Chelsea: Four things to keep an eye on for Wednesday, July 24

Chelsea return to London with a trophy that makes the International Champions Cup look storied and legitimate. While the Blues bask in the Rakuten Cup and reset their biological clocks to Greenwich Mean Time, here are a few things to watch for today.

Chelsea have played more preseason games thus far than other teams will play all summer. On a quiet Wednesday just past the halfway point of preseason, a few interesting things are still taking place.

1. Chelsea ex-manager preseason derby

About that International Champions Cup… Juventus and Inter Milan both lost their ICC opener to Premier League teams. The two Italian clubs meet today for a preseason derby between Chelsea’s two most recent managers, now back in the land and league of their birth.

Like all preseason games, YMMV over how much you want to read into the tactics, organization and coaching. Antonio Conte is still trying to offload Mauro Icardi to make room for Romelu Lukaku, about whom Manchester United said the clock is ticking for any transfer this summer. Meanwhile, Maurizio Sarri is surely doing whatever it is Sarri does when he has a full preseason to do it.

Perhaps the best thing to watch for will be hints of how the two managers leverage their Premier League experience in their return to Serie A. Sarri will finally have the structure-vs-structure battle he longed for all last season, instead of the Premier League’s ever-gauche man-marking of the entire midfield, physical (speed and strength) one-on-one battles and pesky unpredictable play among the top six. Loyal readers will recognize the circuit vs. circuit nature of this match-up and see that the similarities between the two coaches – at least in terms of their overarching school of thought and instruction – outweigh the differences. Non-readers, as always, will see whatever they damn well want to believe.

2. Loan destination for Chelsea centre-backs

Fikayo Tomori came on just after halftime against Barcelona, and those 43 minutes will likely be his last in Blue until next summer.

Tomori’s return to the loan army is pretty well confirmed, with only the destination still unknown. Simon Johnson of the Evening Standard reports Tomori will join a Premier League or Bundesliga team, reinforcing the club’s belief in his talent, potential and future at Stamford Bridge. Like Ethan Ampadu, they recognize he and his future at the club are better served by having him play regularly somewhere else in a top league than picking up scraps at Chelsea.

Jake Clarke-Salter may also know his future very soon, as The Telegraph says Birmingham City are a likely destination.

This will be Clarke-Salter’s fourth loan and, depending on how you look at it, a stall or a setback. Last season with Vitesse was his first in a top flight, and a year in Birmingham City will likely not give him much experience above the middle part of the second tier. Even so, he remains rated well enough to stay in Chelsea’s long term plans, once the bottleneck shakes out ahead of him.

3. Callum Hudson-Odoi’s new contract

Yesterday’s rumour of a contract breakthrough started in a reliable place (The Times), confirming a reliable Twitter account (Carefree Youth) and was strongly hinted at by Callum Hudson-Odoi himself on social media.

There shouldn’t be any real surprise, just relief that it’s done and a lot of respect for the club in how they secured many years from Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Mason Mount and Hudson-Odoi in quick succession this summer. Those “no smoking” signs really do the trick.

4. Will anyone else speak up on needless fixture congestion?

Chelsea had to go to Japan to win the Rakuten Cup. Manchester City join Chelsea in the “in trouble with Chinese state media for perceived disrespect on a preseason tour” club. A few of the other top six clubs are in the United States. And that’s all just for preseason, let alone the number of games to play and miles to log once the season starts in four competitions.

For Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, it’s actually five competitions, since they will be in the FIFA World Club championships, that coming a few months after they and Chelsea have to travel to Istanbul for the Community Shield of Europe, aka the all-English UEFA Super Cup.

Speaking about the season ahead and the added load of international play for most of his squad, Klopp said the obvious:

"We need to calm this down. We need proper breaks, then you will get world class performances. Then you can enjoy these boys in the long-term and it will be easier for the younger ones to come through…  So where is the space for development? – The Telegraph"

The playing load these players are currently under is unsustainable. Even if the physio staff (a growing number of teams now employ a dedicated “recovery coach”) can keep the players from getting injured, the quality of play suffers when the majority of players are under persistent fatigue.

Within the top teams in each league the effects may not be as noticeable since all teams are experiencing it to similar amounts, and it can add to the drama of the league as it creates an opening for upsets. But it becomes a conflict of quality vs. quantity. Sponsors and media want more football played and broadcast in more markets on more days and for more hours. The level of the play doesn’t matter as long as people have something to watch. If the people are happy just to watch any football, they may not notice or care about the decrement in performance levels.

No one on the sport or entertainment side of the football industry should be content putting out a subpar product simply to fill broadcast hours. We want “Chernobyl,” not “Two and Half Men.”

The media loves and is highly sympathetic towards Jurgen Klopp and, obviously, he is the reigning Champions League champion. That should give his words some weight. However, unless other similarly prominent coaches and players speak up publicly, nothing will improve.

We spend lots of hours watching football, but there’s more than enough football worldwide that we can have a healthy diet of the sport without having to watch the same bunch of players run themselves into the ground in a race to someone’s pot of gold at the bottom of exhaustion.

For example, Chelsea can see take my advice and stream all the Chelsea FC Women’s games without restriction.

Let’s see who joins Jurgen Klopp to stand athwart and say “Enough!”