Chelsea: Lampard making Jorginho a midfielder formerly known as regista

Jorginho is not the player he was on the first day of the season. That player was much closer to the Jorginho of the first day of last season than the midfielder who sent Chelsea’s assist of the year to Tammy Abraham.

By the time Eden Hazard reached age 27, Chelsea knew exactly the limits of what they could expect from him. If Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte could not teach and motivate a player to track back and defend, or to maintain some level of fitness during the off-season to promote preseason training and early season performance, he is simply never going to do it. Part of Hazard’s legacy will be the frustration of those managers and many fans that he is a player who is in the top five worldwide through natural talent, but is almost overtly disinterested in putting forth the effort to be among the top three.

Twenty-seven years old is an age where players and coaches may get comfortable in the realm of old dogs and new tricks. Not many players that age are looking to add new elements to their game, perhaps instead aiming to refine what they already do. Coaches may assume the same and not bother teaching their older players. They have enough to do training squad-level organization and tactics, and may focus their development efforts on younger players.

This is what makes Jorginho’s apparent development this season so notable.

At age 27, Jorginho is well-established for what he does. For four years, he was Maurizio Sarri’s “regista” in a 4-3-3.

Two leagues and the Italian national team came to know him as such. Opponents scrutinized him in that role for ways to overcome Napoli or Chelsea. Chelsea fans used his adherence to that role as the basis for how they rated and appreciated him in his first season at Stamford Bridge.

Frank Lampard’s decision to use his version of a 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 could have reinforced Jorginho’s sense of inertia. Jorginho was in a familiar place on the pitch doing a similar enough role to think that what he had done for four years would be sufficient for a fifth.

And as N’Golo Kante’s injuries went from recurring to prolonged, Jorginho had an unopposed claim to a spot in the starting XI. Mateo Kovacic is not suited to being the base midfielder, and he is far too valuable in his current function. Billy Gilmour is still too young and underdeveloped to start regularly in the Premier League, if at all. Antonio Rudiger’s and Andreas Christensen’s injuries have left Cesar Azpilicueta and Marc Guehi as the only depth at centrebacks, and Azpilicueta was until recently the only depth at left back and the only right back. The lack of depth along the backline precluded using a centreback as a deep midfield destroyer in place of Jorginho.

But the 27-year old Jorginho is not taking the complacently Hazardous approach.

In the first two months of the season, Frank Lampard talked about Jorginho’s effort and willingness in training. This initially seemed like Lampard adhering to the rule of always praising players in public. Nothing much about Jorginho’s performances in the first half dozen games looked any different from what he did in his previous 54 in Blue. Either what he was working on had a long latent period or Lampard was simply managing his players in the press in his usual positive way.

The last couple games show that the former may be the case. Jorginho’s combination play with Mateo Kovacic when bringing the ball out of tight areas in the defensive third is creative and purposeful. They pushed their luck late in the game against Watford with their needlessly technical keep-ball, showing the work that needs to be done in their decision-making. But the mechanisms were new, as they had to be since Chelsea are not working circuits to play the ball out. Like the other midfielders, Jorginho and Kovacic made a new, creative mistake.

Taking advantage of the new space for creativity, Jorginho is making different passes both in transition and offence. The angles and weight of the passes are showing some variety, even if many are still over-telegraphed and under-hit. Again, more importantly, they are his passes, not the playbook’s.

Obviously, the pinnacle of Jorginho’s passing this season was his assist to Tammy Abraham at Watford.

It was unlike any pass he had previously made at Chelsea. The two direct looks up the pitch to find Tammy Abraham, confirm his position relative to the centrebacks and read his run; the power and curve on the ball; and the complete lack of any circuit mark this as a novelty and hopefully a turning point. The intent and execution of the pass were unlike anything Chelsea have seen from him.

Jorginho has two assists in the Premier League this season, halfway to matching his career-best for a league campaign after 11 games.

Last season, when none of his 3,118 Premier League passes plus a thousand or so more in the other competitions yielded a single assist, we were told that assists are not part of a regista’s job, and that this was just one more thing we don’t understand about registas.

Well, if making assists are not part of a regista’s job, either Jorginho is expanding the role almost beyond recognition or he has simply shed it entirely. We’ll take either one.

Part of the pseudointellectual buffoonery of those people who unironically talk about registas is that they are usually the same people who decry different managers’ dinosaur sufferball anti-football tactics, and criticize players for not being “suited to the modern game.”

But few things are as “suited to the modern game” as the fixed role incarnation of a textbook concept like “regista.” Players are not developed, scouted, trained or tasked under such rubrics any more. The game is too multidimensional and free-flowing, and most players have a wide range of attributes with one or two truly stand-out qualities.

Under Frank Lampard’s management and perhaps under his tutelage, Jorginho is leaving behind his regista days and growing into a more complete midfielder.

It is absolute gaslighting to say Jorginho is doing the same thing this season as he did last season. But more than that, it’s insulting to Jorginho.

One of the many things that makes the Sarri / Jorginho cult the most bizarre in all of football is their impression that stasis resounds to their idols’ credit. They praised Maurizio Sarri for never adapting, and now they are doing the same for Jorginho while attacking anyone who says he has changed, developed, grown or improved – as if those are signs of weakness. Would it be better for a player to stay mediocre than to improve, since improvement implies a previous state of inferiority?

Jorginho at age 27 is doing what Eden Hazard did not do. Jorginho’s apparent desire to learn, improve, experiment, make mistakes and evolve may be the basis of the leadership qualities Lampard praises him for.

If a £57 million 27-year old with a nearly-guaranteed place in the XI can apply himself to moving beyond what he has known for most of his career, every other player can and should, too.

Whatever you think of the player he was, everyone should give Jorginho credit if he is, in fact, on the way to being something more.