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Football

17th May 2022

No, Trivago did not accidentally confirm Todd Boehly’s Chelsea takeover

Simon Lloyd

One regular day of Barclays Chelsea Football Club. That’s all I ask for. Will never happen.

The last couple of months or so have been, to put it mildly, a hell of a ride for Chelsea Football Club. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the Roman Abramovich era at Stamford Bridge has come to an abrupt end. You’ll also know that a takeover of the club appears to be dragging on far longer than it should – much to the annoyance of Thomas Tuchel.

For a few brief minutes on Tuesday morning, however, it seemed like there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel. US investor Todd Boehly, who by this point seems to have been close to completing a deal for Chelsea since the time of the Henry VIII, appeared to have been confirmed as Chelsea’s new owner. Sort of.

chelsea boehly trivago

Trivago deleted tweet

Admittedly, the fact that it was travel company Trivago who broke the news didn’t quite seem to add up, but as one of Chelsea’s official partners, there was hope that the deal was done.

A tweet appeared on Trivago’s Twitter account at precisely 11am on Tuesday, welcoming Boehly to the Chelsea family. It remained there long enough to clock up plenty of retweets before finally being deleted soon after.

Clearly, something wasn’t quite right and it’s now believed the tweet only appeared as the result of a scheduling error.

Doubts remain over Boehly takeover

Fresh doubts were cast over Boehly’s £4.25bn takeover attempt on Monday, with ministers reportedly concerned it could fall apart due to a lack of consensus with the club over the proceeds of any sale.

The club have agreed terms on a deal with Boehly’s private-equity funded consortium but a senior Whitehall source told the BBC that there was now “serious concern” that outgoing owner Abramovich was “willing to let Chelsea go under” over an alleged “refusal to agree to a sale structure that gives ministers confidence that proceeds would go to a good cause”.

It never ends.

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