Maurizio Sarri’s future is unclear. The games which may well be his last, Thursday’s Europa League tie against Malmo and tomorrow’s league cup final against Manchester City, offer a microcosm of Chelsea as a team and as a club and Sarri’s place in relation to each.
That Chelsea have reached another cup final, the latest of a slew during the Abramovich period, shows that there remains a glimmer of the petro-dollar prestige and cold drive of the club’s great years; which start with the appointment of Ranieri in 2002 and culminate in Drogba’s penalty in the Champions League Final in 2012. It also indicates that this team is still, just about and on their day, good enough to beat good teams, as they did Liverpool in the semi-final. Still, it is likely that will lose the game and possible that they will be humiliated.
While the 3-0 win meant very little in a footballing sense, Malmo are not good and Chelsea put out a B+ team, in a broader context, this game is perhaps the more representative, more telling. The Europa League, in its current format, is a wretched and unloved competition, largely ignored until the semi-final stage, when it is possible, though by no means certain, that two good teams may meet. It is claimed that the competition is respected on the continent, certainly it is not in South-West London. Chelsea’s presence in it is a symptom of the club’s diminished status and ambition.
The current squad feels very much more Europa League than Champions League, more fighting for a place in the top four than fighting for the title. The club’s transfer policy over the last few years has been to sell relatively high and buy relatively low, with more than a few ill-advised gambles thrown in. Morata is not Costa, neither is Higuain, he wasn’t in his prime and certainly is not after a confidence shredding few months. Kepa is not Courtois, who was not Cech. Jorginho is not Fabregas, Bakayoko not Matic, Rudiger patently not Terry. And these are the players who have frequently started over the past two seasons. A look at the bench, and beyond, is even more damning.
What was the thinking behind the signings of Drinkwater, Barkley, Zappacosta, Palmieri, Caballero, Pato, Giroud, Djilobodji? Abramovich wants the club to be self-sustaining, and the wage bill is down from the high tide mark, but even within these confines better decisions could have been made, less money thrown away on players who do not belong at or near elite football. Simply put, managers have had less money to work with in and had to put up with poor decision making over which players are signed.
Sarri has been roundly criticized for claiming it is difficult to motivate these players, but perhaps a more accurate way of putting the issue is that the players aren’t actually good enough to play for what we have come to believe Chelsea should be. The complaints coming from one of the leakiest changing rooms in Europe are pitiful: the sessions are boring, he passes on too much tactical information. These may well be excuses for players who can’t deliver and would like to deflect the blame. Maybe it’s psychologically easier for them not to try, so they don’t have to fail and face the reality of their own limitations.
Back to tomorrow’s game. After the final whistle if, as expected, Chelsea lose two or three nil, Sarri will be upbraided for failing to motivate his players, for not adapting to English football, for not playing Kanté as a defensive midfielder. We will be reminded that he had not won anything before he came to the club and that he was a bank manager not so many years ago.
Perhaps, but maybe the players struggle for motivation because they are not good enough and, on some level, know it, that Sarri was describing a problem rather than creating one; maybe adaptation to any job, especially complex ones which revolve around elite performance, requires more than seven months. Kanté doesn’t seem to be complaining about his new role and neither did Allan, another fine defensive player, at Napoli. It is also worth pointing out that Sarri has won several promotions in Italy and was in fact a foreign currency trader, not a chain smoking, Italian version of a peacetime Captain Manwaring, bespectacled and mediocre.
It will be easy for Chelsea to sack Sarri, but they will still be in the Europa League, this year and likely next, will still have an underwhelming squad and will still face a transfer ban. Within that context, a manager who might require some time and a few failures to start to deliver his vision might be invaluable. Sarri can either help arrest, and hopefully reverse, the downward trajectory of the team and club or be jettisoned and contribute towards the patient march back to mid-table irrelevance. Or they could always re-hire Mourinho.
Fioruisce 