Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri will forever owe a debt to Marina Granovskaia

Marina Granovskaia continued her month of impeccable deal making, extracting £5-8 million from Juventus for Maurizio Sarri. Whatever else Sarri may think of Chelsea, no one did more to help him fail up the ladder of football than the Chelsea exec.

By the time you read this it may already be over. Not to get out too far ahead of events, but I’m willing to take this opportunity to share with you, loyal readers, a promise I made several weeks ago: once Chelsea officially announces Maurizio Sarri’s departure, I will not write any more articles about him. Had I said this earlier, many of you may have joined the #SarriOut ranks.

Marina Granovskaia has been the driving figure behind the entire Sarri saga. The Stamford Bridge scuttlebutt says she overruled the objections of several other board members, notably chairman Bruce Buck, to hire Sarri last summer. Now, with Sarri wanting to repeat the feat of failing up into the first available better job, she is making his departure as smooth and advantageous to Chelsea as possible.

Sarri had a truly positive relationship with the fans and club at Napoli, to the extent anyone can have a positive relationship with Aurelio De Laurentiis. Sarri made his reputation at Napoli, and the fans appreciated what he did for the club. Having won only two trophies – the 2011/12 and 2013/14 Coppa Italia’s – since 1990, three trophy-less years under Sarri did not dampen their affection, nor did it ramp up the pressure on the superstitious skipper.

Strangely, it also did not bother Chelsea FC, one of the most demanding and gluttonous trophy-chasers in Europe.

When Chelsea called Sarri, presumably on the basis of a social media mini-mob and a few YouTube videos, he was not about to turn down the opportunity to join a club that wins trophies even when they shouldn’t. Just as when he moved from Empoli to Napoli, his good-enough finish at one club was somehow good enough for another, bigger one.

Granovskaia plucked Sarri from perennial also-run status with Napoli and brought him to Chelsea. The culture of the club and the players shifted the odds of success greatly in his favour.

A team she had a large hand in building – including, perhaps, convincing Eden Hazard to stay for the 2018/19 season – delivered what Sarri and Napoli could not do together in three years. With Eden Hazard determined to leave Chelsea with a dazzling season as a parting gift, with players like Olivier Giroud and Pedro hungry to add to their sterling careers, with N’Golo Kante and Cesar Azpilicueta as indefatigable and unshakably professional as ever, it would take a greater man than even Sarri to derail the club’s march through all four tournaments.

He came close. He certainly came close. The players and the club pulled him through, but with Eden Hazard leaving and no one new coming in, Sarri’s marginal hopes for next season were in a precarious spot.

He may not have done the thing he was hired to do (it was mindlessly quixotic waffle to think he could change the playing style of the club, even if you think that is a good thing), but he helped do the thing the club does so well on their own: win a tournament. His finish at Chelsea was once again good enough for the next biggest club looking for a new manager.

For reasons inexplicable, Juventus turned to the man they bested for three consecutive seasons to replace Massimiliano Allegri. Just as Chelsea hired a man with no trophies when they demand at least one person, Juventus are willing to hire a man who has won one trophy when all the club care about is the one trophy that has eluded them for so long: the Champions League, a tournament where Sarri has not advanced past the Round of 16.

No matter. Those are concerns for his critics, skeptics and – now – the bianconeri. They are not his concerns.

Chelsea could have rebuffed Juventus’ interest and either quelled, quashed or quenched Sarri’s dissatisfaction. The latter option would probably lead to even more palpable discord than even Chelsea can handle, so Marina Granovskaia once again served as Maurizio Sarri’s professional guardian angel.

Granovskaia negotiated his exit, not allowing him to break his contract for free, but setting reasonable terms for Juventus to acquire his services. Juventus will pay Chelsea the balance of Sarri’s remaining year, about £5 million. This is quite an improvement from the disposition of their last broken managerial contract, which cost the club £9 million.

Marina Granovskaia is making it possible for Maurizio Sarri to fulfill the dream of every Italian manager: coaching Juventus. This, only one year after making it possible for Maurizio Sarri to fulfill the dream of nearly every European manager: lifting a European cup.

Who knows what Sarri would be doing right now if Granovskaia had not hired him last summer. He wouldn’t be packing his Europa League trophy into a box en route to the black-and-white side of Turin, that’s for sure.

We know Sarri does not have much going in the way of personal and professional relations (see: Cahill, Gary; Kante, N’Golo; Fabregas, Cesc; Hazard, Eden…). Hopefully he has a strong sense of gratitude towards Marina Granovskaia. If she ever needs a favour from him, his trophy shelf will hold a permanent reminder of why he should say “Yes, ma’am, what can I do for you?”