Thus begins the long farewell. A chance for fans to show their appreciation for a man who everyone knows won’t be in office much longer; a chance to reward a celebrated coach with a farewell trophy and a set of hallowed memories. Yes: it’s a great afternoon for Mauricio Pochettino, for whom Sunday’s Carabao Cup final is the best way to save Chelsea’s season, and perhaps even his own ailing project.
Of course, history is against him. It has been more than ten years since the final provided a real surprise. Every winner since 2013 has also qualified for the Champions League, something Chelsea almost certainly will not achieve. For eight of the last ten winners, the League Cup was not the only trophy they lifted that season. If this competition was once an opportunity for upstarts and underdogs to disrupt the established order of English football – think Oxford, Leicester, Birmingham, Swansea – today it tends to uphold that same order, confirming what we already knew, and reward the serial winners.
Related: Chelsea will hope that the success of the Carabao Cup can be the first form of vindication
And so a Chelsea triumph at Wembley – after losing the last six finals there – would have wider significance than silverware or European qualification, or even Pochettino’s own future. Part of Chelsea’s modern identity is the ability to win even in the face of adversity or dysfunction. Coaches come and go, there is chaos, but still the pots keep coming. Both of their Champions League victories came from the mid-season mess. Antonio Conte all but burned the place down in 2018 but still emerged with an FA Cup. Since the takeover of Roman Abramovich, Chelsea have not gone two seasons in a row without a trophy. But unless Pochettino can claim one of the two domestic trophies, this is the fate that now awaits them.
How we got here is a question with multiple answers. And at this point it seems appropriate to draw a comparison with Liverpool, whose era of success has been built in exactly the opposite way to Chelsea’s: stability, sustainability, a coherent plan, familiar faces and an actual budget. Even the resignation of Jürgen Klopp – potentially a seismic and shattering event – has happened at a sober, stately pace. Klopp first informed the club of his intentions in November and will leave in June, meaning his departure will last about as long as Graham Potter’s entire reign at Chelsea.
In the red corner are patience and process, careful consultation and orderly follow-up. In the blue corner: disruption and disorder, constant unrest and Nicolas Jackson. What does this look like in practice, on the field? Take, for example, the two World Cup-winning midfielders of Chelsea and Liverpool, and the way their new clubs have tried to integrate them.
Alexis Mac Allister was not signed by Liverpool to play at the base of midfield. Most of his success at Brighton and Argentina came in a more advanced role, either as a number 10 or as one of two attacking number 8s. But with Fabinho and Jordan Henderson leaving in the summer and Chelsea beating them following the signings of Roméo Lavia and Moisés Caicedo, Mac Allister started the season in a deeper role. “It was clearly not the [original] idea,” Mac Allister said recently. “But we didn’t have a real number 6, so I had to do the work.”
And it was fine. The walls did not collapse. More recently, Mac Allister has moved to a role further upfield where he has felt equally comfortable. “I’m not sure what the natural position is for players who can really play football,” Klopp said ahead of the midweek match against Luton, where Mac Allister provided two assists. “We need to get rid of these clear structures of who is where. Alexis can play in different positions. He has the tactical brain.”
In contrast, when Pochettino talks about Enzo Fernández and his evolving role over the course of the season, tactical intelligence is barely mentioned. Fernández was signed for £106 million last January after co-owner Todd Boehly saw him play in the World Cup, and is already on his third Chelsea manager. During his time in charge at the club last season, Frank Lampard was asked how he saw Fernández’s best position. “I didn’t actually ask him that question,” Lampard admitted.
This season, Pochettino Fernández has shuffled between a more withdrawn role where he can get more touches, and a more advanced role where he can contribute more to the attack.
“The ability to move and run, I think, is improving a lot,” Pochettino said this week. “He’s improving a lot, his ability to move around the field. He is a player with the ability to be box-to-box, he has the ability to score goals because of the technique he has.”
So here we have Mac Allister switching positions freely, but that’s the idea, with Klopp essentially trusting him to sort things out on the pitch. And we see Enzo switch positions freely, but for reasons that are never quite made clear, and that seem more related to his engine and his ability to cover ground. On the field, the effect can be much the same. But only one of these approaches actually focuses on player development, on encouraging the player to see themselves as a decision maker rather than as a work unit.
None of these in themselves say anything about how 90 minutes of football on Sunday will go. This is the basic truth of Boehlyball: gather enough expensive talent in one place, point it vaguely in the right direction and every now and then the pieces will align and make you look like a genius. And if it does, it will become largely indistinguishable from a compelling and rigorous 10-year plan. This is the anti-ideology that has essentially supported Chelsea for more than two decades, and which may yet carry Chelsea to victory here. After all, once you’re on the winners’ podium, no one cares whether you got there on purpose or by accident.