Chelsea started their season with five successive league victories and went unbeaten until late November. There was a lot of positive talk about the impact of Maurizio Sarri and how his successful style of football at his previous club Napoli was being transferred so quickly to Chelsea. In these early weeks of the campaign Jorginho was dictating matches from a deep-lying midfield position while N’Golo Kanté scored on the opening weekend, appearing to relish a modified and less defensive role.
Some cracks are starting to show and they seem to be spreading quickly. It certainly looks like Sarri’s honeymoon is now over, despite their cup final to come.
Performances have gone downhill, with the 2-0 defeat at Arsenal last weekend their fourth in 11 league games and widely considered a new low. But what was surprising to me was what Sarri had to say afterwards: criticizing his players’ “mental approach”, saying Arsenal were “far more determined than we were” and most eye-catchingly suggesting Chelsea’s squad is “extremely difficult to motivate”. More recently Sarri made it clear that he had said something similar in the dressing room. “Why keep it a secret?” he asked. “I want to be direct with them in private and in public.” But I think this is always dangerous ground for a coach to tread, especially so early in his tenure.
I think public criticism of players can go one of two ways: either the players will want to raise a proverbial middle finger at their manager and prove them wrong, or the squad will go within themselves and performances will deteriorate. I do not have managerial experience but I think if a manager wants to get a reaction they are better off speaking to players privately. What we’ve seen in the recent past is that public criticism of players just doesn’t work. Think of Marcus Rashford, Luke Shaw and Paul Pogba at Manchester United under José Mourinho. Players are under enough pressure to perform from fans and the media without a manager complicating matters further in public. Top players will not let it affect them too much but I know it is not something they appreciate.
After all, Alex Ferguson, one of the greatest managers of all time, had a golden rule never to criticize his players in public despite being famously known to give “hairdryer treatments” in private. This approach in protecting his players publicly clearly worked for Ferguson and brought him unprecedented success and the loyalty of his players. I often question why so many modern managers of top clubs depart from this approach.
For Sarri to go down this path at Chelsea is even more surprising. The Blues have had three very strong characters in the dugout over the past four seasons: Mourinho, Antonio Conte and now Sarri. Of those managers, Mourinho eventually left in a huff, the players becoming fed up with his antics. Conte also left in a huff, amid what seemed to be a sharp contrast to the title‑winning togetherness in his previous season. This is the situation Sarri walked into in the summer, and he has got to tread very carefully or it might end as badly for him as it did for his predecessors. And both Mourinho and Conte had won the league title before their relationship with the players started to slide.
Into this tricky period, Chelsea have added Gonzalo Higuaín. The Argentinian scored a lot of goals under Sarri at Napoli, and the expectation will be that he will do the same at Chelsea. His arrival will free Eden Hazard to move away from the false nine position with which he’s clearly dissatisfied.
The Belgian enjoys playing with forwards who hold the ball up and bring him into play, allowing him to make those dashing runs infield from the left. It could be that this is the effect Sarri is hoping Higuaín’s arrival will have, but perhaps this is another sign that he is a manager who, in the end, prefers to play in a familiar way with familiar players.
Many managers bring players they have previously worked with into a new club – but that doesn’t always mean they will continue to enjoy success together. Jorginho was the first player to follow Sarri to Chelsea from Napoli, and for a few weeks he seemed to have made the transition seamlessly. But it didn’t take very long for teams to suss out that if you press Jorginho you can stop Chelsea’s attacking supply. Jorginho, with no assists to his name, is not having the kind of impact that would justify forcing Kanté out of his preferred role. Kanté is the engine of the Chelsea team, as he was in their most recent title-winning season and Leicester’s before that, not to mention the World Cup-winning France side.
For a new manager to come in and move Kanté is the equivalent of someone taking over from Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and shifting Harry Kane to the wing to make space for a player from his previous club. Kanté hasn’t spoken out about any frustration he might be feeling – like Hazard did, for example, when asked to play as a false nine by Conte – but despite being a humble, unassuming guy he still has a massive impact on the team. Maybe Sarri, famed for his attacking style, doesn’t necessarily value the unglamorous work that Kanté does – breaking up play, stopping counterattacks – as much as other managers have. But hopefully Sarri can look at the attributes of players such as Kanté and play them in their preferred roles, in which they have enjoyed success with Chelsea in the past.
The Guardian Sport
