Chelsea: Gianfranco Zola hitched his cart to the wrong horse to learn defence

Gianfranco Zola apparently chose to work with Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea in large part to learn Sarri’s defensive methods. Zola’s choice of mentors reflects some poor professional judgment.

For a brief period towards the end of Maurizio Sarri’s time at Chelsea, when his departure was all but certain but his replacement by Frank Lampard was not, there was some consideration about Chelsea appointing Gianfranco Zola as his successor. Had the club sacked Sarri during the season, Zola would have become the interim manager almost by default, as no one remotely close to the task was available. Perhaps that eventuality kept Sarri in place until the final day.

Zola has extensive coaching experience, at least in terms of number of clubs. He has only lasted more than one season at one club, though: West Ham United, his first management gig, where he stayed for two seasons.

More so than the first 10 years of his coaching career, his recent comments after leaving Chelsea show the club made the right decisions to get to this point.

According to Matteo Bonetti, Zola’s main interest in being Maurizio Sarri’s assistant manager was “learning about his defensive coaching, not offense. The way Sarri teaches the team to win the ball back and position themselves is the thing that excited Zola the most.”

Well. Zola could have spared himself a lot of time and second-hand smoke by studying Sarri’s methods the same way Sarri himself learned them: pick up an Italian football textbook (almost any from the canon will do), read closely, memorize thoroughly, implement verbatim. Sarri’s defence was as by-the-book as his offence, and similarly unadapted to the realities of the Premier League. Chelsea’s pure zonal marking on set pieces surrendered numerous scoring chances, and an untoward number of goals.

Whatever Sarri did to “[teach] the team to win the ball back” manifested itself as N’Golo Kante doing very many N’Golo Kante things.

Chelsea’s press was driven almost entirely by Kante and Mateo Kovacic, which is an added irony in that Kovacic helped make Sarri look good (perhaps even to Zola!) and yet many Maurizio Sarri fans were among the loudest to criticize his permanent transfer. Sarri did not motivate Eden Hazard to press (the whole squad was hard to motivate, to be fair, so we were told, often), and solved that deficiency by playing Hazard as the centre-forward. However, Willian and Pedro pressed less aggressively than in years past, which comes back to some combination of tactics, motivation and instruction.

It’s hard to say what it is Gianfranco Zola hoped to learn about defending from Maurizio Sarri, other than: (a) what not to do and how not to do it, and (b) the importance of having players like Cesar Azpilicueta and N’Golo Kante.

The former are important lessons, but ones you hope to learn observationally and not directly. The latter should have been obvious for years, as it was to managers like Jose “you can win the Champions League with a team of 11 Azpilicueta’s” Mourinho and Claudio “playing with N’Golo Kante is like playing with an extra man” Ranieri.

Gianfranco Zola declined Chelsea’s offer to remain in a different role. This is multiply unfortunate.

Zola is a club legend. He would add to the club’s continuity and identity they are building via Petr Cech and Frank Lampard, even if – maybe especially because – he was from a slightly older generation. Pictures of Zola teaching and laughing with Callum Hudson-Odoi would go well with this week’s pictures of Mason Mount with Frank Lampard and Kepa Arrizabalaga with Petr Cech.

Zola would also have gained a more valuable education in Premier League defensive methods than he ever could have under Sarri. Lampard learned all about Premier League defences by playing his part in Chelsea’s while picking apart several dozen others. He absorbed lessons from managers like the aforementioned Mourinho and Ranieri, along with Carlo Ancelotti.

Two of those three are well-schooled in the Italian methods, and adapted to the Premier League: precisely what Zola ostensibly hoped to learn since he wants to keep working in England. They won titles by balancing Italian structure with the physicality of the league and the unique characteristics of their players, producing the dynamic squads that won Ancelotti’s Premier League title at Chelsea and Ranieri’s at Leicester City, which, of course, featured N’Golo Kante.

Obviously, 2018/19 was an odd year around Stamford Bridge. Gianfranco Zola seems to be an odd casualty of that odd year. The door should always be open for him. Hopefully next time he’ll walk through it behind someone better.