A marriage made in hell
They were not going to stand in his way after a testing campaign
IN the end there was no shortage of smoke but simply no fire where Maurizio Sarri and Chelsea were concerned.
They just did not get along. Perhaps they were never meant for each other.
Sarri could deliver the sparkling football and endless victories they craved but Chelsea were not the club he thought they were, with their remote owner, a strangely sparse executive tier and players who have long since understood how the manager is most disposable of them all.
Behind the scenes, they all rubbed each other up the wrong way and this decision to part amicably after one turbulent season is surely for the best.
Sarri delivered on his brief to lead Chelsea back into the Champions League and they helped him win his first major trophy. Few supporters really warmed to him, particularly the hardcore of match-goers.
They never connected in the way they did with Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti, the three managerial success stories of the trigger-happy Roman Abramovich era.
Conte threw himself into the crowd when his team scored. Ancelotti exuded a personal warmth and Mourinho delivered unprecedented success on the pitch while proving a pioneer in the art of self-promotion.
Sarri had zero interest in selfpromotion. There is not a trace of vanity about him. Perhaps this ought to be applauded as an antidote to modern society but a modern football club expects some degree of charm or charisma from its front man in the age of brand expansion.
Sarri often cut a curious figure on the touchline, chewing and sucking on a cigarette butt.
A whiff of nicotine would trail behind him as he trundled around the training ground or the corridors of Stamford Bridge and this jarred inside an elite sporting operation. He is not the first modern Chelsea manager to smoke. Gianluca Vialli, Roberto di Matteo and Ancelotti liked a cigarette, but not to the same degree.
Sarri loathed his media, commercial and ambassadorial duties, and dodged them when he could. Gianfranco Zola would be summoned to replace him.
Or he forgot because they were never in the centre of his thoughts. Chelsea were reprimanded by the
++ Blues players bored by training and Sarri refused lie-ins ++ Support never warmed to dull football ++ He alienated fringe men ++ Smoking habit jarred with club ++ He hated media duties Premier League for missing media deadlines when he locked his players in the dressing room for an inquest of more than an hour after a 4-0 defeat to Bournemouth.
The post-season match in the United States against New England Revolution was the epitome of this.
Sarri did not lift a finger to promote the charity venture planned by Abramovich and Revs owner Robert Kraft to raise funds and awareness to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. They raised more than £3million but the manager grumbled about the game getting in the way of preparations for the Europa League final, failed to attend any of the media engagements in Boston and did not join a visit to the city’s Holocaust Memorial or a formal dinner at Kraft’s mansion because he was feeling ill.
Sarri would not applaud the travelling fans after an away game. One of his many superstitions was to avoid stepping on the pitch.
He had to be cajoled by club officials to lead out the team at Wembley for the pre-match ceremony in the FA Community Shield, his first game.
He did, however, realise when the fans turned against him in mid-season with protest chants and jeering Jorginho, the player so integral to his tactical system.
Few could see why Sarri indulged the Italy international who followed him from Napoli at a cost of £56m, to the extent where he marginalised N’Golo Kante, who had been the best midfielder in the Premier League for three years.
He promised to restore ‘fun’ to Chelsea when he arrived with great fanfare to replace Conte and the season started so well. But the football became dull as soon as opponents fathomed out how they could drop deep and let Chelsea pass sideways until they came to a standstill or cause them problems on the turnover by hustling the supply lines around Jorginho.
When the results turned, the board and the players, like the fans, were left wondering why the manager did not seem inclined to react and make adjustments to his trusted strategy.
Many came to find his training regime a drag. It could be tedious and repetitive, heavy with team shape and pattern of play in the Italian tradition and very similar in that respect to Conte.
Often the monotony was enhanced by Sarri’s superstitions to follow the same process every
week. At one stage, his determination to play eight-veight training games every day with the same 16 players left spare players such as Victor Moses with nothing to do but run up and down the side of the pitch with a fitness coach.
He preferred to train in the afternoons, which disrupted players’ lifestyle patterns, and those with children suddenly found they had much less family time.
Sarri ordered players to report early on the morning of an evening game to practise set-pieces.
Lie-ins were out of the question and by the time kick-off arrived they had been up and on the go for 12 hours. Those not central to his plans were completely ignored. His treatment of popular club captain Gary Cahill went down very badly with many.
Another player claimed he had been made to feel like one of the inflatable dummies representing opponents in training exercises and undertook his own preseason style fitness regime to get himself back into shape.
Such things might be tolerated when the team was winning, but Chelsea’s form began sliding and some players, while making the right noises in public, were demanding change and airing their discontent in private.
After an insipid defeat at home against Manchester United in the FA Cup in February the dissent broke open in the dressing room.
Voices were raised and Sarri was criticised for his tactical stubbornness.
The season was at risk of falling apart. The crushing defeat at Bournemouth was followed by a 6-0 thrashing at Manchester City.
The manager came close to the sack and might have gone had there been a convenient replacement available.
Zola, one of the obvious candidates, was hospitalised with gallstones.
Marina Granovskaia delivered Gonzalo Higuain on an expensive and complicated loan deal in January but he was making little impact and making few friends with an aloof attitude. He did not appear to be the missing link.
The dressing-room revolt forced some minor tactical changes but then came the Carabao Cup final when Chelsea rose to the occasion and matched City, only for the Kepa Arrizabalaga bustup to eclipse a positive display.
Sarri exploded in rage on the touchline when Kepa refused to be substituted having twice required treatment for an injury.
The manager ripped off his tracksuit top and stormed off towards the tunnel. Kepa stayed on while Chelsea lost on penalties and Sarri was stunned to find the club inclined to side with the goalkeeper, concerned about triggering another Diego Costa situation, rather than to back the manager’s authority.
Conte had ostracised Costa soon after winning the title in 2017 which knocked millions off his value as they tried to sell the striker. Sarri retreated into his inner circle more than ever and, with such angst behind the scenes, there was probably never any way back from here.
When Juventus provided the opportunity, he told Chelsea he wanted to leave.
For someone who started his career coaching in amateur football, the chance to coach the Old Lady of Italian football was too good to miss.
Chelsea, with their transfer ban looming, had been starting to think it might be worth sticking with Sarri for one more year but they were not going to stand in his way after what had been a testing campaign.
And so it is over and, in the end, with little acrimony.
Sarri will pursue a glorious opportunity and Chelsea bank £7m in compensation and set about making another fresh start, this time with links to their glittering recent past with echoes of what Bayern Munich, AC Milan and Ajax have done.
Petr Cech will be installed in an executive role with first-team responsibilities.
Cech could soon team up again with Frank Lampard, who is set to replace Sarri. Didier Drogba is a visible presence in the stands at Stamford Bridge. Joe Cole and Ashley Cole are taking coaching qualifications with the support of the club, as did Lampard and John Terry.
Lampard does not boast the same wealth of coaching experience but understands Chelsea’s inner workings which would be a start and a connection, through his assistant Jody Morris, to the club’s academy.
At a time when a transfer ban looms this could be vital as Abramovich searches for No12 in his endless quest for his perfect manager.
Meanwhile, Sarri joins the heap of Chelsea rejects.