Chelsea: Usual questions of the “best XI” float around Maurizio Sarri’s final XI

Maurizio Sarri has to assemble one final starting XI, who will hopefully end Chelsea’s 2018/19 season with a Europa League title. Even with 61 preceding games, the usual questions about his “best XI” remain.

My colleague Travis made his bones here at The Pride of London with his “predicted XI” articles, which started with Antonio Conte’s first game in charge in August 2016 and have barely missed a competitive game since. Unfortunately for Travis – and you the loyal reader – Maurizio Sarri sapped much of the life out of the predicted XI feature. By the festive period this past winter, the only real question about Chelsea’s lineup was who would be the third / attacking midfielder.

By the spring, though, Chelsea were pursuing Champions League qualification via two routes, and Sarri was using more of his players more frequently than in the first part of the season. Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi (thank you, Bayern) were in the regular rotation, and Emerson Palmieri was sending Marcos Alonso to the bench more frequently.

Being the ultimate man of patterns, Sarri had two distinct but overlapping squads: his Premier League starting XI and his Europa League starting XI. But nothing about their individual or group performances indicated which XI he considered his best. Olivier Giroud’s sustained excellence in the Europa League contrasted sharply with Gonzalo Higuain’s dismal consistency in the Premier League, but the Frenchman only started one league game in 2019. Neither Emerson nor Alonso did anything to prove which one deserved to start over the other, so they just stayed in orbit. Sarri’s substitutions were as monotonic as ever, suggesting he did not think of anyone as a game-changer.

All of this led to confusion about which competition Sarri was prioritizing as the margins in both shrunk towards the final weeks. If Chelsea had any other manager we would say he was taking a neutral, pragmatic, day-by-day needs analysis and – in the absence of any convincing stars – balanced playing minutes as best he could.

But Sarri’s personnel decisions are never neutral. He and those in whom the dogma lives loudly would consider it blasphemous to accuse him of pragmatism. And he makes no adjustments day-by-day or in the interest of balance.

Now Chelsea have one game remaining. Maurizio Sarri is right that his future at the club should not hinge on the outcome in Baku. But this is still the biggest game of his career: his first European final and a chance to win his first trophy of any kind. And yet it is still difficult to say who he thinks is in his best XI.

The left-back spot has been up for grabs all season. Marcos Alonso and Emerson practically held the door open for the other every time one took the pitch.

Emerson has the speed advantage, which was woefully insufficient when he did not do anything productive going forward with the ball nor started tracking back in time to catch up with the play. Alonso has much better positioning on both sides of the ball, sometimes too much so on offence. Chelsea’s “false three” made a better case to be in the opponent’s box than the “nominal nine.” He had no chance of catching up to a forward running away from him, but if he was in position to defend, he has good tackling abilities. Emerson, on the other hand, rarely had the chance to put a foot in because opposing forwards could move around him so easily with a few touches.

Marcos Alonso and Emerson are at least within the margin of error of a coin flip from each other. Whomever Sarri selects, some fans will be relieved and others aggrieved. Whether Chelsea win or lose, the left-back will be a scapegoat, even if Alonso scores the brace for a 2-0 win.

The more worrisome position is at striker. Olivier Giroud has played in 13 of 14 Europa League ties, with 10 complete games. He has more minutes in the Europa League than the Premier League, and leads the Europa League with 10 goals and three assists. Only Lionel Messi has created more goals in Europe this season.

And still there’s that nagging doubt in the back of my head that Maurizio Sarri just might start his preferred No. 9, his football son, the one who knows “his” system, in what could be their last game at Chelsea.

If Sarri prioritized the Premier League down the homestretch of the season, assuming it was a more safer way of qualifying for the Champions League and wanting to minimize some of the pressure on a Europa League final, he may have started Higuain in those games because that was his best XI. Sarri brought Higuain to Chelsea to be his starting striker. There was no intention of Higuain and Giroud competing for the spot in the best XI. If Giroud was the Europa League striker when that was the secondary competition, now that it’s the only competition, will Sarri push him aside for the primary striker now that the Europa League is the primary competition?

Again, under normal circumstances, this would be highly unlikely. Coaches usually let the players who start a competition finish a competition. Not always, though. Antonio Conte had Thibaut Courtois play the FA Cup final over Willy Caballero last season.

But when the incumbent leads the tournament and the alternative is already packing his bags for a return from loan, the lineup is usually well-settled. Even more so when the incumbent recently extended with the club, something that would seem dependent on a promise of more playing opportunities next year.

But any decisions involving Maurizio Sarri and “his” players – Gonzalo Higuain and Jorginho, in particular, but also someone like David Luiz – are not normal. Even when they are predictable, they are not always explainable, especially when the preceding months tell us so little about the workings of the coach’s mind.