Chelsea cannot use transfer ban to justify sacking Maurizio Sarri

Neither Chelsea FC nor Maurizio Sarri will benefit from staying together during the transfer ban. However, the ban cannot be the reason the club eventually dismisses the coach.

Travis is correct in saying Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri are fundamentally incompatible if FIFA’s transfer ban stays in place this summer. Even if the ban is suspended and the club can do business in the summer, the Blues would likely not buy enough of the players Sarri would request, leading to another season of square pegs in round holes and the same set of excuses for inchoate Sarriball.

However, as compelling as Travis’ arguments are, they cannot be the reason – implicit or explicit, public or private – for the inevitable sacking.

A transfer ban is simply too convenient. It’s FIFA handing Chelsea a mulligan for a series of decisions that deserve prolonged scrutiny within the executive suites of Stamford Bridge.

Citing the transfer ban shifts the agency and the cause for Sarri’s sacking to FIFA. “We would have stayed the course, if not for FIFA’s draconian denial of our appeal.”

The club’s PR team may think that would soften the blow among Sarri’s diehard fans (a dwindling group, in any case), but it would only reinforce the idea that the club were progressing in their season under Sarri. This would necessarily lead to a push in the near-term or short-term for another manager in Sarri’s mould to come in and finish the job of transforming the club around aesthetic lines.

When the time comes for Chelsea to part ways with Maurizio Sarri they need to emphasize he is the cause of his own undoing. Factors that will be exacerbated by the ban – his refusal to play youth, his refusal to rotate smartly, his denigration of club leaders – would still independently justify (in part) his dismissal. As Chelsea well know, their legal case establishing cause for dismissal must be airtight.

Only by squaring up to this will Chelsea be able to see that, behind Maurizio Sarri’s mistakes, are their mistakes. The club erred in sacking Antonio Conte, the club erred in hiring Maurizio Sarri. The club erred in the decision processes that led them to both, and this is a necessary if painful correction, one they would have to make regardless of FIFA.

If the club hide behind FIFA, they will deny their deep responsibility for all these events and give people inside and outside the club justification to say “let’s try it again, this time with feeling.”

All that said, Chelsea still have a face-saving out. If Maurizio Sarri cites the transfer ban to resign, the two parties can leave with their reputations intact, an understandable goal, as Travis pointed out. It would spare Chelsea FC the public recriminations, which means they may be able to dodge the internal examinations.

Engineering a coach’s resignation rather than simply sacking him seems a bit beyond Chelsea’s normal skill set. But if it allows them to escape any difficult questions and painful lessons, they may just step up to the challenge.