Sarri-ball has been punctured by Poch

Spurs boss shows the best way to rattle Chelsea

WHEN Maurizio Sarri was announced as Chelsea manager this summer, we knew we were in for a treat. Regular watchers of Serie A, especially in Sarri’s recent stints at Empoli and Napoli, were adamant his was the football of the future.

No trophies had been won, admittedly, but the style and the organisation were something to behold. Sarri-ball we called it. The Italians were typically more prosaic, dubbing it Sarrisimo, a veritable footballing philosophy which had been honed away from the elite echelons of the game.

Sarri had spent most of his career in the lower leagues of Italian football and started in the eighth tier and was thus fresh and invigorating. Pep Guardiola was beguiled by Sarrisimo.

Coaches came to study it. Fans were enthralled by it. The team pressed bewilderingly high up the pitch, they passed like a Guardiola team, but they broke more directly. And if Guardiola’s football had as tendency to be horizontal, Sarri was more vertical and so, arguably, more thrilling.

The way Chelsea started the season it was easy to be bewitched. Unbeaten since the Community Shield with a run of 18 games, it was easy to forget that there has been another tactical phenomenon, other than Guardiola and Sarri, in the Premier League for some years.

Mauricio Pochettino has spent much of the first half of the season worrying about World Cup fatigue and investing most of his energy in mitigating the chaotic and aborted move to a new stadium. Amidst the noise, it’s easy to forget that when his teams play at their best, they are irresistible.

While Pochettino developed his ideas initially under Marcelo Bielsa and shares much with Sarri, notably the commitment to press the ball high up the pitch, most of his football education came in Europe and a big chunk of it in Barcelona, even if he was at Espanyol, rather than at Camp Nou.

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say he responded and reacted to Guardiola’s reboot of Johan Cruyff’s Total Football when he took over at Barca in 2008.

And here at Wembley, the old masters would have purred in approval. The late Cruyff might have demurred at the lack of possession — Tottenham had just 40 per cent — and said something demeaning about that.

But both he and Bielsa would have loved the deployment of full backs deep into Chelsea’s half. Ben Davies seemingly spent most of his time playing in front of Christian Eriksen. Serge Aurier needs little encouragement to do the same but this was a complete performance, where defensive discipline balanced those surging runs.

Often, the opening ten minutes of a game can be deceptive. Manchester United famously played well for ten minutes before Barcelona scored in the 2009 Champions League final; they were then played off the pitch.

But sometimes the opening exchanges put down a marker as to who’s in charge. Pochettino did that to Sarri here. Tottenham parked themselves in the Chelsea’s half and refused to move out.

In the opening five minutes alone Tottenham had won two corners, Dele had been put through by Davies and Kepa had to save from a Harry Kane header.

Even before he would put Spurs ahead, Dele had been extraordinary in leading the press. Kane was never far behind. Antonio Rudiger and David Luiz looked bewildered.

Yet just behind all of that energy sat a cool head ensuring the mayhem of the press had an intelligent focus. You could easily make cases for Dele, whose combination with Kane was a joy to watch, or Heung-Min Son being the man of the match. But Eriksen was the conductor who dictated the rhythm of the match. Often he was dropping deep but always with the intent to drive his team on, almost surveying the situation and then deploying his troops.

It was Eriksen’s superb cross which allowed Dele to open the scoring on seven minutes; it was Eriksen who broke down the left to set up Kane for the shot that produced the second. So often it was he who orchestrating and directing.

As for Sarrisimo, it hasn’t died a death. But it has had the first serious questions asked of its meaning. In terms of who suffered the most, the obvious targets would be Rudiger and Luiz. But there was a more subtle reason behind their demise.

Thus far this season, Jorginho has been superb and effectively a player-coach on the pitch. Having played under Sarri at Napoli, he is the man who fully understands what is needed from his team-mates.

But here he was overwhelmed in midfield and, like an army without a general, Chelsea looked shambolic. Take Jorginho out of the game and you effectively remove the foundation stone of Sarri’s building: the whole edifice comes tumbling down.

So when the third goal saw Son latch on to Dele’s quick long ball out from the back and he simply tore past Jorginho, it wasn’t simply exposing a weakness in the Brazilian’s game. It offered a blueprint for stopping Chelsea from playing. (Thereafter Son turned Luiz inside out before finally scoring the goal he had threatened to score from the start; but it was the demolition of Jorginho that felt symbolic).

Sarri won’t change. He can’t. He has made that much clear. And Chelsea will, of course, play better.

Eden Hazard and N’Golo Kante barely featured and that won’t happen again this season. But it was one of those performances that send you back to the tactics board and reassess your players.

Is Mateo Kovacic really that much better than Ross Barkley? Can Luiz and Rudiger carry the burden of a high pressing defensive line against a top-class team? And might January be a busier month than we all imagined?

It had always looked quite a task to craft the Antonio Conte team into Sarri’s mould. That he did it so well, so quickly, was a testament to his skills. But at Wembley the cracks we expected to see earlier began to show. The master craftsman may need to go back to the workshop.