{"id":628748,"date":"2026-04-24T22:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628748\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T22:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:31:09","slug":"chelsea-new-boss-calum-mcfarlanes-remarkable-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628748\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea: New boss Calum McFarlane’s remarkable rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The softly-spoken McFarlane is an enigma. He has only a small social media presence. He has established a successful football coaching career away from the limelight.<\/p>\n

He grew up in Forest Hill, south London, and in his words, was a “failed footballer”, who moved into youth coaching.<\/p>\n

Alongside part-time roles at Crystal Palace<\/a> and Fulham<\/a>‘s academy, McFarlane started coaching Lambeth Tigers. <\/p>\n

There, a chance meeting shaped his future.<\/p>\n

There were two boys from Norway at the club who just happened to be the sons of former Tromso player Thomas Hafstad.<\/p>\n

“In 2012, I spent a year in London observing academies at different clubs in England,” Hafstad, who played 260 games for the northernmost football club in the world, told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“Instantly, I could see Calum was a very good coach. He listened to the players – young boys of 11 and 12 – and really understood how to work with them.”<\/p>\n

Hafstad, now Tromso technical director, said it was easy to see McFarlane “would be a great asset”.<\/p>\n

“Even then, he had a strong knowledge of the game, but what stood out most was his man\u2011management,” he added. <\/p>\n

Hafstad took McFarlane to Tromso, initially as as an Under-14s coach. <\/p>\n

“He did very well in two years with us,” said Hafstad.<\/p>\n

“He moved up to coach the under\u201119s and even took first-team sessions. At the time, we were in European competitions, so it was a strong period for the club.<\/p>\n

“We’ve stayed in touch. I spent a few days at Chelsea<\/a>‘s academy in November last year, so we still have a close connection. I have no problem believing he could become a top manager in the near future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The softly-spoken McFarlane is an enigma. He has only a small social media presence. He has established a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-628748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}