Chelsea beat Manchester City at Stamford Bridge on Saturday to liven up the title race and – among other things – prove me right.
A seriously smug slumber is what I awake from today.
Chelsea’s win against Manchester City shouldn’t have been as shocking as people seem to believe that it was. It’s true, yes, that the Blues have been in something of a slump in recent weeks, but people have both misunderstood and overreacted to that brief run.
Matches against City are some of the most important games in England, and it’s very difficult to underestimate their importance. Each match obviously affects the Premier League table, but the very existence of City as the behemoth that they are is a representation of how much British football has changed in recent years.
That said, though, some things will never truly change. To understand the present we need to examine the past and acknowledge the grandfather of modern British football while we try to study it in many ways.
Sir Alex Ferguson once said the weekly matchup began with the press conference. It was important to win there if you were going to win on the pitch later. This is where Maurizio Sarri’s masterstroke of man-management began this week.
Sarri declared his players were overconfident. Many already knew this, but too few had taken the correct action in rectifying it. Both Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho – themselves genius in the field of management, regardless of your personal feelings on them – touched upon this core defect at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea’s biggest issue isn’t talent. It’s a deep-seated mental deficiency when they have to face challenges head-on.
By declaring his stars overconfident, but immediately saying it concerned and worried him, Sarri took a different approach to that of Conte or Mourinho. Those two traditionally took the authoritarian approach. Though Sarri is older than both, he has proven to be a much more modern and contemplative manager.
He created a situation in which his players could not argue. They could not fight him, as he was concerned for them. No one pushes off the doctor offering aid, neither could the players come out and say “We’re not overconfident! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” because by doing so they would prove him correct.
The mind of the modern footballer is so complex and delicate that Sarri’s more measured approach to dealing with the same issue everyone has observed worked perfectly.
Second, his work on N’Golo Kante was genius. The little French wonder of a man is, beside Cesar Azpilicueta, the biggest throwback of a player in the squad. He would never argue with the manager or cause a stir, and has little reason too. The club obviously believes in him – they extended him another five years, something the manager would have approved of. But to politely dress down perhaps the most celebrated player in recent history – a double Premier League winner and World Cup champion – would have been seen as a message to the rest of the team. Choosing Kante as the medium for that message made it so much more effective.
Unlike Paul Pogba at Manchester United, who seems to take offense at the idea that someone would suggest he’s simply not Pele, Maradona, Zico, Cruyff and Platini rolled into one, Kante simply improved. He didn’t make a fuss. He realized his manager wants the best for him. If not for the more elementary reason that his manager is entrusted with improving his players and has made a profession of studying the details of football, then simply because what’s good for the players and the manager is mutual improvement so the manager can stay employed.
Finally came the move to leave Alvaro Morata out of the squad while also not playing Olivier Giroud. This was useful in two ways.
No part of Pep Guardiola’s preparation would have been on the idea of Chelsea playing without a striker. They don’t even have video to study it. By throwing a wrench quickly into the gears of City’s machine, Sarri put them on the backfoot for perhaps the first time this season.
There’s nothing about Alvaro Morata that makes any sense. If I was a 1.89 m, 82 kg man blessed with good touch in both feet and a shockingly healthy dose of speed I’d make Diego Costa and Christian Vieri look like handmaidens. Morata simply doesn’t have it. He seems more likely to give an invitation to dinner than hell to an opponent. He has all the tools except the one between the ears, it seems.
For Sarri, a manager who counts attitude and intellect above all else in his players, the Spaniard simply represents a compromise in every match. He doesn’t press properly, which is the literal first step in Sarrismo and one of the most necessary factors in playing against Manchester City.
Morata has been in the game long enough and has the masterful education from such football universities as Juventus and Real Madrid. He knows a striker can contribute without scoring. Raul did so for years for Los Blancos, and yet Morata does not. It’s been unacceptable for ages now, and simply admitting is an important thing for Sarri to do.
In doing these things Sarri created a perfect triumvirate rolling into this game. People acted as if the struggles were terrible, but they were two weeks. Teams struggle for much longer than that. I understand the Roman Abramovich-accelerated timeline has turned us all into panic mongers, but two weeks is hardly a crisis in a team trying to change over a decade of habits.
Sarri will need time, and eventually the team will begin to shape itself. He has shown his intelligence, acumen and will are very much up to the challenge. He’s a good man managing Chelsea in a more pragmatic way than many will acknowledge. His ability to learn where others failed and the humility to do so make him so special, and it so wonderful that Chelsea have him.