Chelsea waited all last season for Maurizio Sarri to produce his vaunted Sarriball. Now that he’s gone, it turns out the everything is Sarriball as long as people like it.
We’ll have to wait until Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Antonio Rudiger and N’Golo Kante are back to full physical capacity before we can know if the longest-lasting legacy of Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea is the rank jackassery among fans who claim that everything the Blues do, from the banal to the spectacular, is because Sarri taught them how to do it. Given the resilience of the human body compared to the collective psyche, my money is on the rank jackassery.
N’Golo Kante’s positioning against Liverpool was the main tribute credited to Maurizio Sarri, despite the many differences both superficial and consequential that outweighed the main similarity: Kante nominally played forward and to the right of Jorginho.
In the loss to Manchester United, Chelsea’s sequences of playing out from the back were frequently cited as something the Blues could do only because of Sarri. Plenty of pseudointellectual nonsense like “making the players press resistant” along with banalities like “rapid forward passing” were also laid at Sarri’s feet.
Oddly, none of the defensive lapses that led to the four goals had anything to do with Sarri; nor did the absence of the four players mentioned above; nor did the 27-year old Jorginho’s stumbling efforts to do the sort of things most 27-year old midfielders can do if only, the preceding four years of their career, they are tasked and empowered to do more than one rigidly defined set of duties.
But banalities and selective application of standards are nothing new. What is new in the opening weeks of the Lampard era is the shifting definition of what Sarriball was, is and was supposed to be.
In the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” Calvin’s favourite game is Calvinball. The only rule is that you can’t play it the same way twice, leading Hobbes to praise his friend’s invention by saying “No sport is less organized than Calvinball!” Off the top of my head, games of Calvinball included singing the “I’m Very Sorry” song, jumping around until someone found the bonus box, the babysitter flag and time fracture wickets.
Sarriball was supposed to be about rapid vertical passing, moving the ball forward to create quick attacks and sending it backwards to lure out the opponent so as to then change direction and strike their stretched out defence. Most passes would be executed on a single touch, with Jorginho “pulling the strings” and “setting the tempo.” Outside players would drive the ball into the box low and hard, with a few quick passes within the box before a shot.
To the extent any of these things happened, they did not have the desired end product. Fortunately, many of these terms are vague enough to have no real meaning, so anyone can say they happened without fear of counter-argument.
In six preseason games and two competitive games under Frank Lampard, the Blues are showing much more dynamism and control of the game than they did last season. The players are rotating freely through midfield and the forward line. Passes and players are breaking through and behind the defence, with other players opening up space between and behind the opponents’ lines, whether on the attack or playing out.
At very superficial and basic levels, the Blues are delivering on the promise of Sarriball more this season than they did last season. But at more relevant levels – formation, training methodology, circuits vs. decision making, use of space and off the ball runs, zonal vs. man marking – this season is a hard break not just from last season but the two before that.
No matter. The players and the fans are enjoying this football so it must be Sarriball, or, more accurately, Calvinball.
Playing out from the back through the full-backs and not Jorginho? That’s Sarriball now. Players rotating their position in midfield and in the press, and the squad as a whole shifting their formation to match the changing game states? That’s every bit as Sarriball as the 4-3-3 regista. Training with small-sided games and intense game-scenario drills instead of unopposed circuit repetition with extended lecture breaks? That’s the road to Sarriball. Aerial cross from the full-backs to a target man in the box? If it works, it’s Sarriball. Man-marking through midfield? Sarriball.
Going back to N’Golo Kante’s new position, last season Kante played the forward, box-to-box role because Maurizio Sarri said Kante was “not technical enough” to play the deep playmaker position. Kante wasn’t in a new position because Sarri thought it would be Kante’s best position. He was there because Sarri thought Kante wasn’t good enough for a different position. That was Sarriball.
Now that Lampard has kept Kante in the forward role and Kante is bringing his dominance to that position, the same people who previously agreed with his technical deficiency now say that Sarri knew all along that Kante had more in him than defensive midfield and was being held back. That’s Calvinball.
Before long, Chelsea will fall back into a 4-5-1 while up 2-0 in the 75′ against Arsenal and this will be called Sarriball. The Blues will have 40% possession and five shots against Manchester City but will win 3-1 on three counter-attack goals that started with the centre-back lumping a long-ball to the lone striker hovering near midfield, and that, too, will be Sarriball. Marcos Alonso could make a triumphant return to the Chelsea starting XI as left wing-back in a 3-4-3 with N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic in midfield and, under the rules of Calvinball, this will be Sarriball.
If only Gary Cahill were still around he and Danny Drinkwater could don their masks and instantly be the greatest Calvinball, er, Sarriball players we’ve ever seen.
Where we are now is having people claim that everything that gets a positive response is Sarriball. Simply, they like Sarriball. Other fans like something they just saw. Therefore what they just saw was Sarriball and, as Peter Griffin would say, kerosene is Red Bull. QED.
Calvinball is a wonderful game of unfettered creativity. No wonder its rules are best applied to Sarriball retroactively, free from the fetters of reality and Sarri’s approach to management. Among many ironies is how last season was all about “the process” and “the philosophy,” and those were used to justify the sluggish product. Now this season, things are judged as Sarriball solely on results and outcome.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to sing the “I’m Very Sorry” song.