Chelsea hired Maurizio Sarri partly to entice Eden Hazard to stay, but now Sarri has Hazard in his crosshairs and Hazard is still talking about leaving. If only someone had done a little research into this plan.
“Hey Dries, let me ask you something.” Those seven words could have changed the course of Chelsea history. Eden Hazard and Dries Mertens have probably known each other nearly their entire lives as they came up through Belgium’s club and national youth system. For the last eight years they have been on Belgium’s national team together, and for the last few years have become regulars in the Red Devils’ starting XI. And yet for all their time together since 2015, it seems Hazard never thought to ask Mertens what it’s like to play for Maurizio Sarri.
If it’s true that Eden Hazard supported the decision to hire Sarri, he seems as surprised as anyone by how things have turned out. Far from a gluttonous buffet of fun, Hazard looks bored in training and discouraged to find himself as an occasional centre-forward. To the extent Chelsea are playing beautiful football rather than just possession-based tippy-tappy, Hazard seems like he is only now learning that “beautiful” and “creative” are two different things.
As a parade of Premier League managers, pundits and bloggers have demonstrated in tactics or words, Maurizio Sarri’s system is literally by the book. His pedagogy reflects his product: repetition on the training pitch produces execution in matches.
Such training is the antithesis of fun for Eden Hazard. The enjoyment only slightly improves in games when he can create opportunities to be himself. But those exist within the context of the mechanistic circuits, and are further limited by his defensive responsibilities on the wing or his isolation as centre-forward.
Again, as everyone now knows, Maurizio Sarri is nearly a universal constant. He is doing at Chelsea what he did at Napoli.
Somewhere along the line, communication and shared comprehension broke down amongst all parties involved. The Chelsea board, bereft of the football expertise provided by a technical director (455 days), may not have understood Sarri’s methods and systems. They went looking for the fun manager whose team plays beautiful football, and hired Sarri for the effects while remaining oblivious to the causes. Permitting ketchup in the canteen was all the validation they needed.
Hazard, though, bought into the myth as well. He does not strike us as an obsessive student of the sport: someone like Frank Lampard or John Terry, who will watch any game at any time just because it’s football. He may not have watched much Napoli over the last few years because few people were really all that interested in the Italian Spurs. OK, that’s fine.
But did he never ask Dries Mertens, in particular, what things were like in his three years under Maurizio Sarri?
Mertens surely would have told him about the repetitious training, the constraining circuits, the fact that decision-making is limited to “what lever do I pull” rather than “what do I want to do here.” Perhaps Mertens would have talked about how much he loved it and how he thought Sarri was a great manager. But as Hazard himself pointed out, he and Mertens have very different approaches. What Mertens described with relish, Hazard would see as unhappiness ahead.
The one possibility that could shift all of the burden for this mislabeled bill of goods onto Maurizio Sarri and away from Eden Hazard is how Sarri views the progression of his curriculum.
Sarri has spoken numerous times about how poorly the squad understand his tactics. Perhaps what he is saying is that there is a wide range of understanding within the squad: some players picked it up quite easily and quickly, others are still struggling with the introductory chapters. Whereas some (most?) other coaches would then individualize the training – moving some players along the curve while sending others to remedial sessions – in true Sarri fashion, he may be anchoring the entire team’s education to the slowest learner.
If that is the case, Eden Hazard may be waiting impatiently for some of his teammates to learn to balance without training wheels.
We could flatter the players further at Sarri’s expense by assuming that they all mastered the first building blocks of Sarrismo early on in the season, but Sarri is not adapting the pace of his curriculum to the players. Sarri has never worked with a group of players as experienced and accomplished as Chelsea’s. They did not get this far in their individual careers and amass their individual accolades by being dullards.
Sarri, in his infinite rigidity, may be adhering to a timeline built for lesser players. “It takes eight months to learn this, so by god we’re going to spend eight months learning this,” even as every single one of his players learned it to the hilt after three months.
As we are immodestly pointing out with increasing frequency, just about everything about Maurizio Sarri is readily knowable. The only reason for anyone to be surprised by what emerges from the smoke is a lack of research and preparation. It’s all there for the understanding.
Eden Hazard had a particular advantage in seeing into his future because he could have asked one of his friends (we presume they’re friends) for the entire inside scoop. It seems implausible that they never once discussed Sarri, but then again, it is still hard to accept that so many people are still in the novelty phase of the Sarri era.
Playing beautiful, enjoyable football is one of Eden Hazard’s major motivations. Right now, there is not too much in Chelsea’s training nor playing to keep him happy, nor will there be even if Sarrismo is fully realized.
Perhaps Eden Hazard was as blind as Chelsea FC were in their mutual interest for Maurizio Sarri. At least his would have been a bit blissful.