Chelsea FC are letting their most transient employee have an unprecedented level of input into the transfer process. Maurizio Sarri has no reason to think about what he’s leaving for his successor, which will make it even harder for Chelsea to hire the next lucky victim.
Chelsea have gone almost to the point of self-parody in recent years with their handling of coaches, transfers and internal power struggles. All of these have made the head coach job increasingly unattractive for anyone competent enough to get hired elsewhere. The club’s recent transition from half-assed under-supporting their coach to half-assed over-supporting their coach (“But I’m using my whole ass.” – Homer Simpson) is compounding the problem.
After years of ignoring their coaches’ requests for new players and delivering whoever Michael Emenalo wanted instead, in the absence of Emenalo or a replacement (436 days), Chelsea are on the verge of delivering Maurizio Sarri’s second by-name player request. If the Blues sign Gonzalo Higuain, Sarri will be the envy of all his predecessors.
However, Chelsea’s concern should not be with Sarri’s predecessors. It should be with his successor. Sooner or later, Maurizio Sarri will leave. When he does, the new coach will not only inherit the usual fractured locker room and pressure for immediate success. He will take over a squad built by and for the ultimate short-term employee: the coach.
Jorginho and Gonzalo Higuain are uniquely Sarri players as far as Chelsea are concerned. The club would not have signed nor perhaps even considered either player if not for Maurizio Sarri.
Jorginho may be a uniquely Sarri player overall. Almost the entirety of his professional career has been with Sarri, playing the same position in the same overall structure. The last few months at Chelsea have shown his limited versatility: first, by how effectively the opponents can erase him from the game; second, by how much more fluid the midfield became when Cesc Fabregas took his place.
Whether and how Jorginho would play in any other manager’s system is an increasingly open question this season. Sarri’s grim refusal to adapt his tactics limits not only the team’s playing style and avenues for success, but also Jorginho’s ability to show what else – what more? – he can do.
The case for Gonzalo Higuain rests entirely on his experience with Maurizio Sarri three years at Napoli. While Jorginho at least brought three years of Sarri continuity to Chelsea, Higuain’s connection to the coach and his system are decayed by time. And yet that is still more than his connection to any of the players or the Premier League. Plus, he is 31-years old. If Chelsea follow their usual pattern of confusing a stop-gap for a long-term solution (see also: Luiz, David), Sarri’s successor will find no strikers within three years of their prime years.
Maurizio Sarri has no reason to concern himself with who comes next. Only coaches who truly become part of the club – Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger – have that luxury or affinity. Chelsea, obviously, have no such individual in recent memory (perhaps in my colleague Kevin Peacock’s memory, though). Sarri, like the dozen or so men behind him, can only think about his own survival.
The next coach, then, will inherit at least two players who Chelsea bought in response to one man’s hope to last another year or two. Worse, these two players are particularly specific to Maurizio Sarri. Some of his other players from Napoli have proven their versatility under different managers before or after Sarri. Others are still in their prime years. But not these two.
Jorginho is – and Gonzalo Higuain might soon be – at Chelsea now because Maurizio Sarri is at Chelsea now.
This is why clubs have and need a technical director or director of football. The technical director ensures the club buys players for the club, not the coach. They make decisions on a timescale greater than the tenure of the coach, which ensures the players they buy have a shelf-life longer than the coach.
When the time comes, prospective coaches will take a look at Sarri’s squad and wonder if the club will give them what they want the way the club gave Sarri what he wanted. There is no good answer. If the club does, then they are simply restarting the cycle of short-term thinking. If not, they will find it even harder to hire someone worthy of the badge.