Jorginho and the Liberation of the Iron-Lunged Monk

Maurizio Sarri is an anomaly.

A former banker, never truly ingratiated with the professional game as a player, he balanced an unremarkable amateur career with the demands of his day job after failing trials with both Torino and Fiorentina before embarking on an extraordinary, arduous trek from the deepest depths of the Italian Sunday leagues to the very pinnacle of European management, via no less than 19 different clubs.

A nicotine fiend, a human furnace who chains his way through 80 tabs a day, so indebted to his addiction that he spent the best part of his Premier League debut chewing on the end of a Richmond Superking to stave off the shakes. Sarri would probably get more of a kick out of sweeping chimneys than lifting silverware.

A laconic charmer, drizzled in olive oil and Neopolitan wit, a wise soul who would look more at home whiling away his autumn years in the corner of a sleepy piazza with a chessboard laid out in front of him than he does on a sweltering touchline in a baggy t- shirt, wandering around half-zombified like your dad on the Sunday morning after his monthly night out with the boys.

Perhaps most anomalous, however, will be the task required of him as Chelsea manager given the state of the side that he has inherited from fellow Italian Antonio Conte.

Whereas the majority of his predecessors have been gifted near-mint condition squads and the extravagance of oligarchical reserves of post-Soviet oil money, Sarri was handed something altogether more threadbare.

If rumours are to be believed, the dressing room he is walking into has more fractures than a Saturday night A&E, and the general perception from the outside looking in is that Conte’s tumultuous tenure, plus the added complexity of a rumbling visa row, has significantly lessened Mr. Abramovich’s willingness to throw money at his problems.

Now, clearly Chelski aren’t destitute, but given the apparent pervasiveness of the rot in the squad, their spending has been relatively conservative. Paying a world record fee for the prophetically-named Kepa may seem outlandish and gaudy, but it was a move largely necessitated by Real Madrid flashing a bit of ankle at the poor man’s Costel Pantilimon, Thibaut Courtois, and an unusually early transfer deadline coming up with the velocity of a mayfly on a windscreen.

Elsewhere, forgotten lunatic David Luiz has been released from solitary and put in a cage with Antonio Rudiger in the hope that in a few months’ time one of them gives birth to a beautiful, healthy centre-half partnership; artist’s impression of a Spanish man Pedro continues to blow caliente y frío; and having Alvaro Morata up front is akin to storming the Bastille with a Nerf gun.

In fact, the one area in his squad in which you would have presumed Sarri’s relative confidence would have been his midfield.

Marshalled superlatively by N’Golo Kante, a man so uniquely dependable and wholesome that he surely deserves his own role a la Claude Makelele, Chelsea’s midfield was often a silver lining on the greyscale cloud of last season’s underwhelming title defence.

Waxing lyrical about Kante is hardly reinventing the wheel, but there’s a reason that it’s en vogue. A timid enforcer, the diminutive Frenchman is the polite bailiff who apologises profusely as he takes everything you own and gives it to a colleague five yards away.

There are countless stories of Kante’s inhuman endurance and monastic lifestyle, but, put quite simply, the greatest and most succinct compliment he can be paid is that he has become the international benchmark, both in terms of his stamina and his modest attitude.

It came, therefore, as something of a minor shock when the Blues’ one moment of seemingly frivolous indulgence saw them hijack Manchester City’s move for scheming regista Jorginho.

Granted, the Italian was good for Napoli under Sarri, but he’s no N’Golo Kante; nobody is. Fair enough, it was a obstinate middle finger up at Pep’s sky blue Monstars, but £57m is a lot of money to spend in spite. And for the love of God, won’t somebody think of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, that forbearing dreamboat who got an army of girlfriends to believe that football might be coming, coming, coming home?

It took 90 minutes to dispel any conceivable doubts Chelsea fans might have had. On his debut against Perth Glory, Jorginho touched the ball 101 times, completing 98 successful passes in the process, at a rate of one pass every 27 seconds. Something else.

And perhaps the most significant facet of the Jorginho transfer will prove to be the liberating effect he has on the players around him. The early promise of Kante’s performances this season suggest an evolution in the midfielder’s style of play, and a greater emphasis on using his freakish engine for mischief as well as protectionism.

With Jorginho occupying a deeper role and casting his incisive glare over the final third like the Eye of Sauron, Kante is free to break forward with greater frequency, and a runner of his enthusiasm will always be difficult to track.

The chances of last season’s N’Golo Kante appearing at the back stick like Casper the Friendly Ghost to shank home Chelsea’s first goal of the campaign would have been slim to minimal.

With the foundational yin and yang that the Jorginho-Kante dynamic gives the Blues in the centre of the park, it affords Sarri, provided he continues to employ a 4-3-3, the luxury of a wildcard in his midfield trio. Like B. A. Baracus in The A-Team or the ginger one in Girls Aloud, it is often the wildcard who brings the element of surprise, the danger.

What’s more, Sarri’s boys are blessed with an embarrassment of riches, should he choose to use them. Ensuring Mateo Kovacic arrived as a compensatory makeweight in the Great Thibaut Courtois Heist may have felt a little like putting a plaster on a stab wound, but in truth the Croatian could provide the attacking bite of a snarling aggressor in Chelsea’s midfield Cerberus.

The playmaker has seen his opportunities limited since moving to Real Madrid from Inter Milan three years ago, but there’s very little shame in being kept out of any side by a player of Luka Modric’s calibre.

Admittedly, the cold, hard numbers of Kovacic’s goalscoring exploits leave a lot to be desired, but with a prolonged run in the starting eleven and a decent course of hypnotherapy to renew his self-esteem, there’s no reason to suggest that with his natural disposition for being bloody good at kicking spherical objects, he won’t come good.

There’s also the hope that the Croatian can be the catalyst for a minor renaissance in Alvaro Morata’s dreary ongoing modern art exhibition entitled ‘The Striker With No Understanding of Basic Geometry’. The two previously worked together at Real, and it is perhaps Sarri’s belief that with his old friend rubbing his shoulders and whispering sweet nothings in his ear the Spanish donkey can end his torturous limbo and be transported back to some idyllic dreamland in which his legs don’t turn to polystyrene when confronted with an open goal.

It is also refreshing to see Sarri put faith in certain players who may have felt their Chelsea careers were shuddering to a halt. Ross Barkley, for one, has done a pretty good impression of Wally, of Where’s Wally? fame, since leaving his boyhood Everton for the dazzling smoke of the capital. A box-to-box chameleon, he has rarely looked even a shadow of the irrepressible teen who set pulses racing with his joie de vivre and bowl-cut fringe.

Barkley looks like the bully in a Channel 4 school drama who only lashes out because he can’t articulate the stresses of caring for his bedridden mother. You could easily see Ross skidding up to training on his brother’s mountain bike, JD Sports drawstring on his shoulder, a boxy pair of slip-ons from a Shoezone back-to-school special ruined through months of smashing home playground screamers, and a can of Tizer on the go. This is in no way a bad thing. In fact, it could well be what Chelsea, and dare I say England, are lacking; a little bit of bastardry.

When he’s in full flow, when the stars align and defences open up like the Red Sea before him, Barkley is a raw, uninhibited hybrid of Gazza and Stevie G. Evidently, he’s nowhere near the level of such exalted company just yet, but there have been flashes; sparks of ingenuity, glimpses of a player who sees the game with the same childlike instinct and wonder as he did kicking a battered casey around his estate, waiting for the soft sodium glow of a streetlight to blow the final whistle.

Barkley’s predatory outbursts, his rabbit-chasing, whippet-sharp compulsions, could be the perfect foil for a team that are increasingly sculpted to resemble their new manager’s vision of technicality and patience.

Aside from Barkley, Sarri’s other resounding vote of confidence has been cast in favour of aforementioned Chippendales reject Ruben Loftus-Cheek. Suspicions that the RLC is in fact a decent footballer were confirmed last season throughout a wholly beneficial loan spell with Crystal Palace.

During the briefest and most torrid working relationship since Lady Jane Grey and the Privy Council of England, Frank de Boer guided the Eagles to an unprecedented opening slump of seven games without a point or a goal. Nonetheless, Ruby shone like a diamond in the rough.

Whereas his teammates – who, with the exception of an absent Wilf Zaha who came back into the side to immediate effect in Palace’s shock 2-1 win over Loftus-Cheek’s parent club – ground and toiled their way into some semblance of choreographed performance, Ruben looked positive and imaginative from the get-go.

Such was the impression he made before Christmas, RLC’s seat on the plane to Russia was reserved, even in spite of an ankle injury that disrupted his campaign and sidelined him for three months.

When Dele Alli strained every muscle fibre in his left leg and started playing like half a man, Loftus-Cheek ripped off his velcro tracksuit and stepped up to do Baddiel, Skinner, and the Lightning Seeds proud.

The rapid progression of Ruben’s profile over the past twelve months essentially forced Chelsea into an ultimatum. Regular first team opportunities were a must or a move to any of the suitors forming a snaking queue around Stamford Bridge seemed inevitable.

Pleasingly, Sarri, unlike his predecessors, appears to have recognised the talent he has on his hands and looks intent on integrating Loftus-Cheek into the first team ASAP.

Moreover, just as silence is the absence of noise, a decent midfield is the absence of dead weight and Sarri seems to understand the benefits of a leaner, more streamlined core unit.

Tiemoue Bakayoko never properly looked like the heir to Nemanja Matic’s throne, but his move to AC Milan has likely prevented him from straying too far into John Obi Mikel’s internet punchline territory, while Danny Drinkwater is so far in the friendzone that Mauricio Sarri sends him screenshots of other midfielders he matches with on Tinder.

Cesc Fabregas is, of course, still a valuable option to have coming into the side, but on the dark side of 30, with his toe already dipped into the tranquil pool of punditry, and a passer of Jorginho’s abilities staking a claim as the shiny new linchpin of the Chelsea midfield, you can’t help feeling that his glorious career might just be beginning to wind its way down into a long goodbye.

All in all, however, Chelsea have a midfield that can, theoretically, compete with the likes of City and Liverpool. The rest of the squad might not be there yet, but it’s a start.

And all of it starts with Jorginho. He is the skeleton key unlocking the various leaden shackles of his colleagues. He is the telekinetic savant shuffling his comrades to and fro with an erstwhile glance or a flick of his index finger, like Matilda flinging jugfuls of newts.

He is, upon second glance, a piece of business capable of rivalling any during the Abramovich era, and he might well end up being the signing of the season.