Football news - 'F*** Sarriball' Muddled Maurizio is a dead manager walking as Chelsea fans protest
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Updated 19/02/2019 at 08:16 GMT
Stamford Bridge has delivered its withering verdict on Sarriball. And those of a delicate disposition may like to look away now, writes Dan Levene.
Maurizio Sarri
Image credit: Eurosport
The Coliseum it may not be; but when Stamford Bridge stands in judgment, the effect is sometimes not unlike that of being thrown to the lions.
Not since November 2012, and the first match of Rafael Benitez's short, ill-advised yet oddly successful stay in west London, has it spoken so clearly as it did on Monday night.
Then, the message was in the form of a frosty 'welcome'. Now it was a vitriolic 'farewell'.
Chelsea's match going support has had enough of Maurizio Sarri, and his ball, and they don't care who knows it.
After a series of defeats without a goal – four at Bournemouth, six at Manchester City, two at home to Manchester United in the Cup – the verdict was clear: “F*** Sarriball.”
WARNING: THIS CLIP CONTAINS OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
It was a jaw-droppingly damning response.
And, should the message not be loud and clear, fans joined in with a United-inspired chant of "You're getting sacked in the morning" for good measure.
Last time a Chelsea crowd sung that with gusto was West Brom away one Saturday in March 2012. They were out by mere hours: as Andre Villas-Boas collected his P45 around lunchtime on Sunday.
What has inspired such bare hatred of a manager who was the hipster's champion just a matter of months ago?
Well, that status has barely helped his cause – though it is certainly not alone in provoking such a barrage of negativity against the project.
Fans here will not have got the opportunity to publicly pass judgment on the evening's post-match press conference.
Asked if he had heard the chants, his response was at first a fudge: “Not really very well.”
Once their magnitude was explained, there was a more resigned: “For everything there is a first time.”
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Paul Pogba spoke of the trust between manager and the players after the Chelsea victory
Image credit: Getty Images
But, more damagingly, came the words: “I am worried about the result. Not about the fans.”
Ouch.
Chelsea's fans have hated his intransigence. They've frequently shared, of late, the feeling he is out of his depth.
And they've despised the predictability of his football, and of his selections.
Against United, the only surprises were that he started Pedro for Willian; and that he switched the pair of them for each other in the 56th minute.
That is the time he usually reserves for his Ross Barkley for Mateo Kovacic switch – here done in the 70th minute: where he usually does the Pedro for Willian one.
But, more than anything, it was the intellectual snobbery which surrounded his "philosophy", that has led most to rebel against it.
When Brian Clough steamed in to his doomed-to-fail stopover at Leeds in 1974, a period in history so brilliantly captured in David Peace's The Damned United book and film, he immediately took on the mantle of iconoclast.
He told the players all they had won thus far was worthless, as it had been achieved by cheating.
The players burned him, and his regime, to dust – within 44 days.
Here and now it was not Sarri who made that claim: though with his repeated references to "my football", though thick (and mostly) thin, he came close.
It was the football intellectuals who would claim to know better.
They told Chelsea's fans, on Sarri's arrival and beyond, that what they had seen – from Antonio Conte, and Jose Mourinho, and even in some cases from Carlo Ancelotti – was rubbish. And that they were wrong to enjoy it.
When, in reality, that football had delivered the very best times of many of their lives.
And when the football that Sarri delivered was awful: turgid and ineffective, disjointed and ponderous; those that pay their hard-earned cash to watch the stuff in person did not hold back in passing judgement.
Sarriball is over, bar the shouting. And when does end, the inquests will be long and painful.
But the one truth that needs no public enquiry should be evident to all.
No matter how much some might laud the Emperor's new clothes: a Chelsea crowd will always be the child that points to his nudity.
Give them results; give them love; pull their strings and they will respond.
But here they have called their club's bluff. And there's no going back from that.
Dan Levene @danlevene
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