Maybe Maurizio Sarri’s golden boy will feel the heat next year without his guardian watching over him.
Indeed, Sarri might have won the Europa League final, but his brand of football throughout the course of the season did very little to win over the fans, who made it abundantly clear early in the campaign by way of chants that they weren’t too keen on the idea of him as the club’s commander and chief.
Having secured Champions League football and a top-three finish for the Blues, which is impressive really given the flak he has received, perhaps there will be no complaints from either the club or Sarri if he decides to move away this summer to succeed the departed Allegri as Juventus boss, as he is expected to after receiving Chelsea’s blessing (per the Times).
And this has got us wondering, who – if anyone – will suffer the most next season without Sarri-ball?
In an effort to transform the title-winning, counter-attacking team of old, which shone under ex-boss Antonio Conte, Sarri introduced a man he knew he could count on to promote his own brand of football, Jorginho.
The almost ludicrous £50million Chelsea spent on the Italian implied that they were getting one of the world’s most dynamic stars, but Jorginho has really failed to wow us for the majority of the season (some of his own fans even booed him) with, what in our minds, were sleep-inducing sequences of sideways passing.
Indeed, when looking at the fact that Jorginho made 3,118 passes during the 2018/19 campaign – an impressive amount and the highest ranked in the Premier League, according to official statistics – but failed to create a single assist his teammates, we’re left a little disappointed.
Compare that to Wolves player Joao Moutinho, who occupies a similar deep-lying role and has accumulated eight assists this term, and it becomes abundantly clear what the Italian is missing. Now, to be fair, it’s not as if the Blues boasted the most dynamic of centre-forwards this season, but it’s not hard to imagine that the club would have expected more.
To blame the former Verona man for all of the team’s problems for much of the campaign would be too much, granted, but the big signing of a manager brought in to oversee such an overhaul of the playing style could soon be losing a man who has defended him a lot this season.
Generally speaking, as well, teams appeared to grow wise to Jorginho as the season progressed (Dele Alli did a wonderful man-marking job on him at Wembley, with Richarlison doing the same the week before) and worked out how exactly to nullify his abilities much too easily, which essentially destroyed Sarri’s whole philosophy for a portion of the season.
We’d hazard a guess to suggest that, if he doesn’t adapt his game next season, there’s every chance that he could find life even more difficult next season.
Chelsea fans, do you feel Jorginho justified his price? How do you think he’ll perform in a different system to the one Sarri demands? Let us know in the comments below…
