BALL WATCHERS!
Sarri tells Chelsea defenders to ignore their opponents in bizarre plan
MAURIZIO SARRI says he wants to have fun at Chelsea and that he couldn’t change his idiosyncratic a t t a c ki ng t a c t i c s e ven i f he wanted to.
T h e n e w S t a mf o r d Br i d g e manager initially made his name coaching semi-pro and lower league teams in Tuscany and was 55 before he first coached in Serie A, with Empoli.
Sarri developed his unique style outside mainstream football and he says that Chelsea knew exactly what they were getting into when they hired him, so owner Roman Abramovich knows that it will t ake t hree months t o re- t rain defenders such as Gary Cahill and David Luiz to be comfortable with his methods.
Primarily, though, Sarri seems to be in tune with Abramovich’s longstated desire for entertaining, attacking football, which is how he made his name in Italy.
‘It’s important if I like it, first of all,’ he said. ‘I want to enjoy, I want to have fun, press the ball. Then, if I enjoy the game, maybe the supporters enjoy the game. And I think that, if the team enjoy the game, they’ve had a lot of opportunities to win the match.
‘I think he (Abramovich) knows it. If they called me (to be manager) 40 days ago, I think it’s because they wanted to see my football here. It’s not easy, but I have to try.’
His success with Empoli got him the Napoli job where, coincidentally, he succeeded Rafa Benitez, today’s opposing manager with Newcastle. While the high defensive line, split full backs and pressing are staples of the new generation of coaches primarily influenced by Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa, his defensive tactics require a complete reworking of technique, with players encouraged to ignore the opposing players’ runs and focus only on the position of the ball and their own position.
‘I think it’s better. If you can come round to thinking in this way, then it’s very easy. It depends only on you. You are not depending on the opponent. I think it’s very easy and, if you defend by looking only at the ball, you can stay very high up the pitch. In the other way, you defend on the movements of the opponent.’
He admits that despite two successive wins to open the season it could be a painful experience over next few weeks, especially for defenders.
‘ It’s not so easy to change the mind,’ said Sarri. ‘If you are used to defending by looking at the man, and I ask you to defend by looking only at the ball, I think if you are 18 it’s maybe easier. If you are 28 and, for 10 years, you’ve played the other way, it’s not so easy. So you have to change completely the mind. For two or three months it can be frightening. But I think, in this case, with this team, there are very intelligent players.’
Asked whether he himself might need t o adapt in t he Premier League, Sarri said: ‘I don’t know. Maybe I have to do that, but I am better when I play my football, my way of football. I don’t know if I’m a very good coach if I teach another (way of) football.’
The system requires very precise and strict positional discipline from his players, but Sarri claims that if done right, it conserves energy and so allows players to press for a full 90 minutes.
‘I think we can press for 90 minutes, only if we have the right distances between the players, we stay very high. Otherwise it’s a problem, of course.
‘In the last part of the first half against Arsenal we lost distances, so it was impossible to press and recover the ball. We were immediately in trouble. But I think we can do it for 90 minutes.’