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Chelsea have made a new signing! Sort of.
The club have announced today that legendary goalkeeper Petr Čech, who is sixth on the club’s all-time appearance list with 494, has returned and has been appointed as the new technical director advisor — Technical AND Performance Advisor, to use the full title!
Čech has been linked with this move for several months now, even as he prepared to face the Blues with Arsenal in the Europa League final. That ended sadly for him, but now that he’s retired and he’s back, we can all forget about and have ourselves a good old time. After all, if Big Pete’s happy, we’re happy.
But what’s a technical and performance advisor?
Glad you asked.
The focus of the job will be to provide advice on all football and performance matters throughout the club as well as embed and facilitate strong links between our men’s and academy teams, ensuring that the various support departments are working together effectively.
Petr will be based at Cobham and will work closely with Chelsea Director Marina Granovskaia (pictured above). His role will also align him with the men’s first team coaching and backroom staff, travelling with the team home and away with an emphasis on strategy and performance.
-source: Chelsea FC
To me, that sounds like something that this organization has been missing for some time now, someone to align various departments, help connect the football end with the business end, and keep lines of communication open. Čech’s role may not be called a technical “director”, at least not yet, but it certainly fulfills a good chunk of those duties.
Am told #Cech shouldn't be seen as direct replacement for #Emenalo at #cfc or regarded as a sporting director like rumoured target Luis Campos. He will have some say on transfers from the get-go but his influence on that will grow over time with the more experience he gets.
— Simon Johnson (@sjstandardsport) June 21, 2019
The appointment of a club legend without any specific experience in this role, which used to fall under the purview of Michael Emenalo before he left almost two years ago, may be a risky and somewhat strange move for the club, but it mirrors the trend seen at some of the world’s biggest clubs. We have no doubt that Čech will learn on the job and quickly grow into his new role — and probably increasing influence and responsibilities as we move forward.
There’s certainly lots to do!
Welcome home, Big Pete!
I feel very privileged to have this opportunity to join @Chelseafc again and help create the best possible high level performance environment to continue the success the club has had over the past 15 years ... pic.twitter.com/FvcZc698mx
— Petr Cech (@PetrCech) June 21, 2019