Truthful Tuesday | N’Golo Kante is a gem but Chelsea have outgrown Frenchman’s presence
Few players in the modern age has been as universally loved as N’Golo Kante and the midfielder does make it so easy to do so. But times have changed and while Kante’s footballing days aren’t over, in this week’s edition of Truthful Tuesday, we say that the time has come for Chelsea to say goodbye.
At the start of the 2019/20 Premier League season, nobody gave Chelsea a chance at finishing in the top four, nope not even one. They were after all burdened by a transfer ban, had lost a club great in Eden Hazard and appointed Frank Lampard as their new manager after just one decent season at the Championship club Derby County. But a year on, and the Blues are back and back with a bang as Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech train with a talented group of young players who’ve proven their bones in the English top tier. Not only that, they’ve got in Lampard a manager, that is looking to truly build something for a future that may or may not have him sitting in the hot seat.
He’s taking the Blues into the future, one where their bountiful youth academy gels together brilliantly with their heavy spending ways to create a super-team that could compete with Liverpool and Manchester City for the title in the coming years. The problem, however, partly for Chelsea and N’Golo Kante is the fact that they’ve done it without him. The Blues signing Kante for a now-nonsensical sum of 30 million from Leicester City, which will indubitably go down as one of the deals of the century. Kante’s rise itself is a Hollywood story made for the silver screen; a late bloomer, then suddenly out of nowhere he comes into prominence after years and years of hard work for a Leicester City side that epitomizes that.
Then a move to his dream club, Chelsea, and another league title to add to his coffers before he lifted a World Cup in a tournament where he played about as big a role, if not bigger than Kylian Mbappe. But since lifting that World Cup, the most absurd thing has happened. N’Golo Kante hit his ceiling and has found that his road ends there, which has shocked a few. Maurizio Sarri tried to accommodate the Frenchman by playing him as a box-to-box midfield destroyer but was sent running back to Italy before Lampard arrived and did the same thing.
That hasn’t worked mainly because the Frenchman has had his consistency hit by injuries in his worst injury hit season. It’s been nigh over ten years since Kante didn’t finish a league season with at least 30 appearances and that alone tells the story. His new role however, in a new look Chelsea forces him to play with the ball and not against it which isn’t, unfortunately, the Frenchman’s best talent. Instead, the 29-year-old is forced to do something he isn’t comfortable doing and it’s affecting his entire game as a result. In the few – 27 games that he has played, Kante’s insistence to cover every blade of grass has seen him struggle at what he does best, winning the ball back.
The timing of his tackle has gone down, the average at which he concedes fouls has gone up and his influence on the game is waning. Why does this change things? Because Chelsea, in Frank Lampard’s eyes, are a team that plays and moves with the ball rapidly and clinically which is why the likes of Mason Mount, Matteo Kovacic and even Christian Pulisic has thrived. It’s why Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech should do well, with both being excellent and efficient having thrived in similar roles at RB Leipzig and Ajax, and why the Blues are looking at a more progressive passer as their defensive midfielder.
Jorginho, no matter how much Sarri claims, isn’t a defensive midfielder but what he does do well is recycle the ball and get it to the players who can make a difference. The Brazilian/Italian can’t defend to save his life, and apparently Chelsea’s, which is where N’Golo Kante thrives. Now the funny thing is that if you paired the two midfielders about five years ago, it would have been about as destructive a partnership as the Premier League might have seen. But in the years since Antonio Conte brought Italian tactics to English shores, the English and the rest of the world have adapted and done so in style.
Now we’ve got Rodri and Fabinho creating the base at two of England’s best, Sergio Busquets doing his thing at Barcelona and Thomas Partey, the latest in a long line of defensive midfielders. And you can see exactly why Chelsea are interested in the Atletico Madrid man. He's what would happen if N’Golo Kante and Jorginho DNA’s were taken and made into the perfect defensive midfielder. Not that Partey is perfect but he’s what Chelsea hoped that Kante would evolve into and yet that hasn’t happened. But that’s not to say that Frenchman is now inessential in the Premier League because that’s the furthest thing from the truth. The matter of the fact is that at his incredible best, Kante was a cheat-code.
Anyone who averages 4.7 tackles and 4.2 interceptions per game, as he did during Leicester City’s title-winning season, is not ordinary and that’s what Kante was. But if you give anything time, they will adapt to change which is exactly what has happened. The world of football has adapted, found new ways to overcome their challenges and somewhere along the need for a pure defensive midfielder like N’Golo Kante disappeared. And this season, Chelsea proved that they don’t need him and the evidence is there for everyone to see with their place in the league personifying that.
A fourth-place finish with one of the youngest teams in the league at the hands of a manager making his Premier League debut. They did all that without the presence of Kante and even when they had him, he was no longer Chelsea’s ace in the hole. There’s no denying what Kante did at his best but he turns 30 next year and with his recent injuries, he’ll no longer be the omnipresent figure he once was in midfield especially at Chelsea. It’s exactly why, it’s the perfect time for Chelsea and the smiling Frenchman to shake hands, part ways and move onto to something new.