Chelsea Champions League lesson two: N’Golo Kante’s world

Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante ascends to another plane of existence, again

I’d be remiss to not talk about the Man of the Match. Perhaps “Matches” is more appropriate though, considering N’Golo Kante was given the award in both semifinal legs as well. His reputation has been practically unblemished for over five seasons now, but his performance in the final showed just how far he has risen up the ranks, all the way to the absolute top tier of players in the game.

While it’s a bit unorthodox to call a player who doesn’t contribute to the score line a match-winner, Kante was absolutely that in the final. In fact, his influence on the match wasn’t restricted to the pitch itself. Kante’s ominous presence was obvious from the moment Manchester City’s team sheet was finalized.

Kante is, of course, an obvious threat to any system set out by an opposing manager, but it’s a fair argument that Pep Guardiola’s somewhat shocking midfield selections were the product of a fear of Kante’s ability to negate an entire opposing midfield. Theoretically, a ponderous midfielder like Fernandinho or, to a lesser extent, Rodri, would have been a sitting duck for Kante’s incessant ball-winning efforts. You could even argue that City’s attacking line, with its false nine, was also organized specifically to create from the wider areas of the pitch.

And yet, even against a team selection designed to minimize his impact, Kante still overcame Guardiola’s gambit, and was by some distance the best player on the pitch. Kante’s influence on both the meta-game played by managers and the actual physical game on the pitch is so severe that he sits in truly rarified air among the greats of the game. He causes Leo Messi/Cristiano Ronaldo levels of disruption. (As an aside, he even shut down Messi in the 2018 World Cup.)

Kante is such a force of nature that the great teams and managers actively try to avoid him, yet he, much like Thanos, remains utterly inevitable. In a way, he is a sort of reverse Eden Hazard. Whereas Hazard carried a gravity with him that collapsed opposing defenses towards him, Kante has the opposite effect, pushing play elsewhere due to the nigh-guarantee that he’ll recover possession for his side.

At this point, it’s almost underselling him to say that he is the greatest defensive midfielder the game has ever seen. Perhaps it’s reductive to even call him a defensive midfielder at all, when his contributions are so all-encompassing in every area of the pitch. There’s no question, however, that he’s the greatest at what he does.

Two-time Premier League champion, World Cup champion, and now Champions League winner. It’s a resume that even the most promising of starlets would consider to be teetering on the edge of implausibility. So much is made of Kante’s personality and, for lack of a better term, cuteness, and there’s absolutely a need for more people like Kante in football and probably the world in general. But that conversation distracts or even takes away from appreciating him as one of the standout players of the modern game, on a level that only a handful of players can reasonably lay claim to.

While the victory was obviously a team effort, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Chelsea more than likely loses the final without Kante on the pitch. I don’t think I need to convince anyone, Chelsea fan or otherwise, that Kante is great, but I think it bears emphasizing that he really belongs on the highest pedestal of the best to ever play the position, and right along the traditional names as one of the best to ever play the game, period.

For my money, he’s leapfrogged the Claude Makeleles and Patrick Vieras of the world by a mile. While it’s apples and oranges to an extent, the only real comparisons begin to stretch into the realm of once-in-a-lifetime players who redefined what it means to play a given position. There is, and possibly always will be, only one N’Golo Kante.

Chelsea is so incredibly lucky to have him at the club, and there has never been a better time to take stock of just how important he has been to every success the club has enjoyed over the last five seasons. Here’s hoping there are a few more trophies ahead of him.