How DID Chelsea end up in such a mess?
Party is over as Blues look for a new manager, new players and owner runs into visa problems
IT WASN’T just what he said, but how many times he said it. ‘I can’t change,’ insisted Antonio Conte. ‘I can’t change. I can’t change. I can’t change. I can’t — change.’ He repeated it twice more, later, for good measure. ‘I am this,’ he added. ‘I am — this.’
So here we are. He’s this, they’re that and the direction Chelsea are headed in is the other. Roman Abramovich’s visa issues may be swiftly resolved, but news that the owner was unable to attend Wembley on Saturday as part of deteriorating Anglo-Russian relations just added to the uncertainty swirling around the club.
Eden Hazard is courting Real Madrid, Thibaut Courtois is also talking in riddles about his future, and a manager who has delivered two trophies in two years is planning to clear his desk. It all seems so unnecessary. Asked what needed to happen next, captain Gary Cahill was frank.
‘Probably the uncertainty needs to be put to bed and whatever is going to happen, needs to happen,’ he said. ‘Of course we feel the sense of uncertainty.’
What is bizarre is that all parties would appear to be worse off once the split occurs.
Chelsea are unlikely to find a better manager than Conte this summer. Different, yes. One with a similarly stellar CV, quite probably. But better? A manager capable of delivering the title in his first season, breaking records in the process? A manager capable of phasing out John Terry, of coming up with a better option than the captain, leader, legend at the heart of a creaking back four? A manager who could turn Victor Moses into a right wing-back? A manager who could, tactically, outwit Jose Mourinho at Wembley with an inferior team?
Whatever mistakes he has made, this will be some act to follow.
And Conte? Is there a better job out there for him than Chelsea? Probably not. Conte described himself as a serial winner, but that applies to the club he coaches, too. This was the 15th trophy of the Abramovich era and won’t be the last, visa issues permitting.
The owner has exacting standards but his club will never be left to drift like Arsenal, or fade into irrelevance like the storied names of Serie A. Chelsea might not be a long-term engagement for a manager, but it remains a great job.
And yet, somehow, between them, employer and employee have reached the end after only two years. For once, the club are not the bad guys. Well, not entirely. This isn’t the same as sacking Carlo Ancelotti a year after doing the Double in his first season.
Reasonable requests by Conte for greater influence on transfer policy morphed into a mood of dissatisfaction that gravely undermined the league campaign.
Had compromise been reached, it is very likely Chelsea would have finished in the top four and had they qualified for the Champions League and won the FA Cup final against Manchester United, we would not be discussing the identity of their next manager.
Abramovich cannot relish writing another severance cheque for £9m. He is trying to run the club on a budget and this is dead money.
What is unfathomable is how Abramovich heads a successful global enterprise in complex fields including energy, aluminium, insurance and banking without a gift for mediation.
Yet Chelsea never mediate. Not with Diego Costa, not with Conte — every difficult negotiation reaches deadlock. Conte, by his own admission, is stubborn and intractable. His relationship with players suggests that, too. Yet one also senses he would be Chelsea’s manager next season if he could.
So how was there not a third way? Why was there no resolution? Why is it always back or sack? It is said, inside the club, that Abramovich regrets his call over Ancelotti. Might Conte not regret some of his confrontations, too? Might David Luiz or Willian not have aided Chelsea’s assault on the top four? Might the club have helped him resolve those issues, too, had he not been torching bridges with his superiors with every public pronouncement?
Asked whether there was something — anything — he could have done this year to make his work environment less fractious, Conte’s answer was illuminating. Not just what he said, but the time he took to compile a response, the ums and errs, the pauses.
There were 12 seconds of silence before even the beginning of a reply — it doesn’t sound much, but check your watch for 12 seconds and think that most replies to questions are instant — 32 seconds before the answer began in earnest and close to a minute before he got into his stride.
Conte was bullish, but this was not the retort of a man whose political machinations had gone entirely to
plan. he has, in all likelihood, talked himself out of a job — and knows it.
‘It’s not simple to answer this,’ faltered Conte. ‘For sure, when you decide to take a coach like me, you must know who you are taking. I cannot change my personality. I cannot change my idea of football.
‘I can find the right way to win this trophy, but if you ask me if we can play better, yes, we can. But now the real situation of this club is this — we have to play strong defensively if we want to win a trophy or we want to get a place in the Champions league.
‘Maybe we missed the Champions league this season because we tried to play very open and in this moment we can’t, especially against a strong team, because to concede three goals in seven games this season means you don’t have stability. a great team doesn’t concede four goals against Watford, no? Now, if you want to change, then we can change our idea, but you must then change many players.’
and we’re back to the start of the season, when Conte was dissatisfied with recruitment. Yet Chelsea hardly sold him short.
abramovich needs a visa and may soon need a manager and several players. how has this been allowed to happen, again? Conte may not be able to change, but Chelsea must.
This isn’t a matter of paperwork at the home Office. What is felt this morning, this insecurity and emptiness even in a moment of triumph, appertains to the very fabric of this football club.