Andre Villas-Boas Officially Named New Chelsea Manager

With Andre Villas Boas departing after Chelsea FC reportedly paid his massive release fee, FC Porto have worked quickly to appoint a new manager, handing over the job to Vitor Pereira, who was an assistant under Villas Boas. An official statement from FC Porto can be found here. The release states:

Roughly translated, the release states that Pereira has signed a two-year contract, that he will become manager with immediate effect, that the move was made after Porto received the fee required for the release of Villas Boas, and that the hiring will be officially announced during a press conference at Estadio do Dragao.

Unfortunately, a great deal of this piece is going to be entirely speculative. That’s okay, though. Sometimes it’s fun to speculate. I have a bit of a theory that I would like to speculate about, and that theory is that Roman Abramovich has known what he was doing all along.

When he hired Carlo Ancelotti and Luis Felipe Scolari, he knew that they were short-term fixes. When Avram Grant was appointed as a temporary manager, the view was towards continuity in a team that didn’t need to be blown up. When Guus Hiddink was brought in on a temporary basis, it was because the team was in need of a total turn-around.

Update: FC Porto have released a statement confirming and accepting Villas Boas’ resignation, contingent on receiving the €15M payment to trigger his release clause.

It is an interesting move, not least because of Villas-Boas’ reputation as ‘the new Jose Mourinho’, due to his Porto links and previous working relationship with his former mentor, who led Chelsea to two consecutive league titles in 2005 and 2006 before leaving the London club after a dispute with owner Roman Abramovich.