Chelsea's "Sarri-ball" revolution is well underway in a difficult preseason season



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After a 1-1 draw in regulation, a stoppage by Willy Caballero and a decisive penalty by Cesar Azpilicueta saw Chelsea beat Inter in Nice.

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Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri believes that a quick improvement is needed from him after defeating Perth Glory 1-0 in his first pre-season friendly.

NICE, France – In watching the warm-up preliminaries of the Allianz Riviera on Saturday, the bold new football pitch that Chelsea entered under Maurizio Sarri's leadership was immediately apparent.

Beginners were divided into two teams of five, placed in a small square of cones and charged with keeping the ball under pressure. It's a standard workout exercise and often used by Antonio Conte – but not quite like that. The speed of the thought and the foot was everything, the players of Chelsea being clearly invited to combine fast decisions with fast pbades.

When he is well executed, he is devastating and the best moments of Chelsea against Inter came during a first half. corresponds to their ambition. Marcos Alonso and Davide Zappacosta overtook Callum Hudson-Odoi and Pedro Rodriguez on both flanks, while Ross Barkley and Cesc Fabregas explored the pockets more centrally in front of Jorginho, the master of tempo and direction

. how quickly the basic principles of "Sarri-ball" have become established in a team of Chelsea so recently prepared to "suffer" out of possession. The doubles training sessions focused as much on tactical as physical preparation, Sarri repeating the attacking moves as meticulously as Conte drilled the defensive form.

Central defenders are the only pure defenders in the 4-3-3 system of Sarri. they are even encouraged to play the first pbad forward closer to the midline than their own penalty area. But it is Jorginho before them who has been the transforming element, just as he was under Sarri in Naples

. After pbading 98 pbades in just 45 minutes against Perth Glory, he said that he was the only remaining player on the He faces everything his coach preaches even as Chelsea collectively lost his fluidity and consistency in a second period dominated by replacements.

"He's a fantastic player, I'm so happy to play with him," David Luiz told Jorginho. "He's great, he always has the ball, he's always in a good space, he's always creating a line to cross, he already knows the philosophy of our coach, I'm so happy to have that kind of player in our team. "

This was, according to Sarri, just a" normal match "for Jorginho, who seems to combine Sergio Busquets' 360-degree consciousness at the base of the midfield with the unrelenting desire to find a go ahead. "For this way of playing football, Jorginho is a great player," said the new coach of Chelsea.

Others still learn what Sarri wants, and as a group, they do not yet have muscle memory. his style for more short bursts. "Tonight we moved the ball, but I do not think about the right speed," he said. "You have to move the ball at high speed on the ground, otherwise we risk playing for 90 minutes with 75% possession but without scoring, so we have to improve that."

There are also more specific defense issues, where the move from Sarri to a fourth back reversed the established hierarchy of Conte. Victor Moses is once again considered a winger and Cesar Azpilicueta as a back, while Alonso and Zappacosta, starters against Inter, both have positional problems. A friendly match against Arsenal Wednesday in Dublin represents a last unpressurized audition for Sarri before a clash against Pep Guardiola's Manchester City town at Wembley on Sunday which, one way or another, will prompt conclusions more strident on the viability of his vision.

Sarri will not spend a minute on the training ground with three of Chelsea's top players, Eden Hazard, N Golo Kante and Thibaut Courtois, after Wembley's trip, while the frantic final He Still remains possible to strengthen or weaken his team significantly, no matter whether he is interested or not in such matters.

Chelsea is prepared for the pain in the field and in the early stages of the process, but for Roman Abramovich, watching the Inter match of an executive box in the Allianz Riviera alongside the club's director and Marina Granovskaia's trusted advisor, Sarri's football ideology seemed surely even tanned There are already signs that the Italian is able to reproduce the alchemy that has made Napoli the team the most exciting in Europe and in doing so, catapult Chelsea to the tactical and stylistic border of Italy.

In the end, however, his fate will be determined by the same thing that makes or breaks all the coaches of the best clubs: Engagement. Both from the players at his disposal now and those he will meet in the coming days and weeks.

"A new philosophy always takes time, but it also depends on us," admitted Luiz. "If we devote ourselves every day and do things every day to training, especially in this early game with these friendly games, we can try to learn quickly, it also depends on us."

Source: espn.co.uk

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