Manchester United need a Maurizio Sarri of their own

When Manchester United face Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea on Saturday, they will see what the right new manager can do for a club.

There aren’t many places Jose Mourinho knows as well as Stamford Bridge. It’s a stadium which has witnessed arguably the greatest moments of the Portuguese’s career — his first Premier League title win, and his last, as well as countless famous victories over old foes. Mourinho can’t claim to have built the King’s Road ground in the same way Arsene Wenger can with the Emirates, but the spirit of Chelsea today very much evokes that of its greatest ever manager.

However, Mourinho will walk through the Stamford Bridge door this weekend a very unfamiliar figure to the many who got to know him over a collective five years, in two separate stints, as Chelsea boss. The sparkle is gone, as is the charm. Mourinho, as a coach, is a control freak, but he has lost his grip on things at Manchester United in recent weeks and months. Some even believe his job is under threat.

Of course, Mourinho suffered similar issues in his final season at Chelsea, leaving the club slumped in 16th place in the Premier League table, but his current problems feel more existential, as do Manchester United’s. The club have been hollowed out by their experiences over the past few years, with a sense of deep-set malaise bringing everyone down around Old Trafford. Getting rid of Mourinho would only solve part of the problem.

Chelsea found themselves in a relatively similar situation last season. Things had grown stagnant at the club, which stagnation manifested itself in the insipid performances of Antonio Conte’s side on the pitch. They didn’t just need a new manager, but a whole new approach and ideology. That’s what they got when they hired Maurizio Sarri.

The appointment of Sarri was somewhat unusual for a club of Chelsea’s size and ambition. The Italian, after all, has never won a single piece of silverware. From Mourinho to Carlo Ancelotti, Luiz Felipe Scolari to Conte, Chelsea have always gone after winners. Even Andre Villas-Boas, perhaps the riskiest appointment ever made by Chelsea in the Roman Abramovich era, had won the Europa League.

Sarri didn’t fit that bill, though. He fulfilled another criteria. At Napoli, he had forged one of the most exciting, dynamic teams in all of Europe, running Juventus close in a title race last season. They might not have been crowned champions, but Sarri’s Napoli served a reminder to many in Italy of what soccer could be.

Chelsea wanted, and needed, a piece of this. So far, Sarri has delivered, with Chelsea already playing a swaggering, high-tempo, high-intensity brand of football that has supporters and neutrals enthusing. Even if they don’t finish the season as Premier League champions, Chelsea have succeeded in revitalizing the club.

And so with Manchester United set to make the trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea this weekend, it’s clear: They desperately need their own Sarri. A precedent has been set for them to follow, with Chelsea willing to look beyond the kind of candidates they would ordinarily target to find something different.

Whether this is likely or not is another matter. United are a club ruled by non-soccer figures. Success at Old Trafford is measured as much, if not more, by what happens off the pitch as what happens on it. When executive vice-chairman and public face of the Manchester United board Ed Woodward talks of progress, he speaks about share prices, social media impressions and App Store ratings, not points and trophies.

But if there is a genuine desire within the corridors of Old Trafford to fix what is broken at the club, they should look at how Chelsea went about addressing similar problems. Finding another Sarri might prove difficult, but his hiring sets an example for United. Look in different places and you might just find something, well, different.