Chelsea missed their chances to build around N’Golo Kante, and now look

Chelsea have used N’Golo Kante to plug the various gaps in the side rather than build the team around their one remaining world-class player. The results are inconsistent team performances and an injured Kante.

We give Maurizio Sarri credit about as often as he made concessions to reality. Almost as if those two things are linked. For all of his comments about Eden Hazard’s “selfishness,” at some level he knew that his hopes of wringing a trophy and a better job out of his time at Chelsea were at the Belgian’s feet. He and his janissaries could say Hazard was selfish and not right for “his system,” but he knew that Sarriball must be set in the timeout corner whenever Chelsea had the ball in the final third so Eden Hazard could do whatever Eden Hazard alone could and wanted to do. Sarri did not build his tactics around getting the ball to Hazard against isolated defenders in the final third, as Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte did. But Sarri at least knew not to kick his hat and storm down the tunnel every time the circuits shorted at Hazard’s feet. Sarri would have missed a lot of goal celebrations if he had.

Sarri did not make such concessions for the other world-class player in his side, N’Golo Kante. Frank Lampard has not either, nor has Chelsea’s board done much to build a team around the world-class player who didn’t spend years anticipating a move. They were so myopic in trying to plan the line of succession post-Hazard that they neglected what they could do with, for and around the man who would become their highest-paid.

Both Sarri and Lampard have used Kante more like a utility player than the focal point of the team. They look at his prodigious talents and decide where in their plans he could bring the most.

This is the opposite of what Sarri and his predecessors did with Eden Hazard. They all took stock of what Eden Hazard does best, and then put Hazard in the best situations to do it. In short, get the ball to Hazard where he could run at defenders: preferably in the final third, often in the middle third, don’t ask him to be in the defensive third.

Kante’s top contribution is breaking up the opponent’s play and quickly sending Chelsea back up field. He does that by always being in the right place at the right time, through a world-class combination of reading the play, speed and creativity in his tackles.

For as much credit as Kante gets for covering wide swaths of the pitch with action at both ends of a single run, many times he is just as disruptive by skipping and shuffling a few yards in either direction, without a 30-yard sprint, because he is blocking passing or dribbling lanes and positioning himself at the funnel of the opponent’s play. He creates and enforces the kill zone. And because he is so aware of the opponents’ positions and run of play, he is equally aware of his teammates’. When he recovers the ball, he knows just where to turn and dribble or shoot a quick pass to a fullback or midfielder in space.

He can also make clever runs into the box, overlap the right wing so the right back can cut inside and take shots from 20 yards. His expected goals per shot on target is .09: same as Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Pedro. Yet Kante is the only one overperforming his xG/shot.

But Kante is uniquely suited to prevent goals in a way that he is not uniquely suited to score them. Depending on how you rate each of them, Mount, Hudson-Odoi and Pedro are; or, if not “uniquely,” it is still their primary function and what keeps them in the team.

If Chelsea gave N’Golo Kante the Eden Hazard treatment just as how they gave him the next closest thing to Eden Hazard money and the market rated him as closest to Eden Hazard’s transfer fee, they would have built from Kante out.

Building a team around Kante involves saying, yes, he can do all these things. He can do everything well. But given what he and only he can do, where and how should he play? He should not be the one shifting and snipping or mutating his role – even though he can! – to accommodate his teammates.

If Jorginho can only play as a deep-lying playmaker at the base of a three-man midfield, that’s on Jorginho. It’s not up to N’Golo Kante to cover for him defensively when Jorginho is in the deeper spot. If the attacking midfielders and wingers are not creating enough goals, it does Jorginho and the centrebacks – who are now further exposed – a disservice to stick Kante in the attack. If Ross Barkley is not the player he was supposed to be, it’s not up to Kante to play the Barkley role. The gap Kante leaves is greater than the one he fills when he is played in a less vital position than his best.

Other players or tactics can cover. And if the system requires Kante to cover for players who aren’t available, then the system and the management are not very good.

Kante’s versatility enables these workarounds. That is precisely backwards: other players should be in the orbit of Kante, as they once were of Hazard.

Tactically, it means funneling defensive transitions towards Kante, who is in a forward-facing position to interdict the play. He can sprint towards his own goal and tackle a player from behind, if necessary, but the tactics should minimize those moments. The next part is allowing Kante to send the ball right back in Chelsea’s direction. That means the team has to be ready to transition back to offensive transition just as quickly as Kante is able to win back the ball.

Kante is still doing all of those things, but in an area of the pitch where Chelsea do not need him as much. Mason Mount, Jorginho, the wingers and full-backs can all launch an effective press. They don’t need Kante. None of them can protect the defence and reignite the attack from a deeper area the way Kante can when he is there.

Another benefit of using a player in his ideal position is it tends to reduce the load on his body.

Again, citing the Eden Hazard example: any less talented winger would have been expected to contribute on defence. Hazard was not exempted because he wasn’t good at tracking back and occasionally putting a foot in (although he wasn’t good at it when he did do it). He was exempted because that extra running would have made him less explosive, less agile and slower when Chelsea needed him to do the things that no other player – Blue or otherwise – could do.

Kante has logged more kilometers and impacts covering for other players than he has doing what he does best. The possession-oriented tactics under Sarri and Lampard and his role in their systems ramped up the amount of ground he covers and the number of sprints he has to make,

His physiological load built up last season through overuse, which caught up to him and Chelsea in April and early May. He was then pushed over another precipice in Baku. This season interrupted the recovery and restarted the overloading process at an advanced stage of loading, leading to the 10′ against Manchester United.

Eden Hazard did not like playing false-nine any more than the fans liked him there, but that was the occasional compromise he had to make so as to not track back. It allowed the team to have a stronger defensive posture while keeping Hazard in the best condition (if not position) to do what Chelsea needed him to do.

Whereas the false-nine option helped minimize the work Hazard had to do, thereby preserving him, this season and last N’Golo Kante’s position has piled more work on him, which has repeatedly cost Chelsea his contributions.

Had the team been built around his world-class talents instead of those talents being applied piecemeal in the service of the squad’s and the tactic’s shortcomings, the Blues might be in a better place: at the very least, they would have Kante at this key point in the season.