International managers are not Chelsea managers for good reason

Didier Deschamps and Roberto Martinez have struck out about some of Frank Lampard’s decisions. They are not the Chelsea manager for good reason.

International football is a different beast than club football. Even the most involved international manager is only actively in the game for maybe six months of the year. The tactics are bare bones and simple due to the short amount of training time which lends itself to A: older managers or B: managers that do not have a  great deal of depth to them.

So when any international manager starts to tell a club manager what they should be doing, it is best to remember that the former are not at a club for a reason. Sure, there is the national honor side of things, but the longer someone stays international the more clear it is that the club game just is not for them.

Didier Deschamps and Roberto Martinez have opinions about Chelsea. As the winner and third placed runner up of World Cup 2018, they may think they have a place to stamp some authority on the game. They do not, especially not when one looks at the reality of what they are speaking on with Chelsea.

Deschamps at least played for Chelsea and probably does consider the club when making some decisions. But his decision to call up a hobbled N’Golo Kante knowing the player would not say no was in complete disregard to the player himself. He even felt the need to imply he was owed one by Frank Lampard for not calling him up last break. Kante was injured in the warm up before the Iceland match. Instead of sending him home to rest because clearly a mistake had been made, Kante was kept with the national team for Turkey. Luckily he only made the bench but he should have been gone by then.

That is not to even mention Olivier Giroud. Giroud is a great professional who knew what his Chelsea career would look like when he signed. But Deschamps thinks Giroud should be playing more for Chelsea and Giroud has started to talk about considering his options since going to the French side.

It is almost as if Deschamps simply has not been watching Chelsea this season despite the number of French players in the side. If he had, he would see Tammy Abraham is starting on merit. Perhaps he should be rotated more, but Lampard wants to ride the form of Abraham for as long as he can and who could blame him.

That turns the attention to Roberto Martinez who has almost always felt the need to do wrong by Chelsea. This is the man with Belgium’s golden generation who felt the need to start his strongest XI against San Marino. Michy Batshuayi was a sub in that game and started against Kazakhstan. This seemingly convinced Martinez that he can talk about how Batshuayi does not play enough at Chelsea. Yes, the man who opted to start Romelu Lukaku against a micro nation felt the need to prod Chelsea about Batshuayi’s playing time.

Martinez’s time at Belgium may have reframed how many view him as a manager. It should not. He is still the same manager that banged on and on about the right way to play at Everton as the side became more and more languid. He has Belgium’s best generation ever at his disposal and he is afraid to rotate for San Marino. Simply put, he does not get to talk about Lampard’s decisions at Chelsea because Martinez should never been anywhere close to a job of that caliber.

And again, it as though Martinez simply has not watched Chelsea this season. Batshuayi has looked better this season than any other time at Chelsea, but Abraham still deserves to start as many matches as he is able. International managers do not get to claim their guys deserve more playing time when they are very much second or third choice.

As already stated, international managers see these players just a few times a year. Lampard is seeing them every single day minus the breaks where the international managers get to bang on about things they pretend to know. International managers can stand up for their players without implying Lampard is making the wrong decisions or that their players should move elsewhere.

If either Deschamps or Martinez wanted a club job, they would have it. But both know that they would be jumping into the deep end of the pool if they did so. They stay where they are because it is safer than being exposed at club level. So no, they do not get to tell Lampard what he should or should not be doing. One knows what is going on every day, the others are only relevant a few weeks of the year.