Granting a Wish

By: Sam | May 1st, 2008

Avram Grant in the Champions League semifinal Avram Grant’s new respect comes from his and Chelsea’s advancement past Jose Mourinho’s highest achievement (with Chelsea) in the Champion’s League. It is well-earned because he could have done very well indeed and still failed to get here — and no one be the wiser.

What has he done?

You have to recognize that Chelsea’s surging form — the timing of it — is 90% of this success. This is a high-quality, competitive group of men and of players. Sooner or later, having tasted the culture of togetherness under Jose they would have figured out the recipe themselves with no help from any manager. It made Grant’s lose-lose situation particularly surreal.

This is what has happened in my view. Grant is talented & smart enough to let the players be themselves and he’s taken himself out of the way. And in backing off the too-cerebral, too-tactical approach to the game, Grant has earned the players’ trust and created the environment in which Chelsea are reaching a natural form — devastatingly athletic, fast-paced and able to score when they really need it. Basically in the mold of Mourinho’s & Abramovich’s intensions in assembling this group.

It’s coming at just the right time — and precisely when Manchester United’s form suggests they peaked sometime back in March.

Yet it’s not so simple that Grant has done a laissez faire self-removal. Chelsea performed the best under Jose Mourinho at those times when Mourinho was drawing the most heat from the press (and often creating heat out of nothing) just to distract the negative attention away from the players. This is a form of Jujitsu, a sleight of hand, in which Mourinho found his most effective character — obstreperous, obnoxious, cantankerous, egotistical, yet still magnetically charismatic, playful & funny.

If the one-word answers in last week’s press conference are indicative, Grant has picked up the Mourinho technique and is putting it to use in his own style.

But not everything up Avram Grant’s sleeve is inherited or borrowed from Special One. This is a common and large mistake. Avram Grant has done a few things of his own; and he has weathered whithering criticism for tactical mistakes — many of which are the kinds of moves necessary for a different manager to merely do the work.

Grant’s tweaks to the Makelele | Lampard | Ballack trio in the midfield — what I have called Chelsea’s “Meat Grinder” — is among the prominent examples. Claude plays that Holding position better than anyone in the world. But it was Mourinho who introduced the “Wishbone” of Lampard and Essien ahead of Claude to complement Makelele’s talent at harrying, tying up & stripping ball. Chelsea’s primary gift is its speed at springing quickly into attack in a change of possession from Makelele through Lamps or Essien.

Well, Grant’s contribution to this was his brilliant discovery of Micheal Essien as a right back. Essien is a great right back because he’s so darned well-rounded. He must be on the field, right? Because pound-for-pound he’s one of the best footballers in the world. But his routing to right back — arguably an idiotic thing; but also arguably its own piece of genius — made room for Michael Ballack in the Wishbone.

Here is where Ballack has gathered his confidence (which was never given daylight under Mourinho) and is complementing Lampard so well and scoring his own goals that Chelsea find themselves on the doorstep of a Double, just when it looked like United were a cert for it. A Double in this day and age is really something, whoever might earn it.

Sheva is an interesting case. I still think he is a fine footballer. But not fitting in is not the player’s fault because Chelsea’s pace just simply doesn’t suit his more deliberate gifts of space creation, surprise & finish about the box. Roman may wish for his friend to fit in, but I don’t think it’s in the cards; and it’s a credit to Grant not to have forced the issue beyond the obvious. He tried. Next?

Avram Grant may not take Chelsea to the Double this year — or even one of the two prizes. But he deserves another year with this fine group of players. And something tells me they won’t mind because he’s got the nerve and the sensitivity to figure things out as he goes along.