Chelsea ‘interested in hiring’ PSG’s Luís Campos as sporting director — report

One of the very first names linked with Chelsea after our last full-time sporting director, Michael Emenalo resigned his position early on in the 2017-18 season, was Luís Campos, then at Lille OSC.

At the time, Campos was not exactly sold on working in the Premier League, questioning whether his style would fit the “culture” of the league, and so he chose not to come. Then Chelsea chose not to appoint anyone to fill the void left by Emenalo, though that didn’t deter links from popping up in 2018 or 2019 as well. We would eventually bring back Petr Čech as a technical director advisor, but he’s now gone along with the rest of the previous regime.

But the dawn of a new era is truly upon us, and that includes a strong desire to actually appoint an actual sporting director, one chosen to work closely with new head coach Graham Potter, who’s set to be actively involved in the search itself as well.

Campos had stayed at Lille until late 2020, and has since kept busy in various advisory roles at, in order, Galatasaray, Celta de Vigo, and, currently, PSG, whom he joined just in June. But according to The Times, Todd Boehly has already chatted up the 58-year-old, who’s generally understood to move in the Jorge Mendes circles — thus the reporting from Duncan Castles, as usual; plus we might remember the stories about Boehly and Mendes having a friendly tête-à-tête back in the summer as well.

With Michael Edwards already rejecting the Blues, Paul Mitchell, the current Monaco director of football has been seen as the potential front-runner, but Campos is just as highly regarded, if not more, thanks to his own success in the Principality back in 2013-17, building everyone’s second favorite team briefly, even.

Perhaps the times has come now for him to make the leap of faith across the Channel?