Chelsea right to sell Nemanja Matic, just not to Jose Mourinho’s United
By George Perry
After Chelsea’s and Manchester United’s divergent Champions League fortunes on Tuesday, the wildfire narrative traces the Blues’ woes to selling Nemanja Matic. The key is not which club Matic plays for, but which manager.
Every manager has a certain type of player that he favours to play specific positions or roles in his squad. Some players will do well in any squad, and others are interchangeable cogs as the managers come and go. Nemanja Matic is not just Jose Mourinho’s type – he is exactly a Jose Mourinho player, whether the two are at Chelsea or at Manchester United.
Many of Matic’s key statistics from 2016/17 are closer to those from the 2015/16 debacle than his first title win in 2014/15. Ashley Barnes may play a role there, but so do Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho. Not surprisingly, his numbers thus far at Manchester United look more like 2014/15 (Mourinho) than 2016/17 (Conte).
Matic’s best season in any competition – and by far his best season in England – came in 2014/15. Many players excelled in that title-winning season, but Matic particularly thrived statistically and qualitatively. Chelsea won the title by playing Jose Mourinho football at its finest – flowing when they could, defensive when they needed to and strong transitions between offence and defence.
The entire run of play in that season revolved around Nemanja Matic. He was the pivot point in Chelsea’s midfield, controlling a large swath of space, denying the opposition access and turning the play into Chelsea’s favour.
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Mourinho tasked him to do the things he did best: cover ground in midfield, deny passing lanes and dribbling areas, take outlet passes from the defence and feed the ball to Chelsea’s forward-moving swarm. The system and Matic’s role were built around Matic’s strengths while effectively avoiding his weaknesses.
Antonio Conte laid a different set of expectations on Matic. Conte expects all of his players to be ball-handlers: centre-backs, goalkeepers and holding central midfielders included. For as much as Matic can offer positionally and tactically, he remains a baby deer on ice when the ball is at his feet.
Jose Mourinho is willing to make that trade-off to bring his tactics to life. Antonio Conte is not.
Neither approach is wrong. Both managers have a record of success to support their philosophies. But Matic is as incompatible to one as he is perfect for the other.
Matic was strong last year, in large part because his tactical acumen strengthened his rapport with N’Golo Kante. But Kante’s all-around skill, including his ball handling, highlighted the disparity between Nemanja Matic and a ‘Conte midfielder.’ Matic was occasionally weak, but more often disjointed in Chelsea’s system last season.
The Blues bought two midfielders that better fit the Antonio Conte mould: Tiemoue Bakayoko and Danny Drinkwater. Neither transfer has fully paid off, given Bakayoko’s struggles and Drinkwater’s injury. This contributed to the narrative Phil Neville voiced most prominently on Tuesday night. Neville – and many others – believe that Chelsea committed a grave error in selling Nemanja Matic, and compounded the error by buying two players who are far from adequate replacements.
Neville is right that whoever is behind Nemanja Matic’s sale should be sacked, but only to the extent that they chose the single-worst destination for him from Chelsea’s perspective. But the sale itself was a reasonable move. Only Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United would pay £40 million for Nemanja Matic. The Blues could have done more with their transfer inflow, but it is hard to argue with that piece of business.
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Chelsea’s summer sale may put them to the sword. But it will not be because Chelsea could be winning with him instead of losing without him. And it will not be because they handed a plug-and-play star to any given rival. Chelsea’s only mistake was selling Nemanja Matic to the manager who can most effectively weaponize the Serb midfielder.