When managers get sacked, there is always a lingering air of resentment amongst supporters that the players were to blame. Their argument falls into two distinct camps: either the players are not good enough and must be replaced, or they downed tools and forced someone else to carry the can.
Three months ago, Chelsea were in that exact position. Every Chelsea supporter wanted Frank Lampard to succeed because of who he was as a player more than his aptitude as a manager. They had spent 15 years moving from one Next Big Thing to another to another to great fanfare and no less success. Now they eyed the happy medium, a project manager who could use his deep affinity to create something that couldn’t be bought.
Lampard’s failure was not abject. He did guide Chelsea through a difficult season and Mason Mount and Reece James may thank him for igniting their Chelsea careers. But since Thomas Tuchel has taken over, we have seen Chelsea’s potential under a high-class manager. Lampard’s time may yet come, but he was not ready for this. And this is why that supposition that the players are to blame almost always misses the point. It is the job of the manager to create a shape, a style and a mood that allows players to flourish.
Everything about Chelsea is different. Where Lampard’s Chelsea were at their best through glorious chaos, like an expensive bucking bronco, Tuchel prefers to control the controllables. Chelsea are now able to find space in midfield without pushing extra players forward and leaving themselves open to counter attacks. They are more defensively organised than at any point during Lampard’s tenure. And if Timo Werner was in the same form as Karim Benzema, they would be favourites for this competition.
The strange thing about Werner is that most aspects of his game remain in fine fettle. He wins a header, tracks back to dispossess an opposition midfielder, runs in behind, drops deep to interchange play. And then that all feels like damnation with faint praise when he gets a perfectly good opportunity to score and, well, you know what happens next.
That presents a problem for Tuchel. Does he continue to pick Werner for Chelsea’s most important fixtures, effectively weighing up the two sides of his striker and accepting that the effect is net positive? Or does he pick one of his three other options – Kai Havertz, Olivier Giroud and Tammy Abraham were all on the bench on Tuesday – and attack in a slightly different way. Tuchel evidently concludes that nobody else can replicate Werner’s other work.
We expected a cagey affair in Valdebebas, Real Madrid’s midfield control meeting Chelsea’s organisation with neither team prepared to risk losing the tie in favour of winning it. Instead we witnessed a Chelsea side able to weave through those in white. The advantage of Luka Modric and Toni Kroos is that they can chip balls onto a beach towel from 40 yards. The flaw is that they lack the energy to deal with a fluid, dynamic opponent. Tuchel understood that sitting and waiting for Real Madrid is to move the earth for your own grave.
At times in the first half it felt as if Chelsea had at least one extra man, and not just because N’Golo Kante was doing his best ‘three lungs’ impression. It’s all an illusion, of course; they simply moved the ball from defence to midfield to the final third with a crispness and hardly ever picked the wrong option.
The second half was different, partly because of Real’s ill-deserved equaliser and partly because Chelsea could not keep up their high-energy pressing all night. But Tuchel’s team merely moved from one form of control to the other. They preferred slower, possession-retention football when they had the ball and sat deeper without it, both to preserve energy. In attack, Chelsea used their three substitutes – Kai Havertz, Hakim Ziyech and Reece James – as outlets because of their fresh legs.
Throughout the piece, the same conclusion pervaded: Tuchel really does know what he’s doing. Just look at the difference in the players: Antonio Rudiger dribbling down the left wing and assisting Christian Pulisic’s goal with a lofted through ball, Andreas Christensen the consummate central defender having been regularly omitted by Lampard, Mount seemingly improving with every passing week.
There will be regrets within Chelsea’s dressing room. Real scored an equaliser out of nothing that leaves them fully capable of mounting a second-leg victory; two Chelsea defenders lost headers and it was Madrid’s only shot on target.
But that itself is a compliment. Since Chelsea last played in a Champions League semi-final, Real have won this competition four times. An away draw in the first leg after which they are frustrated they did not win? These are signs of a club in rude health under a manager who is quickly proving that he possesses everything his predecessor lacked.
More on football
- ‘I want Burnley to be the UK’s favourite underdog’
- Interview: Sessegnon on his bid to force his way back in at Spurs
- The making of Everton’s versatile defender whose rise surprised even his own manager
- Hall: Martial is running out of chances to prove he is part of the future at Man Utd
- The Czech ‘warriors’ who rose from obscurity to fire West Ham into European contention
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2Qtdlp1
Post a Comment