The jewel at the heart of Chelsea’s BlueCo empire

Ultras marching on the streets, silent boycotts and letters to the board demanding crisis talks, Strasbourg’s fans are on the verge of rebellion against its owners.

But with the French club challenging for Champions League football with a Chelsea loanee leading the charge, it is hard to argue that Todd Boehly’s plan is not working.

If Andrey Santos goes back to Stamford Bridge and walks into the first team next season, as many fans want him to, at least one arm of the American’s football empire will be happy.

Bought by Boehly’s BlueCo in 2023, Strasbourg have become “Chelsea’s B team” in the words of one prominent group of supporters – but it might just be working.

Despite every regular outfield starter being under 23 years old, Strasbourg are in a razor-tight race for Europe; only two points separate second and sixth in Ligue 1 with just two games of the campaign to go.

At the heart of their team and their success is Santos. At only 21, he has been made captain and is their second-top goalscorer with nine in the league this season, despite ostensibly playing as a defensive midfielder.

The i Paper understands that Strasbourg are hopeful of hanging onto Santos for another season, particularly if they qualify for the Champions League.

Club sources say “nothing is out of the question” – but his form may be too good to ignore, either for Enzo Maresca or for the bean counters at Stamford Bridge looking for profit margins.

But no one will begrudge the Brazilian anything in France.

“He’s been excellent,” Strasbourg assistant head coach and Englishman Justin Walker tells The i Paper.

“He’s a very, very nice guy. A top, top guy. They always are, the ones who are humble.

“He’s been magnificent for us, very, very good. And it’ll be interesting to see what the summer brings for him, when he goes back to Chelsea, or what happens. He’s been really good for us.”

The French club is run by Englishmen, Walker having moved to France with Liam Rosenior from Hull City last summer. Rosenior speaks just as highly of Santos, and says his biggest strength, in a crowded field, is his mentality.

“He plays like he’s 32,” he said earlier this season, an invaluable quality in a squad that virtually all still have to carry ID on nights out.

An air of suspicion over Santos

Santos’s talent is no secret in Brazil. Juninho Pernambucano, of Lyon fame and a legend at Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, said he is “not going to be better than me, he’s going to be much better than me” when Santos was just 18 and had only played half a season for the first team in Serie B.

Chelsea swooped six months later, reportedly paying around £13m for him, and a national-team debut followed soon after.

Like so many young Blues signings though, he was loaned out, in his case to newly promoted Nottingham Forest in August 2023 under the tutelage of Steve Cooper, a former England youth coach of some renown.

However, Cooper didn’t last long in the Premier League – only until December that year – and when Nuno Espirito Santo took over, Santos was sent back to Chelsea, before being marched back out the door and sent off to Strasbourg.

“I would have maybe been worried about where my career was headed and what Chelsea was doing with my future,” Ligue 1 expert and one half of Le Classique podcast Baptiste Reynaud tells The i Paper.

“I can imagine joining Chelsea, and being sent out on loan, then being found surplus to requirements and being sent out on loan to eastern France, arriving in January when it’s probably very cold there, can’t have been the most welcoming moment.”

Santos was one of BlueCo’s first Chelsea envoys to Strasbourg. His arrival was viewed with deep scepticism by fans who had watched fellow French outfit Troyes taken over by City Football Group and used as a staging post for players (their “record signing” Savinho never played for them). Troyes were promptly relegated in successive seasons.

“If you were a Strasbourg fan in January 2024, it must have felt a little bit like Chelsea were dumping their problems onto you,” Reynaud adds.

“There was a lot of suspicion around BlueCo and it wasn’t really creating a great product on the pitch.”

Strasbourg ultras ran “BlueCo out” marches and wrote letters to the club complaining about the aggressive transfer strategy of only signing young players who could be sold on at a profit, while the team flirted with relegation.

‘Rosy’ season yet to win over everyone

Santos though appeared unfazed. He endeared himself to fans with his first goal, a stoppage-time winner against local rivals Metz, and when his loan was extended last summer and Rosenior came in as manager, he continued to excel.

“Fast forward to where we are now, and they’ve been on the terrific run, second half of the season, they play good football, and obviously, times change quickly in football, and I think it’s all kind of rosy at the moment,” says Reynaud.

The suspicion is understandable. Strasbourg is a historic club, but also one that knows hard times. They are one of only six teams in France to have won all three major domestic trophies, but also went bankrupt and had to start again in league football just 14 years ago. Success will only placate ultras, who protested again as recently last month, so far.

But a Santos-led Strasbourg has won some over, not least because the South American has shown maturity beyond his years, including when featuring as captain in first-choice skipper Habib Diarra’s absence.

“He constantly shows professionalism every day in his work, he constantly wants to improve and constantly trains at 100 per cent,” Rosenior said.

“There were other players that had a worthy cause to be captain, but I felt that Andrey was the right choice.”

‘The poster boy’ for BlueCo’s model

Fellow Chelsea loanee Djordje Petrovic in goal and wing-back Diego Moreira – who joined Strasbourg permanently from the Blues last summer – have also made their presence felt, but Santos’s commitment to life in Alsace has won hearts and minds. In March, he conducted his first press interview entirely in French.

“Especially if you’re going to be a poster boy for a model that’s imposed on your club, I think it goes a long way [learning French],” Reynaud says.

“I think also it shows great maturity from him, because it is an international but still a very French-speaking side. You’ve got a lot of players from parts of Africa who might have either grown up in France or spoken the language growing up, but he settled in nicely.

“If he had not made that effort, he would have been seen as a bit more of a mercenary, just a pawn in a big Chelsea galaxy, and he doesn’t care.

“And clearly he’s very mature, and he’s a smart individual.”

Whether he would fit into Maresca’s system remains to be seen, but his timely arrivals into the box from deep are reminiscent of what Enzo Fernandez says the Italian has been trying to teach him this year, and it is easy to see how Santos could work as an understudy to the World Cup winner.

What is certain is that none of it will go to his head. Poster boy for the multi-club model? Chelsea could do a lot worse.