Maurizio Sarri has said that this is a difficult team to motivate and perhaps he cannot. Chelsea is motivated by spite, challenge, and silverware.
Maurizio Sarri’s comments about the team being difficult to motivate have reverberated through the fanbase. Many point to Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte as examples of how Sarri is correct. Seemingly when the going gets tough, the players down tools.
Except that does not quite paint the full picture. Yes, on some level, the players need to be self motivating. The mere fact that they play for Chelsea shows that they are. But then the manager is there to push them even farther. There are few players like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo with endless wells of self motivation. A good manager can close that gap.
When Sarri says maybe he cannot motivate the players, it is likely that he has not found out how to motivate them. And historically, there are three ways that have motivated Chelsea players: spite, challenge, and silverware.
Spite is perhaps the most dangerous one to use but seems to be the most common. All of Mourinho, Conte, and now Sarri have questioned the team’s mentality and ability to various degrees. Sometimes, this turns into an “I’ll show you!” sort of performance. Spite can also arise when it means stealing the title from a rival.
But it is a tightrope with no room for error. A manager can challenge the players like this maybe once or twice in a year. Any more and the players will tune it out and that is when the belief of downing tools seems to arise. Mourinho pushed too far and lost control. Conte pushed too far and lost control. And Sarri has already used his allotted two for the year.
The other side of the coin of spite is challenge. Often times, it will come off similar but different. But rather than force the squad into an “I’ll show you” mentality, it becomes about setting benchmarks.
Mourinho was famous for this. Players would come out of a game feeling as though they had the game of their lives. And Mourinho would criticize something they did. They would come back into training not with a point to prove, but with a burning desire to win Mourinho’s approval.
Challenge also comes up in rotation. Players need to feel pressure on their spot and know there are consequences if they are not up to par. Mourinho was perhaps the best of the three managers in question at this. When Gary Cahill’s form dipped, Kurt Zouma got a long run of games. When Cahill returned, he was far more motivated to keep his spot.
Of course, the thing about challenge players’ spots is that the standard has to be kept the same. One of the (many) reasons why things imploded in 2015/2016 was because Mourinho stuck by his XI to the death. No matter how bad the players played, he would not drop anyone. And suddenly, he could not motivate the starters because they felt safe and he could not motivate the rest because they saw no route to starting. Unfortunately, this same scenario is occurring this season.
Finally, the last way to motivate Chelsea is silverware. Chelsea had no issue topping their Champions League group in 2015/2016 because there was a chance for something at the end. The Blues had no trouble winning the FA Cup in 2017/2018 because there was a cup at the end. And this season, Chelsea has found life in the FA Cup, Europa League, and League Cup easy because winning is within reach.
But when Chelsea is out of the title race, they struggle in the league. This has happened time and time again. The league is a marathon and as soon as Chelsea sees winning is out of reach, they lose interest. That is when managers need to start challenging or using spite to get something more out of them. And as already mentioned, that can be dangerous.
Whether he has realized it or not, Sarri does know how to motivate these players. He has tried to use spite by questioning their mentality. He is out of uses on that one. The next option is to challenge the playing time of some, which he has been flirting with. And finally, the mere call of silverware should be enough for everything but the league.
If all of that is still failing, then Sarri has to turn the mirror on himself and ask what he can change. Plan B is still a misunderstood concept because people equate philosophy and tactics when both are different things. But Sarri does have ways to motivate the players; he just needs to be careful with how he goes about it.