Chelsea have not yet hired Maurizio Sarri but, given the club’s history, they should already be planning for his departure. If they expect to gain players through his arrival, they must expect to lose them upon his sacking.
No one has ever accused Chelsea of long-term strategic planning of their player and managment staff. When they have a coach, their planning window extends to the ever-approaching day of his sacking. When they lack a coach, their window extends to the day they hire the next sap. The current bout of multitasking – where they have a coach but are simultaneously shopping for his replacement – is straining their bandwidth
Yet more than ever, the club should be looking over this current horizon. One of the recurring conversations around Maurizio Sarri is how many of his former players will join him at Chelsea. If the club hire Sarri and assent to his transfer demands, they must be prepared for those players to leave to follow him to the next destination.
Chelsea have been linked to at least one-third of Napoli’s starting XI since Maurizio Sarri became the top candidate to replace Antoino Conte. The extra layer of irony is Chelsea’s record of futility in dealing with Napoli. Napoli have been Chelsea’s worse negotiating partner over the last few windows. The expectation of Piotr Zielinski, Elseid Hysaj and the rest joining Sarri at Stamford Bridge depends on Napoli suddenly becoming more amenable to dealing the club after they… hire away their manager.
This dependency is creeping in to the transfer rumour mill. Daniele Rugani spent a solid week in the rumours. But Rugani played for Sarri at Empoli, not Napoli. Pundits and transfer taste-makers started noting the difficulties, foreshadowing more non-Napoli Sarri players would be in the mix.
For starters, many of the Napoli players in the rumour mill also played for Maurizio Sarri at Empoli. The rumours are now turning to those left behind upon Sarri’s first move. Sarri’s pre-Napoli players became Sarri’s Napoli players long before they became Sarri’s potential Chelsea players. That raises its own set of questions, which we have addressed at length already.
But Chelsea need to think of what will happen when they are Sarri’s ex-club, and ex-club once removed, and so on. If Sarri will go two teams and up to six years back when drafting his transfer wishlist for Chelsea, he will do the same when Chelsea are the source and not the recipient. The Blues should expect to lose, at a minimum, any of the players he brought in. They can also expect to lose any young players who form a strong bond with him, as Hysaj, Zielinski and the rest did at Empoli.
And even if they do not lose these players, Chelsea will have to endure the rumours, the chatter, the questions, the longing glances. The Blues dodged one of these bullets with Eden Hazard when Zinedine Zidane quit Real Madrid. They could be facing a fusillade when – not if, when – Sarri leaves Stamford Bridge.
At best, Maurizio Sarri will last three years at Stamford Bridge. Extreme success or moderate failure could easily trim that to two, and extreme failure to 1.5 or less. That is the reality of most Premier League clubs, an area where Chelsea set and still follow the trend. A club should build a team for the club first, and the coach second. Of course, that would require a technical director. Building a team around a coach is a dangerous proposition unless the club is willing to commit to that coach, as Liverpool and Manchester City have done. Chelsea are not in their company.
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Building a team around a coach who – through no fault of his own – starts his countdown timer on day one is a foolish proposition. If the coach is short-term, and you buy the players explicitly for the coach, the players are now short-term. Chelsea struggle enough in the transfer market. They do not need to add more churn and extrinsic factors.