Chelsea backroom shake-up continues as Jim Hicks appointed head of coach development
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Chelsea has brought in Jim Hicks to shake things up behind the scenes at Cobham after January. Hicks, who is 63 years old, left his job at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) last month to lead coach development at Chelsea.
His job is to help coaches improve from the Under-15s to the U21s levels in both the academy and the women’s teams. Chelsea is known for making great coaches and players, like Brendan Rodgers, Michael Beale, and Joe Edwards, who have all moved on to big jobs elsewhere.
Hicks used to play as a centre-back for teams like Fulham, Oxford, and Exeter. After spending 18 years as the head of coaching at the PFA, he’s returning to club football. Before that, he spent 15 years coaching at Millwall, where he guided the women’s Lionesses team to win both the Premier League and the FA Cup in 1997.
Chelsea has also hired Sam Jewell, who was previously in charge of recruitment at Brighton, for a new role overseeing operations across multiple clubs. Jewell will start after a break from work, following the recruitment of Josh Marsh as the club’s new loan manager from Swansea.
Both Jewell and Marsh will be involved in BlueCo, Chelsea’s parent company, helping to connect the club with RC Strasbourg in the French top-flight league, as well as any other clubs bought in Belgium, Portugal, and Brazil.
