SOCCER: Chelsea v Marseille:IT IS difficult to think of anything that flusters Carlo Ancelotti, Chelsea's laconic and utterly single-minded manager, and it was clear a first defeat of the season at the hands of Manchester City would not threaten his equilibrium.
The Italian has turned the shrug into his trademark and he has no time anyway to look back over his shoulder. His focus is on the next game, which pits him tonight at Stamford Bridge against Marseille in Champions League Group F.
Yet Ancelotti is long enough in the tooth to know when a big club lose, the inquests always run deep.
And so he found himself forced to address the issue of the balance of his squad.
In the 1-0 defeat at Eastlands, Ancelotti had named five rookies among his substitutes. It felt somewhat surreal that as the City manager, Roberto Mancini, sent on Adam Johnson, Emmanuel Adebayor and Jerome Boateng, Ancelotti’s third change, with his team chasing the game, was to introduce the 17-year-old attacking midfielder Josh McEachran.
Against Marseille, Ancelotti’s bench will once again be stocked with youthful promise rather than experience as he is unable to name more than two senior players as substitutes.
They will most likely be Paulo Ferreira and Yuri Zhirkov, and the number would decrease further if the latter were to force his way into the starting line-up ahead of Daniel Sturridge or Gael Kakuta.
It is not as though Ancelotti is in the throes of a selection crisis. Frank Lampard remains unavailable following hernia surgery – he will miss the home fixture with Arsenal on Sunday and England’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Montenegro – while Yossi Benayoun, Salomon Kalou and Jose Bosingwa are also injured. Didier Drogba is suspended after his red card against Internazionale last season.
Chelsea’s rivals would love to see how they might cope with an injury and suspension crisis and, in that event, there would inevitably be questions raised about the club’s summer transfer policy, when a clutch of established players, principally Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack, Joe Cole, Deco and Juliano Belletti, were allowed to leave and only Benayoun and Ramires were signed.
There will be none, however, from Ancelotti.
His faith in the club’s youngsters is total and, like so many supporters, he gets a charge out of seeing them progress. Much could yet rest on the shoulders of Sturridge, Kakuta, McEachran, Jeffrey Bruma and Patrick van Aanholt. Ancelotti feels that each of them is ready.
“I have a lot of options,” he said. “Up front, we have to consider that Sturridge and Kakuta are Chelsea [first-team] players. And McEachran also. It’s normal to have injuries and this is not a problem for us.
“Experience is a good thing and it’s important to have that as a squad but if one of the young players is able to play, the experience will come. It is a very good moment. We have a good mix; young players who are improving and others with experience.”
The subject of the substitutions at Eastlands was raised and it was put to Ancelotti that Chelsea might have the best team in England but not the best squad.
“This is an opinion,” he replied. “I think that Kakuta is a fantastic player, maybe better than Adam Johnson. It depends on your point of view.”
Chelsea opened their Champions League campaign with a 4-1 victory at Zilina, while Marseille lost 1-0 at home to Spartak Moscow. Another win for Ancelotti’s team would see them assume a grip on qualification and that is all that concerns the manager.
“I don’t have to ask the players for a reaction [to the City defeat],” he said.
“I think that they will play a very good game because it’s an important game for us to arrive first in the group. Just for this. We didn’t use our power in the last game but we are able to and we need to.”
GuardianService
