Chelsea make Portuguese club 'preferred takeover choice' after Mendes talks

Chelsea are reportedly looking to buy a club in Portugal as part of Todd Boehly's efforts to overhaul the way the Blues are structured.

Boehly has been serving as Chelsea's interim sporting director since June after Roman Abramovich ally Marina Granovskaia left as director. The American billionaire and his co-owner Behdad Eghbali are now in the process of hiring a new sporting director, with Red Bull Salzburg director Christoph Freund, Paris Saint-Germain advisor Luis Campos and ex-Liverpool chief Michael Edwards in the running for the position.

Chelsea are also keen to follow the current trend in football, made popular by the Red Bull and City Football Group, by becoming a multi-ownership model. According to The Telegraph, Boehly met with academy manager Neil Bath and super agent Jorge Mendes in Portugal in June to discuss the possibility of buying a Portuguese club.

Bath is now scouting around for the best fit in Portugal and, once found, Chelsea could then lean on Mendes' links in the country to get a deal over the line. Boehly has been open about his interest in establishing satellite clubs for Chelsea.

"I think there's different countries where there's advantages to having a club. Red Bull have Salzburg and Leipzig in the Champions League," he said at the SALT conference in New York this week.

"I want to continue building out the footprint. I think there's different countries where there's advantages to having a club. We know people and human capital. We understand game plans and strategies. We're not expecting to be the football experts to find the best talent, we are going to put those people in place.

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"The challenge that Chelsea has, when you have 18, 19, 20-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to clubs, but you put their development in someone else's hands. Our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time. The way to do that is through another club in a really competitive league in Europe."

The direction of travel at Chelsea fits in with their interest in Freund, who has spent more than a decade within the Red Bull system. The 45-year-old helped lure Erling Haaland to Salzburg in 2018 and has already held advanced talks with Boehly over the vacant position.

Under Abramovich's ownership, Chelsea had a strong relationship with Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem, but Boehly is seeking a more formal arrangement which would help them farm out their youngsters on loan.

Red Bull Group contains Salzburg and Leipzig, who often swap players between them, while the City Football Group has joined Manchester City, New York City, Melbourne City, Yokohama F Marinos, Montevideo City Torque, Girona, Sichuan Jiuniu and Mumbai City together. Southampton 's owners, Sport Republic recently acquired Turkish second division side Goztepe as they step up efforts to create a network of satellite clubs.

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