JOSE KANT TAKE IT
While Mourinho and Conte lose their cool, the amazing N’Golo stays calm to fire the winner
THE only thing missing for his coronation as the season’s most remarkable player was an extra nugget for the highlights reel.
Amidst the sound, fury and managerial childishness, N’Golo Kante came up with it. The hidden talents of a remarkable player pop up on a weekly basis. No unsung hero’s praises are being sung as loudly as Kante’s. He never got involved in the bother that flared on a fractious occasion, his cool always kept, his influence as steady as ever. His second-half hit, after Ander Herrera had been sent off late in the first, settled a contest in which tempers were at their worst in the game-long row between managers Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
The mutual loathing was clear, which is why the notion that Mourinho might downgrade the importance of an FA Cup challenge was always a non-starter.
If he was not going to take it seriously, Luke Shaw would have been in his squad.
This was a strong Manchester United team, as in physically strong, units everywhere.
Mourinho knows how to stop Eden Hazard – he did it himself last season. This time, it was down to the likes of Matteo Darmian and Phil Jones, the latter, as you can imagine, launching into the task with particular relish.
There was an overall zeal about United that unsettled Conte’s team – who now face
Tottenham in next month’s Wembley semi-final – but it is a tough gig to keep a lid on so much quality and confidence.
In one five-minute, frenetic first-half spell, keeper David de Gea billboarded Real Madrid credentials, his full-stretch rebuttals of Hazard and Gary Cahill deadheating for instinct and quality.
Hazard’s effort was a creditable one. It was not often he ran more than 10 yards without being grassed by fair or foul means.
Eventually, it merely became a question of when referee Michael Oliver’s patience would snap.
Unsurprisingly, Herrera did the trick, following up a blatant body-check with an offence that was not too serious, but was committed a couple of seconds after Oliver had delivered a lecture to Chris Smalling, telling the United captain he could see Hazard was clearly being targeted.
Herrera is normally a whole lot sneakier than that.
Oliver’s decision produced predictable pandemonium on the touchline and beyond.
The brattish behaviour of Conte and Mourinho was as convincing an argument for simply abolishing technical areas as you could wish for.
The United boss took time out from exchanging insults with Conte and company to send on Marouane Fellaini, sacrificing the creative input of Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
On the double yellow, it was bus-parking time which is why the softness of the Kante breakthrough was something of a surprise.
Several United players stood off, caring little for any shooting potential, and Kante’s decently-hit strike was red-carpeted towards De Gea.
By his rarefied standards, the Spaniard will not be impressed when he reviews his wrong-footed dive, but the space afforded to Kante was the root of the problem. Up until that point, De Gea’s opposite number had been largely unbothered but that changed when Marcus Rashford broke away and twisted Cahill’s blood over a 30-yard dash.
Alas, he could only find the legs of Chelsea keeper Thibaut Courtois, when the scoring odds were stacked in his favour.
That turned out to be the final equalising threat of a contest that ended with more juvenile antics in those blasted technical areas and a two-footed lunge from Antonio Valencia towards Kante.
The French midfielder didn’t even flinch.
If one man was above the nonsense, it was the Player of the Year elect.