I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! Watching Maurizio Sarri mooching around the touchline at Slavia Prague’s Sinobo Stadium on Thursday it was tempting to blink a little, to feel a double-take at the fact this gangling figure with his billowing sports mac, his inch-thick specs, lips pursed around the plug of his nicotine butt, is still somehow Chelsea’s manager.
How many times has Sarri been sacked so far this season? Five? Six? Perhaps almost as many times as he has been derided in the shrillest tones, exposed not just as a fraud, but as an overseas fraud, and an overseas book-learning fraud at that – the worst kind of fraud there is.
Sarri was there in Prague all the same, scribbling in his notebook as Willian jinked vaguely near the touchline, presumably writing down the words “Willian jinked vaguely”. Occasionally he leapt up in that familiar fashion, tracksuit trousers flapping, gesturing angrily with the palms of his hands, and resembling not so much the suave and worldly manger of Chelsea FC, more a man stalking up to the service hatch at his local all-night garage to remonstrate over the gristle content of his microwaved pasty.
Max Allegri has been linked with the Chelsea job again this week. Sections of the supporters will continue to demand Sarri gets the push. But for now, like the mariner, he continues to lurk among the living. And no doubt to the great disappointment of those intent on jeering him off, he does appear to be making some kind of progress
After a poor January Chelsea have lost once in their past 12 games. They have conceded three goals and scored 27 in that time. They are third, with one game fewer to play but ahead of every team they may expect to compete with. After that narrow 1-0 win in Prague they have at least one pointy leather ankle boot in the door to the Europa League semi-finals.
All of which may come as surprise if you have only followed the more hostile Sarri takes, which have suggested all along Chelsea are being managed by an absurd Clouseau-ish figure, bumbling around west London, falling down manholes, clown feet flapping, smoking exploding cigars that leave his hair standing on end and face caked in soot.
From the start this portrayal of Sarri in England has been a bit bizarre. What has he done that is so outrageously wrong ? Why the instant hysteria ? But then, let’s face it, he was always going to tick a lot of boxes.
Sarri is not a Proper Football Man. He is not a celebrity player. He is instead a white collar have-a-go. He is an outsider, with an obsession with plans and blueprints in a nation where a buried horror at the chalkboard and the textbook still runs deeper than recent progress might suggest.
Sarriball, an ironical term coined by someone in another country, has been used to beat him, a sign of – heaven forfend! – intellectual pretension. Here he comes now, papers flapping, textbook under one arm. English anti-intellectualism, the English insularity that still sees it as a form of national disgrace to take lessons or ask favours abroad: Sarri is an embodiment of so many things that have traditionally enraged English football’s deep sensibilities.
Remember that brief period where a shared hatred of Jorginho seemed to unite the nation? What outrage there was at the sight of a small, possession-based midfielder trying to integrate his style into English football.
Fast forward a couple of months and Jorginho and N’Golo Kanté have both been key players in the current run. Jorginho starts for Italy. He has played in six wins in a row for club and country, his team dominating possession in every one. Maybe just give it a while next time.
Other things have gone right. With Jorginho no longer an open sore we have been urged to see Sarri’s use of Callum Hudson-Odoi as an anti-English snub. In reality a talented young player has made 22 appearances behind some senior internationals and had an excellent, unrushed full league debut at the age of 18. There is no actual outrage here.
Then there is Eden Hazard, who may also be off this summer. Rather than saving his powers Hazard has had under Sarri his most productive season in England, topping the table of combined Premier League “goal involvements”. Maybe this is what Sarriball means: giving your fans a late-blooming memory of one of their own modern greats. But fuck Sarriball anyway. Just to be on the safe side.
The paradox of all this reflex hostility is Sarri is actually a likable character, a gangling, stubbornly personable manager. He cut his own path, has asked no favours and still refuses to play the game or cultivate friends in the press.
Meanwhile Chelsea are on course to surpass Manchester City’s points tally in Pep Guardiola’s first season, despite performing against a chorus of hostility. And despite Chelsea’s reduced status, no longer a billionaire’s plaything, more a billionaire’s favourite toy that has been left sightly overlooked in a box in the spare room.
Another irony is that Sarri is just the manager Chelsea need at a time of austerity and transfer bans, with an interest in systems and patience rather than the old sack-and-spend. He may still be doomed, another set of plans ready to be junked but like it or not that haunted figure in the crumpled leisurewear is doing something right.
Whatever happens one thing is certain. The horrified, jeering response to Sarri’s basic presence says more about enduring domestic foibles than it does about the man in the tracksuit with the mildly revolutionary ideas about deep-lying midfield playmakers.
