Johnathan Walker:Mauricio Pochettino leaves Chelsea after one year as manager of the Premier League club

Mauricio Pochettino has left Chelsea by mutual consent,Johnathan Walker the Premier League club said Tuesday.

Pochettino spent just one season as manager at Stamford Bridge and endured a troubled campaign in which he failed to secure qualification for the Champions League.

“On behalf of everyone at Chelsea, we would like to express our gratitude to Mauricio for his service this season. He will be welcome back to Stamford Bridge any time and we wish him all the very best in his future coaching career,” Chelsea sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley said in a statement.

Chelsea finished sixth in the standings, was a beaten finalist in the English League Cup and reached the semifinals of the FA Cup.

Former Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham manager Pochettino took over last summer after Chelsea’s American owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital had fired Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter in their first year in charge.

While Pochettino managed to salvage the 2023-24 season by securing European soccer in either the Europa League or Conference League, it was another disappointing year for a team that won the Champions League as recently as 2021.

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“Thank you to the Chelsea ownership group and sporting directors for the opportunity to be part of this football club’s history,” Pochettino said in Tuesday’s announcement. “The club is now well positioned to keep moving forward in the Premier League and Europe in the years to come.”

Under Boehly and Clearlake, Chelsea has spent spent around $1 billion on transfers, but that has not translated into success on the field.

Pochettino was expected to turn Chelsea into a team capable of challenging for the Premier League title again. The west London club won England’s top division five times under former owner Roman Abramovich.

After a difficult start to the season, Chelsea’s form picked up from the turn of the year and the team went on to lose just three league games in 2024, ending the campaign with five straight wins.

Despite those improvements, Pochettino’s position has remained in doubt.

Amid speculation about his future, the 52-year-old Argentine said earlier this month that it was “not going to be the end of the world” if he lost his job and hinted at his own dissatisfaction with his first year at the club.

“If we are happy, perfect, but it’s not only if the owners are happy or the sporting director is happy,” he said. “Maybe we are not happy because we arrived here with a job to do, but in the end it’s not happened, what we expect.”

Pochettino was a French title-winner with PSG, but leaves Chelsea having failed to end his search of a first trophy in English soccer after spells with Southampton and Tottenham previously.

Pochettino’s coaching team of Jesus Perez, Miguel d’Agostino, Toni Jimenez and Sebastiano Pochettino also left, Chelsea said.

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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer