Unexpected managerial exits are not a new thing at Chelsea.
While the current regime has continued in the same vein as former owner Roman Abramovich, there was a precedent set long before the Russian oligarch arrived in west London, with six different managers taking charge of the club during the 1990s.
One of these was Netherlands legend Ruud Gullit, who took over the Stamford Bridge hotseat when Glenn Hoddle left for the England job in the summer of 1996 and became the club’s player-manager.
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Frank Lebouef on his relationship with Ruud Gullit
One of Gullit’s first signings as Chelsea boss was French World Cup winner Frank Lebouef, who joined from Strasbourg in a £2.5million move.
“When I received the phone call from Gullit, he said I was the best defender in the world and he wanted me,” Lebouf recalls to FourFourTwo. “I thought, ‘Well, that guy definitely never saw me play, but he’s very nice!’ I have to admit that I didn’t know where Chelsea was, but I wanted to go there because he wanted me so much.
“It was insane because he was playing centre-back with me and I thought, ‘I’m actually playing with Ruud Gullit’. I remember one game where we were inside our own 18-yard box just teasing the striker, doing nutmegs. What a talent.”
Gullit – who FourFourTwo ranked at no.30 in a list of the 100 best footballers of all time – led Chelsea to an FA Cup win at the end of his first season in charge and by February 1998 had the club on track for their best league position for almost 30 years and also into the semi-final of the League Cup and the quarters in the Cup Winners’ Cup. But at this point, chairman Ken Bates opted to swing the axe.
Leboeuf was informed by Gullit himself. “We’d had training in the morning, then he called me an hour afterwards and said, ‘They sacked me’,” he remembers.
“I said, ‘They sacked you, why?!’ He said he didn’t know – now we know it might have been because of a new contract, because of some people working behind his back.
Bates then turned to another modern great to step up as a player-manager, handing Gianluca Vialli the top job, with the Italian striker leading the team to the League Cup final.
“He handled a tricky situation well, but I was broken-hearted to see Ruud leave,” admits Leboeuf. “You don’t do that to a legend.”
