Team Sarri are running on jolly and ice-cream
TOMATO ketchup, cake, cigarettes and ice cream – hardly the diet of a champion. Not yet, anyway. But the way it’s going for Maurizio Sarri, his approach to putting a smile back on the face of Chelsea FC is welcome indeed.
Ketchup is back on the canteen menu. As is cake. Ice cream is handed out as a treat on the team coach. And the cigarettes? Well, they are the head coach’s poison of choice.
The rules off the pitch are being relaxed – not tossed out of the window. Cesc Fabregas & Co aren’t stuffing their faces with kebabs every lunchtime – but it is all adding up.
And, irrespective of last night’s result against Liverpool, surely slowing the march of the nutrition police can only be a good thing.
Previous Chelsea bosses waved the red flag at the red sauce. It’s the sugar content apparently which is so harmful.
As if that, in isolation, would be pivotal in Eden Hazard’s brilliantly-mesmerising run at Anfield in midweek. Would a dollop of Heinz’s best have stopped him sending Alberto Moreno for a hot dog?
It’s always bothered me, this.
Years ago, I had this very same conversation with exchelsea and Aston Villa midfielder Andy Townsend.
He was adamant that a little bit of what you fancy does you good – but his advice was: Don’t make that stop at Maccy D’s for a gutbusting burger an everyday occurence.
Back in the day another conversation with Steve Claridge elicited the titbit that he drank once a week. On Saturday after a game. But that was about it.
He played professionally until he was almost 40 years old.
Would it be too much to call Sarri’s approach ‘enlightened’? Yes. The scientists will still take the players’ blood. Heart-rate monitors will still show how much they are working.
(I don’t know if it is just urban myth but I once heard a tale about a player putting the monitor on his dog. When he handed it back to the boffins, the data absolutely floored them.)
And then there are the scales. During his playing days at Southampton my pal Micky Adams used to halflean against the wall at the Dell in a bid to out-fox the coaches making a note of his weight.
There’s no escape now for top-level athletes. No one’s going to fall for that old trick, are they? Surely, it’s all in the mind. Sarri is clearly a decent fella. Hazard is playing out of his skin at the moment. And Gianfranco Zola’s a nice guy to have as a number two.
Maybe it is a reaction to the rules of the house being loosened a little.
The regime of Antonio Conte who was famously strict – double-sessions were the normal order of the day.
The Italian’s pristine appearance was proof of his approach. Always looked the best athlete in every press conference – although given what was facing him that wasn’t much of a claim to fame.
Sarri’s style is more collaborative than confrontation. More ‘Shall we go this way?’ than ‘it’s my way or the highway,’ as it was under his predecessor.
Whatever the reason, the Blues are playing with grins on their faces for the first time in a long while.
And that has got to be smiles better for all concerned.