Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri wasn’t actually talking about any Blues, was he?

Hopefully Maurizio Sarri still has strong relationships with many players from his years coaching in Italy. It’s unlikely he was talking about Chelsea in his recent interview.

When this whole coronavirus thing hit the football world, I almost immediately was concerned for Maurizio Sarri. Juventus had one of the first footballers to test positive for COVID-19, Daniele Rugani. More critically, though, Sarri is a 61-year old chain smoker in the region adjacent to Lombardy, the center (not the epicenter) of the epidemic in Italy. The former Chelsea coach fits many of the criteria for a high-risk population.

Sarri thankfully has not suffered any symptoms of this novel disease. However, someone should still check in on him to make sure he’s staying sharp and overall healthy during Italy’s lockdown. His latest comments suggest the strain may be getting to him.

Speaking on the club’s YouTube channel – an interview during which he smoked constantly (it’s noted in the article) – Sarri not only rewrote the history of time with Chelsea, he welcomed the viewers and readers into his own personal dreamscape.

"[W]hen I told them I was going away after the Europa League final I cried and many of them did, too, because in the end the strong relationship had been created."

Tears of sadness or tears of joy? Or tears of relief that their suffering and turmoil was at an end? Or performative tears, the sort of thing they knew would appease a shallow and petty man? This can go a lot of ways, assuming it happened at all with, er, “many” players.

But wait, there’s more, as the late William Darrell Mays, Jr., would say.

"The truest relationships I have now in the world of football, are those with footballers that I played little. This means that the boys, once they absorb my character, recognize my qualities.Do they ask me for football and life advice? Yes, especially those who are quitting, they ask me for advice on the experience they are doing. Some people say to me ‘I’m 33 years old, I’m going to quit, can I come to your staff because I want to be a coach?’ Others called me for life problems, family relationships, with his wife. When you establish a relationship, they see you as a point of reference."

Not to violate the bonds of coach-athlete confidence, but we’re going to need some names. We’ll start: Cesc Fabregas, Gary Cahill, Danny Drinkwater. Are any of them among the players he played the least and with whom he now has the truest relationships, ones with so much trust that they ask him for personal and professional advice?

Fabregas was only out of Chelsea a few months before he talked about the unfairness and impossibility of fighting for his place against a player whom Sarri saw as “his son.” Cahill talked several times – including at the end of the last season and again last month – about how Sarri ignored him, something that other players and staff described as “ghosting.”

Maybe Danny Drinkwater drunk-dialed him one night and started rambling about his career, his bar fights and his lady problems. That seems plausible on several levels, and would lend a grain of truth to Sarri’s statement.

But there’s actually an easier way to judge what Sarri said. Who are the players who used to play for Sarri but are now on his staff? That should be easier enough to figure out. Or did those players approach Sarri asking to join his staff, but he turned them down? Notice he never said he hired any of them.

Yes, we’re having a bit of fun here.

Maurizio Sarri coached for many years before his one and only year at Chelsea. His personality, methods and tactics go over much better in Italy than in England, and at lower tiers of football as well. Many of the players who were with him on his long journey from the bottom rungs of the Italian pyramid up to Napoli may well have positive memories of their time with him, and strong relationships with him to this day.

But let’s make sure we understand that what happened in Italy, stayed in Italy. Sarri doesn’t have much better things to say about England than the players he had there would say about him.

Let’s also not forget that even Jorginho changed his public tune on Sarri after a few months. It would have been easy for Jorginho to give a blandly supportive answer. He didn’t. He talked about having more freedom, more creativity, more opportunities to learn and more chances to express himself under Frank Lampard.

If anyone wants to say that Sarri’s Chelsea players have this tight bond with him to this day and into the future, we’re going to need receipts. Like the kind we have for all the times we were right about everything.