Yes obviously agree with you on the fundamental issue under Sarri being his role in the offensive phase, but disagree that has no correlation to his position on the park – it’s obviously related to the fact he was taking up positions higher up the pitch ahead of a deeper midfielder in Jorgino (which is the formation most similar to the one here frankly).
Also disagree with you that he wasn’t the deepest midfielder for Ranieri / Conte – both times he played in double pivots and was equally as deep as Matic / Drinkwater (in fact there are some stats that suggest Matic was more advanced than Kante). In this game he is positioned on the formation graphic in a 4-3-3 formation ahead of a single pivot in Pirlo, which is not the role he played under Ranieri, Conte or in the world cup winning side for Deschamps.
You can see the change of position under Ranieri, Conte and Sarri in these heat maps – there’s a whole load of them here (
link) and these are the first ones in the list for each manager so I haven’t selectively chosen these. All games are 3-0 wins for Kante’s team so it’s the same ‘type’ of game and you can quite clearly see how much deeper he is under Ranieri and Conte than Sarri – so the requirement to be a greater part of the attacking phase was a direct consequence of him moving positions ahead of Jorginho as opposed to just a tactical switch. The two things are correlated.
Also just to clarify you seem to be assuming that when I say Kante was part of a deep double pivot that means he must have been a ‘holding player’ but I never made that argument – I’m obviously aware that Kante’s style of defending is based on heavy pressing and closing down of players, the point is that he was generally pressing horizontally across the midfield areas as opposed to vertically high up the pitch as he did under Sarri. Under both Ranieri and Conte he was doing that as part of a deep central midfield pairing as opposed to ahead of a pivot.
Here’s a graphic showing his different approaches under Ranieri and Conte – in both he rarely ventured high up the park and mostly patrolled the midfield areas. The biggest difference is that under Ranieri he pressed much wider, whereas Conte’s more structured style had him sitting deeper in more restrained central areas.
Also just to add – in terms of Kante not being a ‘deep midfielder’ you might remember when Kante first joined Chelsea there was commentary about him being asked to play a sitting Makelele role.. which is extremely deep and genuinely is a holding position. Obviously Conte moved away from that system post-the Arsenal defeat but it shows that he wasn’t playing this advanced hounding role which you’re suggesting. Another (quite surprising) stat to back that up would be (pre-3-0 vs Arsenal) Matic covering more ground than Kante for Chelsea (11.88 km vs 11.34 km) and generally pushing higher up the park whilst Kante sat and screened deeper.
In terms of the 3-4-2-1 that Conte moved to (which was Kante at his best winning Play of the Year) Kante was equally as deep as Matic in a solid double pivot, again Matic pushing up and contributing offensively with 7 assists in the league – by far his highest total ever and the 3rd highest in the Chelsea team. Kante also made almost twice as many interceptions than Matic (2.4 pg vs 1.4 pg) as he shielded the defence as well as closed down in terms of ball-winning - honestly the idea there was a deeper player in Matic with Kante pressing the ball up the park is really far off.
There’s a decent video from Tifo which talks about the 3-4-2-1 of Conte, quite short but shows how the double pivot worked and talks about the importance of Kante as a defensive shield freeing up the rest of the Chelsea team (i.e. the wing-backs) to move forward and attack.
