Jorginho can show Guardiola what he missed out on as City face Chelsea

When Manchester City travel to Stamford Bridge on Saturday, they may look longingly at Chelsea’s midfield orchestrator, Jorginho.

Pep Guardiola thought the deal was done. Manchester City might even have kept a spare seat on their plane across the Atlantic for the preseason tour of America. The Premier League champions had made Jorginho their top target for the summer and all signs pointed to the Brazilian-born Italian international becoming their next marquee signing.

Of course, we all know how the saga ended, with Jorginho ultimately opting for a reunion with his former manager Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea. This weekend, Jorginho will come face-to-face with the team he could have joined, with the manager he turned down. The hypothetical alternative is too irresistible not to imagine — what if he’d made a different choice?

Jorginho would have been perfect for City. It’s easy to see why Guardiola was so keen on the 26-year-old. He’s a player that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Guardiola’s great Barcelona side — technically excellent on the ball, expansive yet secure in his passing, well-drilled in his discipline, but fluid enough to be creative.

In fact, Jorginho would have been a better fit for City than he was for Chelsea. Sarri sold his former Napoli maestro on the notion of revolution, that with the two men at Stamford Bridge Chelsea would become a completely different sort of team, but Jorginho likely would have felt more comfortable at the Etihad Stadium.

The argument could be made that City haven’t really missed Jorginho. Guardiola’s side are, after all, the pace-setters at the top of the Premier League, winning 13 of their 15 fixtures played so far, and drawing the other two. City set a relentless pace last season, but on the basis of the first few months of the 2018-19 campaign, they haven’t eased up.

But still, Jorginho would have made them a better team. The Italian international would have taken the place of Fernandinho in Guardiola’s lineup, edging City that little bit closer to their coach’s grand vision. Alongside the two Silvas — Bernardo and David — and Kevin de Bruyne, Jorginho would have had the sort of support structure that surely would have seen him thrive.

Fernandinho remains a key component of Guardiola’s midfield unit. He might well be the only member who is completely indispensable given City’s lack of a deputy, but it’s somewhat perilous that a team as good as the Premier League champions are so dependent on a 33-year-old.

At Chelsea, Sarri has struggled to find a role for both Jorginho and N’Golo Kante. The former has been installed as first-choice at the base of their midfield three, which has pushed the latter into a slight less familiar position higher up the pitch. This hasn’t proved so popular with Chelsea fans, who hold Kante so dear to their hearts, but Sarri has doubled down on this strategy in recent weeks. He isn’t going to buckle.

Sarri’s biggest challenge is in changing the identity of Chelsea as a team. He’s charged with dismantling and then rebuilding the style and philosophy first imposed on the club by Jose Mourinho nearly 15 years ago. Every successful Chelsea manager since then has used that ideology as a platform.

Jorginho, more than any other player, will be used by Sarri to start from scratch. This Saturday’s clash against City will offer Chelsea a yardstick to measure just how far they’ve come over the early part of the season. Parallels can be drawn between Sarri and Guardiola’s ideologies and City, as Premier League table-toppers, offer Chelsea something to aspire to.

One wonders if Jorginho, on some level, regrets not joining Guardiola’s City, as so many (including Guardiola) believed he would. It could never be said that working under the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach would be easier — we’ve all seen footage of his intensive training sessions — but the Etihad might have harnessed Jorginho in a way Stamford Bridge hasn’t so far.

That regret must also be felt pretty acutely by Guardiola. Fernandinho is enjoying a good season, but he has been moulded to fit the philosophy of his manager. He’s not a natural Guardiola figure like Jorginho is. Guardiola will be faced with what he could have had this weekend.