Chelsea: N’Golo Kante is the best player Maurizio Sarri could not get rid of

Maurizio Sarri has casually dismissed more talent and more trophy-laden players than most clubs would see in a decade. Sometimes it seems the more decorated the player, the easier for Sarri to send him on his way.

The perennial joke over the last five years is that Chelsea’s loan army could not only field several complete squads, but Chelsea Loanee FC’s starting XI would be sufficient for a midtable finish in the Premier League. The Blues had more talent scattered on loan than many first division sides had on the pitch across the “big five” leagues.

Maurizio Sarri is putting his own inimitable spin on the club’s misallocation of its best players. Give Sarri a few more years and a starting XI of his cast-offs would contend for the Premier League title en route to challenging for the Champions League or World Cup.

In just the last month, two World Cup winners have trained their fire on Maurizio Sarri. Earlier this month Cesc Fabregas said “I could have renewed my contract to stay [at Chelsea]. A new coach came and he came with a player that, for him, was like his son.” Not “better than me,” not “with more upside given he is four years younger than me.”

Fabregas has never been overly boastful or arrogant. If he felt he would not be able to develop the necessary skill set and contribute to the team – old dog new tricks, slow dog fast play, whatever the case may be – he would say so, and then perhaps wistfully shrug it off with “Football, it’s f**king brutal as well as f**king unbelievable.”  But that wasn’t the case. Fabregas cut to the issue: Jorginho is like Sarri’s son.

Then, before Chelsea’s second-leg against Slavia Praha, Olivier Giroud said:

"It’s not because I’m 32 and I’ve won the World Cup, because I don’t want to retire. I’m not satisfied with second place… Trust me, though, I’m not happy to play the second role. That’s why I said, next year, I will need to have a more important role to play in the team. – Evening Standard"

Sarri responded in the most on-brand way possible after the game.

Unlike Fabregas and Giroud, Gary Cahill has never won a World Cup. He played only 90 minutes of the 2018 World Cup, but he is still a World Cup semifinalist, along with a winner of at least one of every club trophy.

Danny Drinkwater is no one’s idea of a world-beater, but he, too has two Premier League titles (one is a bit more meaningful than the other) and one each of the domestic cups.

The big “what if” over Maurizio Sarri’s handling of Chelsea’s top talent is N’Golo Kante. Maurizio Sarri’s most frequent comment about Kante this season is how he is “not technical enough” to play at the base of midfield.

For everything Kante did before and during this season, Sarri still does not trust Kante to, um, make 110 one-touch semi-no-look passes every game. To be fair, I wouldn’t either. Kante would know better than to do that, so if that is explicitly and literally what you want, then no, Kante is “not good for one-touch.”

Chelsea announced Kante’s contract extension the week after Sarri excoriated Kante’s performance in the loss to Tottenham. The timing seemed significant. That loss raised the first widespread questions about Sarri’s tactical and man-management suitability for Chelsea FC. Sarri compounded a significant loss by laying so much blame on one of Chelsea’s two best players, and then again by cloaking that blame in such obvious waffle. Sarri piled enough together to raise concerns among his bosses.

They could tolerate his treatment of Fabregas, Cahill and Drinkwater. They may not have liked the direction things were taking with Alvaro Morata, Olivier Giroud and Callum Hudson-Odoi (six weeks later they would take decisive action on that situation, too).

But Kante required an immediate intervention from the top levels of Stamford Bridge.

If we thought Maurizio Sarri was a better read of character we would we think he was taking advantage of N’Golo Kante’s demure professionalism. Kante rarely speaks to the press, and when he does he never says anything borderline controversial or discontented. He stays out of the headlines because he gives sensational headline writers nothing to work with. Sarri could look at Kante and see someone he could short-change for a season or two until the club bought him a proper “Allan role” midfielder. And since Kante would never apply the pressure via the press, no one would apply pressure on Sarri.

But even the football naifs of Chelsea FC know better than to let Maurizio Sarri gamble anything with N’Golo Kante’s satisfaction and future.

Maurizio Sarri’s casual marginalizing of N’Golo Kante’s talents is the one he somewhat got away with. Cesc Fabregas was not willing to put up with it. Olivier Giroud is reaching his breaking point. Gary Cahill spoke candidly about his future in December and seemed ready to leave in January but a loan deal stayed out of reach. Danny Drinkwater, who knows what he is thinking.

Sarri’s handling of these players shows how he will subordinate everything to the monolith of Sarriball. World Cups, European and domestic trophies, club captaincies and performances throughout the current season are all irrelevant.

All that matters is whether a player matches some superficial profile of someone who played at Napoli between 2015-2018. And that’s for the lucky Chelsea players. If Sarri could bring with him an actual Napoli player, then there would be no hope for the Chelsea incumbent, however many trophies he has won, however many goals he has scored this season or however much he can provide Chelsea value over and above the predictable rigidity of Sarriball.

If Chelsea give Maurizio Sarri another year or two he will surely provide over the exodus of talents most clubs would pay mid-nine figures to accumulate.

He will not be solely responsible for Eden Hazard leaving, but that will be another irony: Chelsea ostensibly hired Sarri to make football attractive and fun enough to retain Hazard. It seems Hazard actually does want a bit more than that.