Maurizio Sarri’s honeymoon period with Chelsea fans ended when he started criticizing N’Golo Kante’s tactical abilities in his new role as box-to-box midfielder. Things could really turn for the manager if he makes similar statements about his expectations for Eden Hazard.
Intelligent Chelsea fans have something in common with Mauricio Pochettino. They know that if they want not only to understand Maurizio Sarri but to predict the future at Chelsea FC, they only need to look at Sarri’s three years at Napoli and his five months so far at Stamford Bridge.
While N’Golo Kante adjusts to his new “Allan role” and Maurizio Sarri steadfastly refuses to reinstate the “N’Golo Kante role,” Eden Hazard is enjoying a spell in an equally eponymous position. Hazard has scored seven goals in 13 Premier League appearances, playing mainly off the left wing but overall relishing the freedom of a No. 10 who can swap wings at any time. He has had little to worry about other than being at the top of the formation and the top of the expected goals chain. The previous men who held his role under Sarri, though, had much more on their plate.
Maurizio Sarri expects his wingers to be involved in the press and the defensive 4-4-2. Across all opponents, the wingers were part of Sarri’s intricately triggered pressing schemes. As an example, in many of Napoli’s crucial games against Juventus, the wingers would press Juventus’ ball-carrying centre-back diagonally while the centre-forward would press the centre-back from the side.
The number of tackles a winger attempts is a workable proxy for their involvement in the press and defence, particularly transitions. They will not make too many tackles while their team is set up in their defensive shape, especially not the winger who stays high up in the 4-4-2 with the centre-forward.
Over Sarri’s three seasons at Napoli, his usual front line was Jose Callejon, Dries Mertens and Lorenzo Insigne. These players had very consistent stats for attempted tackles. Their attempted tackles per 90 were similar to what Pedro and Willian have produced for Chelsea over the last two seasons and the first 14 weeks of this season. Eden Hazard is the outlier among the entire group.
Napoli: Attempted tackles from wingers
| Season | Jose Callejon | Dries Mertens | Lorenzo Insigne |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 1.3 |
| 2016/17 | 2.1 | 1.4 | 2.1 |
| 2017/18 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.4 |
Source: whoscored.com
Contrary to popular belief, Antonio Conte demanded less press and defensive involvement from Hazard than previous managers. Hazard is attempting only .4 tackles per 90 minutes this season, down from .9 last season and 1.0 in 2016/17. These are the three lowest values for league campaigns of his career.
Conte may not have played a free-flowing possession-oriented style, but he had no issue with letting Hazard float near the striker or in the striker position when he was a false-nine.
| Season | Willian | Pedro | Eden Hazard |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 | 1.7 | 3.3 | 1 |
| 2017/18 | 1.8 | 1.9 | .9 |
| 2018/19 | 2.1 | 2 | .4 |
Hazard attempted the most tackles per game in 2012/13 under Roberto di Matteo and Rafael Benitez. Between Lille and Chelsea, from 2009/10 – 2014/15 he attempted fewer than 50 tackles in a league campaign once. Since then, he has not attempted over 40.
Hazard’s attempted tackles do not correlate with the number of goals he scores in a season. This is due to the moderating effects of the team’s tactics. Attempting more tackles does not necessarily mean he is playing in a more defensive role at the expense of his offensive creativity. If a winger is pressing more aggressively and therefore attempting more tackles in those contexts, he could force more turnovers which lead directly to a goal.
Under Antonio Conte and now Maurizio Sarri, Pedro and Willian’s attempted tackle numbers are much closer to those of the Napoli trio’s than they are to Eden Hazard’s. Of Chelsea’s three wingers under Conte, Pedro attempted the most tackles, peaking with 3.3 per game en route to the title in 2016/17. Pedro was often the late-man arriving to an overload created by N’Golo Kante and Nemanja Matic to dispossess the opposition in midfield. The two midfielders would take away a ball carrier’s dribbling and passing options, and Pedro would come in to force the turnover and start the counter-attack.
Maurizio Sarri’s tendency to shoehorn Chelsea players into the roles and tactics his players filled at Napoli is well-documented. N’Golo Kante is a generationally-defining defensive midfielder who has won two Premier League titles and a World Cup. But since Sarri’s system does not involve such a player, Kante is employed as a passable but hardly notable box-to-box midfielder. Sarri cannot drop Kante and will not change, so Kante must change for him, even if that means gross under-utilization.
People can debate for weeks over who is more valuable to Chelsea (or any club) – Eden Hazard or N’Golo Kante – and which player is more transcendent, more defining of their position and more worthy of having a team’s personnel and tactics built around him. Maurizio Sarri will be unmoved by the conclusion. He has his way of doing things, and it doesn’t matter who he has at his disposal. The concept is greater than the players, even at the price of execution and results.
Eden Hazard seems to be skirting this particular Sarri-ism. Hazard is using feints and his mere presence to set traps for the opposition as they try to play out, rather than going in directly himself. He is carrying over his methods from the last two seasons, and probably hoping to avoid a return to the seasons before that.
Sarri has not demanded that Eden Hazard press and defend as Jose Callejon and Lorenzo Insigne did on the wing for Napoli. At least not publicly. And at least not yet.
If Maurizio Sarri stays true to his past and patterns – and he has yet to let us down – eventually he will comment on how Eden Hazard needs to improve his defensive contributions, contribute more to the press and involve himself more in forcing turnovers high in the opponent’s half. Jose Callejon and Lorenzo Insigne did it, therefore Hazard must as well. Hazard is not in the Hazard role any more than Kante gets to play the Kante role.
When that happens and the blowback hits, Antonio Conte will chuckle as he raises a commisserative glass of Prosecco to his successor, perhaps with a toast of “Brother, you asked for it.”