How Maurizio Sarri could be the making of Ross Barkley at Chelsea
Barkley played his his first full competitive game since May 2017 at Wembley and he's relishing the season to come
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Your support makes all the difference.For Ross Barkley the relief was obvious, and so was the promise. The most frustrating season of his adult career was behind him at last.
On the pitch, last season could hardly have gone much worse. He made just four brief appearances, only two starts, never completing 90 minutes. They all came after his £15million move from Everton to Chelsea, but he could never get fully fit enough to justify his presence at Stamford Bridge.
This year is already is already different. Barkley has been a regular for Maurizio Sarri in pre-season and on Sunday he played 90 minutes against Manchester City in the Community Shield. It was his first full competitive game since May 2017, when he was still at Everton and Ronald Koeman was trying to convince him to sign a new contract.
Now he has got this far, Barkley can finally look forward to making an impression on the new season. “I played 90 minutes for the first time for a long time,” he said after the Community Shield at Wembley on Sunday. “I felt really good out there and game by game I'm going to be feeling much stronger going into the season.”
Injury setbacks are nothing new to Barkley. He missed a whole year at the age of 16 when he broke his leg playing for England Under-19s, slowing down his development at Everton under David Moyes. Barkley insisted that he “always responds well to them”, but admitted how hard it was as a lifelong footballer to get used to a long spell away from the game.
“You miss the feeling on the pitch, you miss hitting the back of the net, you miss the winning feeling,” Barkley described. “That's what drives me. I just miss being out on the grass. As a young lad it's been your dream to play football and you get injuries and you've got to respond well to them and work really hard, because it's your dream to be on the pitch.”
But since Sarri arrived at Chelsea last month Barkley has been handed the chance to get back on the pitch again. Sarri has said that he likes Barkley, because for his high-intensity aggressive pressing football he needs footballers with all of the obvious attributes that Barkley has. Seeing Barkley charging around at Wembley on Sunday he looked like player who Sarri might want to help set the tempo in his Chelsea side this year, and with the energy to break forward in those high-speed interchanges that characterised Sarri’s brilliant Napoli side.
The Premier League season has not even started yet but Barkley has enjoyed what he has seen of Sarri so far and is excited about putting his football ideas into practice on the pitch.
“We're still learning and getting to know the new manager's way of playing,” Barkley said. “I'll play any style of play for any manager, but it is my type of style. He's an attacking manager, he wants exciting football, to be high up the pitch pressing, scoring goals and being exciting, scoring a lot of goals, team performances all round.”
Barkley has been watching footage of Napoli from last season, to see how their attacking players move and combine on the pitch, and so he can get a head-start in learning what he has to do at Chelsea. Barkley failed to make any real impression under Conte, but Sarri could be the man to provide the structure he has desperately lacked in his career. Barkley is still young and raw enough to be moulded by Sarri, which is a thrilling prospect for English football.
“I've watched clips (of Napoli) just to see the way they played, out of possession and in possession,” Barkley said. “I've seen how they played last season, and against Manchester City last season in the Champions League. They were a really exciting team, one-twos all over the pitch, one and two-touch football. Goals from all around the pitch. It was exciting football, and they were unfortunate not to win the league last season.”
There may well be some regret from Sarri about last year and his failure to win Serie A with Napoli. But Barkley will have his own regrets too about his bad luck with injuries. This season they can help each other get what they need.
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