Conte left in a daze as Chelsea fluff their lines
COMMUNITY SHIELD
AS Arsenal waited to collect the Community Shield at Wembley, Antonio Conte wandered about, arms folded and head down, with the look of a very bemused man.
How did his team lose this game? Why did his goalkeeper take his team’s second penalty in the shootout? How did his shiny new striker miss the target from 12 yards? And what is an ABBA shootout anyway?
As Conte pondered all this and doubtless much more, Arsenal collected the season’s first piece of silverware. Arsene Wenger’s team came from behind to level and won the strange penalty competition that followed by four goals to one.
It wasn’t the fact that Chelsea lost the shootout that really mattered, it was the manner in which they lost it.
The ABBA system is new and will take some getting used to. The best way to explain it is that it works like a tennis tiebreak. One shot to team A, followed by two for team B, two for A and so on. The idea is to prevent the team going second having to deal with the pressure of always trailing.
At times, the teams didn’t look totally convinced about whose turn it was, players being tentatively shoved forwards like nervous teenagers inching towards a youth club dance floor. But that didn’t excuse the peculiar way that Conte and his players went about the business of trying to win it.
It was strange enough to see a central defender, Gary Cahill, go first. But after he scored and two Arsenal players, Theo Walcott and Nacho Monreal, converted successive kicks, Chelsea selfsacrificed in spectacular style.
Bizarrely, Thibaut Courtois took Chelsea’s second kick and ballooned it over the bar. On the touchline, Conte closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw £70million striker Alvaro Morata drag the first meaningful goal attempt of his Chelsea career miserably wide with his right foot.
So when Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Olivier Giroud stepped up to score for Arsenal, the whole thing was over and Conte was left with questions to answer.
Having spent much of the summer with doubts swirling over his long-term future at the Premier League champions, none of what happened at Wembley yesterday will have helped.
His team contained not a single new signing — Morata began on the bench — and maybe that was deliberate. By fielding an XI almost identical to the one that finished last May’s FA Cup final defeat by Arsenal at the same stadium, maybe Conte was underlining his recent assertion that his squad lacks depth.
Whatever the case, the shootout looked chaotic. As Courtois hurried to take his kick, it almost looked as though Chelsea didn’t really care. That impression only deepened when the Belgian all but lashed the ball out of the ground.
Conte and his team did care, of course, you only had to observe the disconsolate Morata afterwards to know that. But Chelsea has not always appeared a terribly settled place during the weeks of summer and nothing that happened yesterday changed that.
For a while, Chelsea had exerted a semblance of control. Indeed, had the Spaniard Pedro not been sent off with eight minutes to go they probably would have held on to their lead to win.
But when things are not quite right at a football club, weird things tend to happen on the field.
Arsenal were the better side early on and looked dangerous. Their own big summer signing, Alexandre Lacazette, almost scored in the 22nd minute, curling a measured right-foot shot against the post from 13 yards. Another forward, 21-year-old Alex Iwobi, was lively, too, and for 25 minutes it was an uncomfortable afternoon for the English champions.
But Chelsea grew into the game as the first half wore on and had established themselves as the more assertive team by the time they took the lead in the first minute of the second period. It was a poor goal for Arsenal to concede as they failed to clear a corner properly but Victor Moses exhibited fine timing and technique to control and score from eight yards.
Arsenal responded and Courtois had to save well from Mohamed Elneny and Granit Xhaka, but the threat from Wenger’s side seemed to have passed when Pedro slid in to rake Elneny’s Achilles with eight minutes left.
It was a daft and dangerous tackle, and though most would have expected to see a yellow card from referee Robert Madley, replays suggested that the red was at the very least understandable.
Thirty seconds later Conte had more reason to be angry as Bosnian defender Sead Kolasinac headed home on his debut.
Subsequently Walcott could have won it for Arsenal, but was denied by a block from Cahill. With hindsight, Conte may wish the whole thing had ended there.