LONDON // Andre Villas-Boas expects to be sacked by Chelsea if he fails to engineer instant success in his first year as manager of the Premier League club.
Villas-Boas was hired last week as Chelsea's seventh manager in eight years under the club's ruthless Russian owner, Roman Abramovich.
"What you expect from this club is to be successful straight away," Villas-Boas said at his official presentation today. "I will be surprised to be kept on the job if I don't win.
"The expectations of the club are at the maximum — no doubt we have a compromise with a certain amount of trophies. The managers who have sat in this chair have been challenged for the trophies. There's nothing that the owner told me that I didn't know, to challenge for the trophies in every area."
Villas-Boas quit Porto after leading the side to three trophies last season, including the Portuguese league and the Europa League, in his one year in charge. His contract was terminated after the club received payment of €15 million (Dh79.1m) to trigger his release clause.
"It was a difficult separation. It's something that was felt hard in Portugal. My commitment was 100 per cent to Porto and it will always be my club," Villas-Boas said. "I always felt well in Porto ... but everyone feels the need for a new challenge.
"The move to Chelsea was based on a very lucrative move ... Porto was able to beat their offer. Porto made an extremely competitive offer to stay."
Roberto Di Matteo, the former Chelsea midfielder, is also returning to the club as No 2 to Villas-Boas.
The Italian was with the west London club between 1996 and 2002 when injury forced his retirement at the age of 31. He scored FA Cup final goals in 1997 and 2000, the first of which set a Wembley record for the earliest in a final after just 43 seconds. Di Matteo was previously manager of Milton Keynes Dons and West Bromwich Albion, the club he left in February.
Villas-Boas is often compared to compatriot Jose Mourinho, who he worked under as a scout at Chelsea from 2004-07 and then with the Italian giants Inter Milan.
In Mourinho's first media conference at Chelsea, he declared himself to be the "Special One." Villas-Boas' entrance was not so grand.
"The title, I will wait for you guys to give it me. I hope I am successful and you give me a good title in the end. This is not a one-man show - it's about creating empathy and raising ambitions with everyone around me. Maybe I should be the "group one."
The 33-year-old Portuguese coach said his approach will be "winning with a certain amount of attacking flair."
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
New schools in Dubai
MATCH INFO
Tottenham Hotspur 3 (Son 1', Kane 8' & 16') West Ham United 3 (Balbuena 82', Sanchez og 85', Lanzini 90' 4)
Man of the match Harry Kane
Three ways to boost your credit score
Marwan Lutfi says the core fundamentals that drive better payment behaviour and can improve your credit score are:
1. Make sure you make your payments on time;
2. Limit the number of products you borrow on: the more loans and credit cards you have, the more it will affect your credit score;
3. Don't max out all your debts: how much you maximise those credit facilities will have an impact. If you have five credit cards and utilise 90 per cent of that credit, it will negatively affect your score.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Honeymoonish
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Elie%20El%20Samaan%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENour%20Al%20Ghandour%2C%20Mahmoud%20Boushahri%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
