The transfer window closed across Europe on Friday, with 40 Chelsea players dispatched to the loan army. In either a reversal of fortune, a bold new policy or a bizarre oversight, Lucas Piazon is not among them.
Dries Mertens was an out-of-the-way utility player for most of his career at Napoli. He had 11 goals in his first season – third-most on the team – but only half as many in the next two seasons. Gonzalo rampaged through the limelight in Maurizio Sarri’s first year at Napoli. Mertens spent that season on bench, with six starts and 27 substitute appearances giving him the chance to score five goals. The next season, with Higuain out of the way, Mertens centered Napoli’s attack and scored 28 goals, followed by another 18 last season.
Could Lucas Piazon be the Chelsea version of Mertens? Possibly. Having outwitted, outlasted or outplayed the rest of the fringe players, Piazon avoided another loan. Maurizio Sarri clearly sees something remarkable in him, enough to keep him out of the loan system since his first half-season with Chelsea back in 2012. Or maybe Piazon was just overlooked.
Piazon is an unlikely survivor of Chelsea’s loan lottery. Over the past few seasons he has been one of the last players sent out, each time coming tantalizingly close while the club settles his fate. As the clock approached midnight on August 31, the Blues found temporary homes for Bradley Collins, Tammy Abraham, Fankaty Dabo and Charly Musonda. But when the clock struck 12, Piazon neither turned into a pumpkin nor headed for the train station.
The Tammy Abraham loan was a particular disappointment, not just the fact of his loan but the destination. Sending Abraham to Aston Villa suggests Chelsea put more stock in his loan last year at Swansea than the previous year at Bristol City. Rather than examine the reasons why Abraham did so much better with Bristol than with Swansea – mainly, Bristol were an attacking club with strong crossers who gave Abraham a dream amount of service, while Swansea had minimal forward movement, little service to the striker, managerial churn and a downcast attitude – they apparently concluded he needed more time in the Championship to prepare for his next adventure in the Premier League.
Aside from misreading his two seasons (your periodic reminder that Chelsea still do not have a technical director), loaning Abraham gives Chelsea no true option at centre-forward behind Alvaro Morata and Olivier Giroud. Those strikers succeeded as a battery last season because they each offered something different to Antonio Conte’s XI. So far this season, with Maurizio Sarri’s tactics, they appear interchangeable.
Because Sarri is not accustomed to having a true No. 9 after his last two seasons at Napoli, he may not want extra No. 9’s hanging around the club. If he cannot find success from Morata and Giroud, rather than bring on a striker who offers a new dimension, he may go back to the false-nine. Eden Hazard would be the most likely player for this role, and Lucas Piazon could be the back-up option.
Piazon has many of the technical and tactical characteristics Sarri would look for in a false-nine. He fits the profile of the Sarri false-nine better than some otherwise more obvious Chelsea players. He has over 150 senior-level appearances across various countries and leagues on the wing and attacking midfield. And Maurizio Sarri and Jorginho seem to have a liking for him, which is about the best endorsement he could hope for.
Chelsea now have their schedule for the Europa League and Carabao Cup, and the schedule will get congested very soon upon the return from the international break. If Maurizio Sarri does not think those midweek fixtures are worth playing Eden Hazard and Alvaro Morata, he will need an option behind Olivier Giroud. Piazon would not be a like-for-like switch, but he would enable both tactical variation and personnel rotation.
To be fair, at least at the time of this writing, he is still not on the first team page of the official website. But he is also no longer on the loan page. For all we know he may be in an even worse form of purgatory than he was in before. But we’re trying to be optimistic while also trying to make sense of it all.
Two seasons ago, Antonio Conte brought former Bolton, Sunderland and Fiorentina journeyman Marcos Alonso to the club for reasons not quite understood at the time. Two years later, Chelsea have one of the best wing-backs / offensive full-backs in the world. Among Conte’s other legacies at the club and in football, Marcos Alonso’s career ranks high.
Maurizio Sarri may see something similar in Lucas Piazon. If Sarri can pull from the serial loanees and recognize where they fit into the first team, he will secure his own legacy at Stamford Bridge. Let’s see how this plays out.