Chelsea: Lessons learned about CHO, the No. 10 and Jorginho vs. Newcastle
By Nate Hofmann
4. Jorginho is looking Pirlo-y
I’ll be completely honest — I was one of the last people to board the Jorginho hype train this season. I had doubts about almost every part of his game apart from playing sideways passes while standing in the center circle.
Could he defend? Could he contribute in the final third? Could he run for 90 minutes?
The answers to those questions are now starting to look like unequivocal yeses. While Newcastle didn’t do much to test his defensive prowess, Jorginho made some of the best passes by any Chelsea player since the Cesc Fabregas golden era.
The first standout pass was his cross-field ball that found Callum Hudson-Odoi inside the box, who played the ball into Mason Mount in front of goal, who then turned and fired straight at Martin Dubravka in the 19′.
The genius of the pass was two-fold. The first thing was to see it as quickly as he did. When you go to pass a ball to a player who is making a run, you usually have a small window of time where you can wait to get the perfect angle before playing the ball. With this pass, Hudson-Odoi was basically standing still inside the box, with the defensive line focused on the other side of the box. When Ross Barkley plays the ball back to him, Jorginho has to hit it first time towards Hudson-Odoi.
The second part is the choice of pass. To make sure it gets there fast enough to maintain Hudson-Odoi’s advantage, the pass has to be in the air, but low enough that it doesn’t float for too long. The result is a curling, one-hop ball that lands on Hudson-Odoi’s instep. Had Mount managed to find the back of the net, that pass would’ve been one for the scrapbook.
The second piece of brilliance came in the 59′, from almost the exact same spot as the Hudson-Odoi pass.
more jorginho. Newcastle put a spotlight on Jorginho in each third of the pitch. light
As Willian plays the ball back upfield to Jorginho, he takes a few steps left before receiving the ball, implying that he’s going to float a cross into the box. Instead, even as his momentum is carrying him left, he quickly plays the ball straight forward to Cesar Azpilicueta, who is all alone at the right corner of the box. He proceeds to smack the ball across goal to no one in particular, which is a shame, but that shouldn’t diminish the brilliance of Jorginho’s pass.
All of this is to say that Jorginho is finally becoming the player everyone expected him to be under Sarri: the pass master, string puller, team quarterback. Ironically, it took Maurizio Sarri leaving for that player to show himself in Chelsea blue.
While his great play didn’t directly result in a goal on Saturday, his obvious ability to dissect a defense as well-drilled and organized as Newcastle’s shows the value he’ll have in matches against teams that want to sit deep and frustrate opponents.
Next. Chelsea needed a Frank Lampard reminder on the joys of counter-attacks. dark
More and more, it’s looking like a midfield pairing of Jorginho and N’Golo Kante could be one of the best combinations in all of Europe.