Chelsea co-owner Hansjorg Wyss has spoken out on Chelsea's stadium plans. The Swiss billionaire forms part of the Clearlake Capital-Todd Boehly consortium which purchased the club from Roman Abramovich almost three years ago.
Wyss has been out of the public since the takeover with Boehly and Clearlake co-founder and co-owner Behdad Eghbali the much more prominent figures. However, walking out of Stamford Bridge after Sunday's crucial 3-1 win over Liverpool, Wyss was stopped by Chelsea Fan TV and asked on an array of topics in a short interview.
"It was a fast, well-played game by both teams," he said of the match. "Fast and durable. The teams were in great shape, both of them." Then, when pressed for specifics on what stood out in the Chelsea side, he added, "I think we are now playing as a team, not as 11 individuals."
Without being pushed, he also gave praise to Enzo Maresca, the fourth permanent manager under the Clearlake-Boehly tenure and the third to be appointed by them. "The coach really has brought a great spirit into the group and I just spent time with them in the locker room and they were all talking to each other and they all were congratulating each other. The coach gave a great motivational speech."
Wyss, 89, also opened up on the lack of progress being made over the great Stamford Bridge problem. Chelsea are still falling behind their rivals in terms of the commercial revenue generated on matchdays and, unlike others, are no closer to finding a direction of travel either.
The two broad options are either to knock down the current structure and rebuild or to move to a new site. There are major issues with both, not least the availability of adequate land close enough to Stamford Bridge to be a plausible candidate for the Chelsea Pitch Owners.
Any stadium decision will have to be passed through the CPO by a vote with a high bar majority, something that stopped Roman Abramovich from leaving in 2011 when Battersea Power Station blueprints were made. A sizeable lot at Earl's Court has long been deemed a suitable alternative but Chelsea are not in talks to buy the unused land.
Those who are in pole position to do so have stated that there are no existing plans to accommodate a football stadium. It is a dilemma which has set Chelsea back even with the promise from Clearlake-Boehly to have a resolution at the forefront of their ownership.
Wyss's comments do not suggest that anything is coming soon. "Earl's Court would be the best option we can even think of," he said honestly. "If it's going to happen, I don't know. It's a lot of obstacles. Right now we don't have one person who drives that project, that's what we need."
Jason Gannon, the club's president and chief operating officer, is leading the stadium work but no proposals have been formulated and sent to the CPO yet. For Wyss, not enough is being done.
"The meetings, the directors meetings that I saw, we don't have one person who said 'I'm going to make it happen [or], it's not going to happen'," he ended. Instead, there is actually a boardroom divide.
Boehly himself admitted as much earlier this year in an interview with Bloomberg. "We have to think about long-term, what we're trying to accomplish," he said when the confirmed rift between with Eghbali was mentioned . "There's a big stadium development opportunity that we have to flesh out.
"That's going to be where we are either aligned or we ultimately decide to go different ways. What has been written and what has been talked about is much more drama than what has actually happened."
Boehly added at the time: "Stadium development is going around the world. "Right now, we're here to see Africa-built stadiums; obviously, here in Hong Kong, they are opening their new stadium for the very first time. Stadium development is definitely a theme. You're going to see the NBA going to Europe, you're going to see stadiums and arenas, sporting infrastructure.
"We're just on the very front end of the sporting wave and sporting infrastructure is going to be a very big thing about it. We have 15, 20 years to work it out."
On the Chelsea specifics he continued: "Inside of London it's really complex. It's not like we're building something in the middle of a rural environment. We have a lot of constituencies to make sure that we care about. Certainly, the Chelsea fanbase is one, but long-term, we are going to be building something, and we are going to work it out."
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