Few Chelsea fans – few fans of any club – would dispute Maurizio Sarri’s characterization of a club with “a soul.” Yet in his first year, he has done little to build such a team.
Maurizio Sarri is increasingly fond of mentioning how little input or interest he has in the club’s transfer business. The response from fans and the media is unusually sympathetic – his predecessors were granted no quarter for pointing out the same reality when it was their turn in the seat. But even though Chelsea’s board may not consult him before making purchases, Sarri still has close to the final word over the other aspect of squad management: who makes the squad and, accordingly, who stays.
In his press conference ahead of Chelsea’s Carabao Cup semi-final tie, Sarri said “we are lucky because our academy is very very good. I think it is important because if you have five or six players from the academy, you have a soul, more than with 25 foreign players.”
Chelsea have some shred of a soul because they do not have 25 foreign players. Sarri has used only 24 players across all competitions this season.
Just over halfway through the season, Maurizio Sarri is slightly below the mark of his predecessors for his use of the academy. Chelsea have given competitive appearances to at least five academy graduates in each of the last four seasons. Last season was the peak, with eight Cobham-raised players taking the pitch at least once.
Sarri has given minutes to three players from Chelsea’s academy: Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Andreas Christensen and Callum Hudson-Odoi. They are 15th, 16th and 22nd in terms of playing minutes under Maurizio Sarri. Sarri has yet to give an academy graduate his first-team debut.
Since Sarri mentioned foreign players in the same breath as academy players, we can take a look there, too. Andreas Christensen is the only foreign-born player of Sarri’s academy trio. Sarri’s English contingent also includes Ross Barkley and – expanding to United Kingdom – Ethan Ampadu. His remaining Englishmen – Gary Cahill and Danny Drinkwater – are surely leaving this January. Sarri’s cast-offs also include two other non-English homegrown players: Cesc Fabregas and Victor Moses.
Cahill is practically an honorary Cobham graduate and Fabregas is a Premier League legend from his teen years, even if his football tutelage is from La Masia and not somewhere in England. Yet they are not part of Sarri’s soul for Chelsea.
Maurizio Sarri’s squad selection so far this season has reflected little concern for academy-derived soul. His players are those who he deemed early on suitable for his system. Per his usual, he imprinted on them like a mother duck on her ducklings and left minimal opening for such petty concerns as where they played their early football.
His statements on Monday, then, are either a statement of his deeply-held but unrealized desires or are a more cynical form of messaging.
His loudest fans defend his pre-Chelsea record of youth involvement by pointing to the poor academies at Empoli and Napoli. They say it was the quality of the academies and the youth players that precluded Sarri from turning to more in-house youth during his Serie A years. Once at Chelsea, with their productive academy at Cobham, he would build the pipeline to the first team.
This has very much not been the case. Perhaps Sarri would still like to quicken his club’s soul with the spirit of the academy, but feels pressured for early results. He has to forestall his desires and the promotion of the academy products in order to win games, secure the Champions League and bag his first trophy. Then, with the trust of the club and the backing of the board, he can take calculated risks on blooding young players.
Or the pressure may be coming from another direction. Chelsea are on the verge of losing one of the three academy players in Sarri’s squad this season: Callum Hudson-Odoi. Hudson-Odoi would not be the first Cobham graduate to leave the club this season, nor would he be the first teenage English starlet to leave the Premier League. Sarri’s statements may be his way of telling these young players that things will improve, they are in his plans, they just need to stick around. Perhaps Sarri’s bosses even put him up to it as part of a last-ditch effort to convince Hudson-Odoi to stay.
As always, actions speak loud than words. Maurizio Sarri can talk about the soul of a squad, but so far he has done the minimum to promote or retain Chelsea’s English, homegrown or academy-trained players. His words from Monday will reflect poorly on him if Chelsea go on to sign and build a future around Nicola Barella instead of Mason Mount; Elseid Hysaj instead of Ola Aina; or any number of geriatrics instead of Tammy Abraham.
Chelsea have their full soul of players, with or without Maurizio Sarri. The question for him or any manager is whether they care to keep Stamford Bridge as the seat of that soul.