Media Stories, Rumours and Gossip

[JaneB]

1 hour ago, RDCW said:

Why, Jane? We're you in the running for the Margot Robbie gig? 

Ha ha!!  I can see why you read it like that!!  I only wish I could be a rival to Margot Robbie 🤪

[paulw66]

On 25/04/2024 at 14:32, Holymoly said:

 

 

On 25/04/2024 at 14:58, My Blood Is Blue said:

Captain. Leader. Legend.

What a great interview, it's great to hear all the stories and the details of his upbringing spoken about so openly. I'm so glad his Mum went against his Dad and signed the contract!

The AVB story is really interesting... sounds like he'd lost the senior players before he even started. JT's reaction to just Benitez's name is brilliant!

I also very much like his comments about Gallagher as captain.

Get him involved in the first team in some capacity, please.

Amazing, listening to this, that no club in the Championship has snapped up JT as manager. 

I always thought he'd be a brilliant manager; not necessarily because of tactical nous, but he would know how to drive standards up

[Chelsea_Matt]

20 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

 

Amazing, listening to this, that no club in the Championship has snapped up JT as manager. 

I always thought he'd be a brilliant manager; not necessarily because of tactical nous, but he would know how to drive standards up

I sense he’d be a brilliant #2. Spot on about the standards - and what it means to play for Chelsea.

[martin1905]

Timing, not just in football but in life, can be everything. 

Maybe I read too much into what he was saying but, after listening to the whole thing I have no doubt, Jose will be back in the summer with JT as his assistant with the view of him taking over.

 

[Chelsea_Matt]

4 minutes ago, martin1905 said:

Timing, not just in football but in life, can be everything. 

Maybe I read too much into what he was saying but, after listening to the whole thing I have no doubt, Jose will be back in the summer with JT as his assistant with the view of him taking over.

 

👀We can only hope. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[paulw66]

9 minutes ago, martin1905 said:

Timing, not just in football but in life, can be everything. 

Maybe I read too much into what he was saying but, after listening to the whole thing I have no doubt, Jose will be back in the summer with JT as his assistant with the view of him taking over.

 

I mean...........could you imagine? That first game. 

Who knows how it would work out, but Jesus, I'd roll that dice. 

[Bert19]

1 hour ago, paulw66 said:

I mean...........could you imagine? That first game. 

Who knows how it would work out, but Jesus, I'd roll that dice. 

Part of the chaos-lover in me would love to roll that dice. 

 

It could be a bit nuts, but two things I could see Jose doing really well are

1. Jose organising the team structure much MUCH more effectively. We'd be much better off the ball

2. Jose leaving the group in no doubt about what is expected of a Chelsea player and really giving them much better guidance in terms of standards and expectations required at the Club (I suspect he would be managing upwards there too).  

 

I'd also like us to try to get a bit of our 'Chelseaness' back.  We have a lot of very knowledgeable people with really strong experience and knowledge of the Club and PL available to us - it would be good to make use of that again. 

People like Eddie Newton, Andy Myers, Ashley Cole, JT etc etc.  They could all be of huge benefit at the moment

[Mark Kelly]

19 minutes ago, Bert19 said:

 

I'd also like us to try to get a bit of our 'Chelseaness' back.  We have a lot of very knowledgeable people with really strong experience and knowledge of the Club and PL available to us - it would be good to make use of that again. 

People like Eddie Newton, Andy Myers, Ashley Cole, JT etc etc.  They could all be of huge benefit at the moment

What? Better than Sebastian Pochettino? Pfft. 

[xceleryx]

31 minutes ago, Bert19 said:

Part of the chaos-lover in me would love to roll that dice. 

 

It could be a bit nuts, but two things I could see Jose doing really well are

1. Jose organising the team structure much MUCH more effectively. We'd be much better off the ball

2. Jose leaving the group in no doubt about what is expected of a Chelsea player and really giving them much better guidance in terms of standards and expectations required at the Club (I suspect he would be managing upwards there too).  

I'd also like us to try to get a bit of our 'Chelseaness' back.  We have a lot of very knowledgeable people with really strong experience and knowledge of the Club and PL available to us - it would be good to make use of that again. 

People like Eddie Newton, Andy Myers, Ashley Cole, JT etc etc.  They could all be of huge benefit at the moment

He'll also have us playing  some of the most negative and insufferable football you'll see, just look at the stark contrast between what he was serving up, and what De Rossi has Roma playing since taking over. 

Granted he may instil some of that old Chelsea mentality, this is a very different generation of player and Mourinho is not close to being the manager he originally was here during either stint. It's just as likely things go completely tits up within 18-24 months and we're left in a worse position.

[Thiago97]

15 minutes ago, xceleryx said:

He'll also have us playing  some of the most negative and insufferable football you'll see, just look at the stark contrast between what he was serving up, and what De Rossi has Roma playing since taking over. 

Granted he may instil some of that old Chelsea mentality, this is a very different generation of player and Mourinho is not close to being the manager he originally was here during either stint. It's just as likely things go completely tits up within 18-24 months and we're left in a worse position.

Yep, that’s how I see it. 
Football fans live of this type of romance, but all the recent evidence is laid bare in front of everyone and highlights what a backwards step it would be.

Jose has some really good traits he could bring to the club. I think we all realise and acknowledge this. However, once the competition picks up and ignites his ego, it’s then we will run into the same problems that has followed his career in virtually every job so far. I don’t doubt he would probably love the job, but I also don’t doubt he would hate the current squad he would have to work with! 

[JaneB]

3 hours ago, martin1905 said:

Timing, not just in football but in life, can be everything. 

Maybe I read too much into what he was saying but, after listening to the whole thing I have no doubt, Jose will be back in the summer with JT as his assistant with the view of him taking over.

 

In my heart that would be wonderful but my head says that Jose's time here has passed and we all know what happened when our last Chelsea hero returned as manager.

[Chelsea_Matt]

5 minutes ago, JaneB said:

In my heart that would be wonderful but my head says that Jose's time here has passed and we all know what happened when our last Chelsea hero returned as manager.

Mmm. But Lamps is a shocking manager. I think Jose would love to come home and we know he’s still an ace coach. 🧡🧡🧡⭐️

[blueandproud]

2 hours ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Mmm. But Lamps is a shocking manager. I think Jose would love to come home and we know he’s still an ace coach. 🧡🧡🧡⭐️

He isn't an ace coach anymore.  He's past it Finished.  Finito.  Kaputt. His stint at Roma wasn't all that.  As the old saying goes "If you leave you  should never come back".  It's never quite the same same second time around.  The 2014.15 model IMHO was the least impressive of all our title wins by some distance, in the second half of that season we struggled to beat a poor Man U and Palace sides and limped over the line.  A third spell would be a disaster, like Howard Kendall's at Everton in the late '90's.

Edited May 1 by blueandproud

[Chelsea_Matt]

33 minutes ago, blueandproud said:

He isn't an ace coach anymore.  He's past it Finished.  Finito.  Kaputt. His stint at Roma wasn't all that.  As the old saying goes "If you leave you  should never come back".  It's never quite the same same second time around.  The 2014.15 model IMHO was the least impressive of all our title wins by some distance, in the second half of that season we struggled to beat a poor Man U and Palace sides and limped over the line.  A third spell would be a disaster, like Howard Kendall's at Everton in the late '90's.

👀

[martin1905]

3 hours ago, blueandproud said:

He isn't an ace coach anymore.  He's past it Finished.  Finito.  Kaputt. His stint at Roma wasn't all that.  As the old saying goes "If you leave you  should never come back".  It's never quite the same same second time around.  The 2014.15 model IMHO was the least impressive of all our title wins by some distance, in the second half of that season we struggled to beat a poor Man U and Palace sides and limped over the line.  A third spell would be a disaster, like Howard Kendall's at Everton in the late '90's.

Depends what your looking for in a manager I suppose.

I want someone  that is going to tear into the players when they aren't playing well or doing what they are told, someone that's gonna to drill them to death on the training ground and make thier lives living hell if they don't get it right. I want someone to install a winning mentality into them.

I want someone that's gonna bang heads with the board when they don't agree with something. That's not going to accept going into the season with no strikers and a bunch of kids, who's not going to allow our club captain to be sold and who will never accept mediocrity. 

We don't need the Jose of 20 years ago we need the more mature, more experienced man that can help to build the foundations of a football club and use his past 20 years experience to help not only the players but those at board level too. 

I don't care if he upsets people in today's 'modern game' that he has apparently outgrown, I absolutely want him to be upsetting people from the players, the board, the owners, the FA, everyone.  The state we are in it is EXACTLY what we need.

[JaneB]

7 hours ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Mmm. But Lamps is a shocking manager. I think Jose would love to come home and we know he’s still an ace coach. 🧡🧡🧡⭐️

Yes, I said look what happened when our last Chelsea hero came back as manager.  No need to keep rubbing it in about Frank.  Personally I don't think he was so bad that he couldn't be given another chance in a lower league and see if he can build from there.  That's what should have happened in the first place.

I know I'm in a minority of one but I don't care and I don't think he was 'shocking'.  

[xceleryx]

4 hours ago, martin1905 said:

Depends what your looking for in a manager I suppose.

I want someone  that is going to tear into the players when they aren't playing well or doing what they are told, someone that's gonna to drill them to death on the training ground and make thier lives living hell if they don't get it right. I want someone to install a winning mentality into them.

I want someone that's gonna bang heads with the board when they don't agree with something. That's not going to accept going into the season with no strikers and a bunch of kids, who's not going to allow our club captain to be sold and who will never accept mediocrity. 

We don't need the Jose of 20 years ago we need the more mature, more experienced man that can help to build the foundations of a football club and use his past 20 years experience to help not only the players but those at board level too. 

I don't care if he upsets people in today's 'modern game' that he has apparently outgrown, I absolutely want him to be upsetting people from the players, the board, the owners, the FA, everyone.  The state we are in it is EXACTLY what we need.

You say all this but when it the reality of it sets in and Mourinho's actions become more detrimental you'll be signing a different tune. 

This also reads as someone that's not actually watched much of Jose in the last few years. If you think he's matured then you're gravely mistaken. He's still as petulant as ever, the way he conducted himself  on several occasions while at Roma towards both the media and officials was nothing short of embarrassing. Even to where he let the team down by getting himself suspended before a huge upcoming match against AC Milan (IIRC). 

If he wasn't sacked when he was, he'd have likely not had his contract renewed at seasons end anyway as the football was downright pitiful. The fact De Rossi has stepped in and transformed the team, playing some genuinely good exciting football, shows you that Mourinho just wears everyone down. 

Sure, he may install a few qualities here and there but to put it bluntly, fuck that. The negatives are just way too damaging to be bothered dealing with, especially when you consider that nature of the squad we have on hand that still needs a degree of nurturing as much as anything else. 

[Thiago97]

9 hours ago, martin1905 said:

Depends what your looking for in a manager I suppose.

I want someone  that is going to tear into the players when they aren't playing well or doing what they are told, someone that's gonna to drill them to death on the training ground and make thier lives living hell if they don't get it right. I want someone to install a winning mentality into them.

I want someone that's gonna bang heads with the board when they don't agree with something. That's not going to accept going into the season with no strikers and a bunch of kids, who's not going to allow our club captain to be sold and who will never accept mediocrity. 

We don't need the Jose of 20 years ago we need the more mature, more experienced man that can help to build the foundations of a football club and use his past 20 years experience to help not only the players but those at board level too. 

I don't care if he upsets people in today's 'modern game' that he has apparently outgrown, I absolutely want him to be upsetting people from the players, the board, the owners, the FA, everyone.  The state we are in it is EXACTLY what we need.

So basically you want chaos. As if we have not had enough of that in the last 2 years, you want to actively go out and bring more of it to the club. Why ? Because someone who was very successful over 15 years ago in a different era of football might be able to replicate that again, despite the fact he has not really replicated that in the last decade.

Makes perfect sense.

 

[Chelsea_Matt]

9 hours ago, JaneB said:

Yes, I said look what happened when our last Chelsea hero came back as manager.  No need to keep rubbing it in about Frank.  Personally I don't think he was so bad that he couldn't be given another chance in a lower league and see if he can build from there.  That's what should have happened in the first place.

I know I'm in a minority of one but I don't care and I don't think he was 'shocking'.  

It isn’t personal. He’s one of the greatest midfielders ever to play the game and seems a truly good, decent man. But amazing players don’t always make good managers. I wanted SFL to succeed so badly as I want all of our managers to. I note though that he still isn’t being employed as a manager anywhere. 

[jasonb]

I felt SFL was unfortunate to not get the chance to get some players  he wanted though can understand why the club were not prepared to do this.

[exiledblue]

Conte, no thanks. Like Jose 18 months then a tantrum and in fighting.

[bertles86]

Appointing Conte would be idiotic.

So of course the Yanks will do it.

[Bison]

Lukaku comes across well here. 

[Mark Kelly]

Just now, Bison said:

Lukaku comes across well here. 

Can't read it its behind a paywall 

[Bison]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

Can't read it its behind a paywall 

Long but good read:

Quote

 

The Netherlands international Stefan de Vrij can recall the moment he first had serious doubts about who had been paid what in the deal that took him to Inter Milan, and it was not an agent, lawyer, or accountant who alerted him – it was Romelu Lukaku.

The team-mates were chatting after training in September 2019 more than a year after De Vrij, now a 66-cap centre-half, had moved to Inter. It had started innocently enough, with Lukaku talking about De Vrij’s status as a free agent when he joined the summer of the previous year. Then he asked De Vrij a question about the agency that represented him.

“It was, ‘Do you have a signed contract?’,” De Vrij recalls. “I said I didn’t. He [Lukaku] was like, ‘Did they represent you?’ I said, ‘Of course! They are my agents’. He said that didn’t mean they represented me. He told me to check my contract.”

That conversation almost five years ago set in train what would be one of football’s more remarkable legal cases. It encompassed two Amsterdam court hearings and two multi-million-euro awards. De Vrij, who was 26 when he made that move to Inter, is now 32. He sought damages against the biggest talent agency in the Netherlands for failing to disclose to him the size of the commission it was paid on the deal that took him to the club, and the consequences that fee might have for his own tax liability.

That agency was Sports Entertainment Group (SEG), led by the agent Kees Vos, who represents Erik ten Hag, Rasmus Hojlund, Cody Gakpo and Robin van Persie among others. From De Vrij’s move to Inter, it would emerge that SEG had earned a commission of €9.5 million and was entitled to a further 7.5 per cent of any further transfer fee paid for De Vrij.

the financial consequences.

“I did my moral part,” De Vrij says, describing the chats he has had with fellow players. “I told my story and what they do with it is their thing. What I always advise is … whoever represents you, of course that matters. But make sure you have an independent party checking all the documents. I think that’s the best advice I can give. A lawyer. Of course, it costs money but good advisers are worth it. That’s the most important thing. To make sure everything on paper is the right way.”

Fifa reported that last year, clubs spent $888 million (£710 million) on agents’ fees, a 43 per cent increase on the previous year, of which more than $280 million (£224 million) was paid by English clubs. The Fifa president Gianni Infantino has faltered in his battle to cap fees. Not least in England where the Football Association, as a proxy for Fifa and its new rules, was defeated by a coalition of leading agencies in an arbitration tribunal in November.

There is no suggestion on De Vrij’s side that agents are bad – indeed he is now represented by a well-known Italian agent. Neither does he claim to have been left bereft by football. He is a wealthy young man. The intriguing question the court was asked to decide was whether SEG breached its duty of care and, if so, how much De Vrij was financially damaged as a consequence.

‘How is this possible?’

After their conversation in 2019, De Vrij followed Lukaku’s advice. “So, I got my contract,” De Vrij recalls, “and I see ‘Inter’ and in the box after that ‘represented by SEG’. Then the player: ‘Stefan De Vrij doesn’t use representation’.”

He was shocked, he says. De Vrij went back to Lukaku and told him. “And he [Lukaku] says, ‘You don’t know what they made?’ I did not understand the story back then. He [Lukaku] said, ‘You are at risk to pay taxes on their commission’. I thought: how is this possible?”

Since he was a teenager at Feyenoord’s academy, and was first approached by SEG for representation, De Vrij and SEG had agreed that they did not need a written contract formalising the arrangement. It was done on a handshake. SEG earned five per cent and then six per cent on his contracts with the Dutch club. They negotiated his deal in 2014 when he moved to the Serie A club Lazio. As the court would later hear, on SEG’s website, its social media accounts and also in internal emails, De Vrij was referred to as a client.

The practice of the agent representing the club in negotiation was the case, Vos told Telegraph Sport in October, ahead of the appeal, in, “95 per cent of transactions” in Italy. It was done that way so that the tax burden for the commission – a benefit in kind – did not fall upon the player. “To say that it is strange that we operated on behalf of the club,” Vos said then, “is not true.”

Lukaku had identified the problem with that argument. De Vrij says, “He [Lukaku] was like, ‘Ok, that is true [there is no signed contract] but in [terms of] the behaviour of you and SEG they are representing you - and working for you. So, the tax authorities could say, “Hey, listen, you said you didn’t use an agent but we can see on Instagram or the company website that they are working for you. So you should have declared the taxes [taxable benefit] and you should have paid [the tax authorities]’.’”

The next thing Lukaku did was pass on the number of his lawyer, Sébastien Ledure, a partner in the Brussels firm Cresta. Then De Vrij called his brother Niels, who works in finance, and the pair resolved to find out exactly how much SEG had made out of the deal to take him to Inter.

De Vrij admits that, even before the conversation with Lukaku, he had harboured some suspicions. As his contract ran down at Lazio, the relationship with the club had become difficult. Lazio did not want to lose him on a free transfer and both sides blamed one another. De Vrij says SEG did not want him to re-sign with Lazio although the two parties did discuss that option, with a buy-out clause included.

€50 million less the €37.5 million contract he signed with Inter.

During the years leading up to the hearings, De Vrij was contacted by the Italian tax authorities and ordered to pay tax on SEG’s commission on his 2014 deal to Lazio as well as a penalty payment. It emerged that in that deal SEG had also formally represented the club and not De Vrij. “You get this tax letter seven years later and of course, it was serious money,” De Vrij says, “but the amounts they [SEG] made back then with Lazio was nothing like they made with Inter. But it does show you that this [tax liability] risk is real.”

Ledure continues to be retained by De Vrij along with his new agent, Federico Pastorello. The player-agent relationship, however, is very different to that which he had previously with SEG. Any commission is decided by De Vrij and not between club and agent. Last year, De Vrij signed a new two-year deal with Inter up to the end of the 2025-26 season with an option for the club to extend for a further year. Having first been offered that deal directly from club to player, De Vrij asked his new agent to explore the market for alternatives.

“He [Pastorello] did find alternatives but none I was interested in,” De Vrij says. “It is very hard indeed to find an upgrade on Inter. Commission was available and I said, with all due respect, I think it is right that this commission gets added to my salary. I said: ‘You [Pastorello] put in a lot of effort but you did not get me a better deal or an alternative I want, so I pay you for the effort.’ He really made the minimum. He was fine with that.”

De Vrij is happy at Inter and satisfied that the regime in 2018 simply did what it took to sign him, as per the conditions laid out by SEG. Yet he also wonders who else might have been interested in him then but were discouraged by the scale of the commission set by Vos and SEG.

What bothers De Vrij above all is a view, perpetuated, he says, in some quarters of the Dutch media, that he pursued the case simply to earn himself more on top of the lucrative deal he already had. He says that money is just not that important. For instance, he says, he agreed his deal with Lazio in the months before the 2014 World Cup finals, in which he would be named by Fifa in its prestigious team of the tournament. Yet he honoured that deal. When a fellow Dutchman joined Lazio a year later the pair laughed about the fact that the newcomer appeared to be on double De Vrij’s wages. “I was not upset,” De Vrij says. “I signed what I signed at Lazio, and it was fine by me. I just told SEG at the time that maybe we had not handled those negotiations as well as we could.”

It was not the salary that concerned him. Instead it was a fear of what he did not know and the tax liability that might come his way that forced him on this legal path. Two defeats in court later, SEG says it is still considering its options. De Vrij feels that the matter has been resolved beyond dispute. SEG has a reputation to protect and some big names associated with it. Pep Guardiola, whose brother and agent Pere has been a shareholder at SEG since 2021, is featured on the SEG website. Neither was involved in the De Vrij matter.

“They [SEG] were the ones who always told me, ‘You are too nice. You should be more of an a--- sometimes in this hard football world,’” De Vrij recalls with a smile. He says he is telling his story now because he feels others have already had their say. “I was always the nice guy. So when this [dispute] happened, everyone was like, ‘If you left them something must have happened’. They [SEG] have a lot of players in the national team and I had been with them since I was 16. I’m a loyal guy. So there were a lot of questions.”