Over the international break we learned that Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri is as intense as humanly possible when it comes to match preparations. Sometimes he’ll hermetically seal himself off from the world, for up to ten hours, and study his formations, tactics and game plans.
Now that Chelsea came within seconds of losing to Manchester United yesterday, suffering what would have been their first loss of the season in any competition, Sarri will go back to the drawing board. In the end, the 2-2 draw was essentially a fair result for both teams, but it’s clear that United’s playing five, and during some of the time, six, towards the back frustrated Chelsea.
Maurizio Sarri wants Chelsea to play every game, all 90 minutes in the mold of his character.
The Italian was upset that his team got away from what he likes to do in the final 30 minutes of the contest.
“I want to play every game for three points. Today I was happy with the performance for 60 minutes because for 60 minutes we played our football. Then after it was 1-1 we didn’t play our football, only long balls and we didn’t win the second balls,” Sarri told his post match news conference.
“In this type of football United are better. I’ve seen the match from the bench and now I want to study the second part of the match. They have to play my football with character.”
Sarri wantts his side to not be playing the long game, and keeping it short and sweet with their passing.
“I don’t want the long ball, and going for second balls, I want to play with short passes. I don’t know [why it happened]. If I knew I would have been able to immediately change the situation. Now I have to study the match. For you a match is 90 minutes, for me it’s around four hours.”
Maurizio Sarri leads Chelsea are back to action Thursday, when they take on BATE in the UEFA Europa League.
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