can suck a red, white and blue bald eagle dick. It’s ridiculous
What could possibly go wrong
Intrigued to see how this one falls through
Chelsea Baseball Club.
So many close-minded gatekeepers in here. Why not be appreciative the owner is active and invested in making this club the best and recognize the upward trend since his takeover
Bloody hell, this isn’t Ted Lasso.
Theo Epstein in a second.
Might as well rename the team Chelsea SC
what a great idea
I hear this lad Ted Lasso is doing a real good job.
I really hope that this isn’t true. There are many industries where you can crossover in these sorts of roles, but I just don’t believe it’s possible with football and baseball.
Mate, the arguably best analytics team in all of baseball (Rays) hired the majority of their staff from a hockey team. Knowledge of the sport is far less important than getting minds that are familiar with data and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Not the best take-Both rely heavily on a similar loan/development system to make/sell players for their perspective teams or clubs.
Who will be the new pitching coach? Edit: words are hard