Few bosses get to leave as winners in Roman era
DON’T RAIN on my parade, sang Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. No chance of that at Chelsea. Who is quick enough to rain on a Chelsea parade? The club beat their adversaries to it every time.
Barely has a Chelsea parade got under way when executives and staff are circling to give it a good dousing. Internal strife, a bungled pre-season, a transfer policy that pleases nobody. It takes a special talent to win the league, spend £135million in the summer and still end up with a disgruntled coach and an anxious, weakened squad.
Success is a unifying force, yet Chelsea have ended up talking to their 20-goal striker through his lawyers. Chelsea do not so much rain on parades as stand on the highest vantage point and unzip their flies.
Diego Costa is almost certainly a high-maintenance pest. Even so, how have Chelsea allowed the rift between club and player to escalate to this disruptive extent? If the Daily Mail can track him down in Lagarto, Brazil, is it beyond reason that a senior executive could make the same journey and attempt a positive resolution?
Antonio Conte is plainly a very demanding employee. Yet how have Chelsea contrived to alienate a title-winning coach over the transfer of Nemanja Matic with close to three weeks of the transfer window still to run? If Matic was to be sold, why now, why against the manager’s wishes, or at a time when he was already complaining about a reduced squad? One theory is that the Matic deal was payback. Conte’s indiscretion over Costa has greatly reduced his sale price. Perhaps this was Chelsea’s way of reclaiming the £40m lost by an injudicious text. If so, it has only spread the damage of a spat that should have been swiftly resolved, and with diplomacy, not a cannon.
Chelsea loyalists are always highly offended by the suggestion they follow a selling club. Chelsea only cash in on players that are surplus to requirements, they argue. This summer has exposed that as fallacy. A club that sells against the manager’s will is not just dumping the chaff. Conte might not have seen Matic as a first-team regular, following the signing of Tiemoue Bakayoko (right), but he certainly viewed him as an important part of the midfield rotation. Equally, his conservative instincts would have counselled against solving a problem for Manchester United.
Conte is not Jose Mourinho, who sanctioned a similarly bold call over United and Juan Mata. Mourinho maintained that was a club decision, too, but never complained about it. Conte’s frustration over Matic’s departure is plain, and mounting.
The club are trying to shift the blame his way by highlighting the number of young players he has let leave on loan, but this is disingenuous. If the manager is losing Costa, Alvaro Morata is a replacement, not an addition. What he will then also want for a Champions League campaign and a tilt at retaining the title is another front-line alternative. He will not put Tammy Abraham or Izzy Brown in that category.
EQUALLY, he knows that only Mourinho has survived failing to win the league or Champions League under Roman Abramovich. Is it any wonder that Chelsea managers are reluctant to lean too heavily on youth, with those stakes?
Indeed, is it such a surprise that Chelsea’s seasons are inconsistent, when the same can be said of their executive strategies? They invest heavily in youth, then use their academy as a revenue stream; they invest significantly in the transfer market, but rush to get major players off their books at the first hint of a downturn in favour, and often sell to rivals; and they sack managers almost annually while wondering why so many arrive thinking short term.
Tellingly, Conte signed the new contract-that-wasn’t this summer. After lengthy negotiations, he improved his financial circumstances, but did not extend his tenure. It was the action of a man who seemed to feel the urge to leave but didn’t have the conviction to just walk away from his achievement. Maybe he regrets that now. Certainly, that the reigning champion manager is also the favourite to be first to get the sack this season is bizarre, even by Chelsea’s parade-raining standards. ‘Don’t tell me not to fly, I’ve simply got to,’ sings Streisand. Maybe, deep down, Conte wishes he had, too.