All too often people judge players in football based on their perception of what they feel the player should do. Unfortunately, that is often not within the context of what the player should be doing with respect to the coach’s guidance and tactics. This is why you see people (even hilariously pundits) chiming in for N’golo Kante to play the holding DM role (which he’s not really ever done at club level) to replace Jorginho, for Chelsea.
Now, mind you, those that understand Sarri’s tactics and style just laugh and shrug this off, because it’s ridiculous, but the anti-Jorginho chatter has now evolved to claim he’s not even good at the role he’s intended to play. It’s like poor-rhetoric-ooze grew some legs and climbed up out of the sea to become a new form of bad judgement. We all should have seen it coming (thanks Darwin!) but we didn’t.
Believe this if you dare, but there are now people claiming that Jorginho doesn’t pass forward. Beyond the absurd comparisons to Mikel (he scores when he wants!) that aren’t even accurate, as he didn’t just pass sideways either (another article in the future), it’s simply not accurate. Not remotely accurate. Now, perhaps because folks are watching it on a TV in their pub, and half-drunk, they are perceiving a left-to-right pass via camera angle as not actually forward, but beyond that I cannot understand this.
I decided to sift through the data, to point out some obvious facts.
- Fact #1 – Jorginho does in fact pass forward –
66% of the time, in fact. Of his 1997 total pass attempts in league play this season, 1318 have been “forward”. - Fact #2 – Jorginho doesn’t just recycle possession – 27.4% of his total passes have targeted the final third.
- Fact #3 – He does make long passes – 50 of them so far, of 72 attempts. A nice 69% rate, his best since 2013/14, when he first moved to Napoli.
- Fact #4 – Jorginho makes forward passes in the final third – Of his 95.1 average pass attempts per match, 24.1 of them are forward passes in the final third. 33.6 of them are forward passes in the middle third.
I made a couple of charts, showing by match some of his passing numbers.
This is showing his distribution by pitch third, as well as his pass accuracy and his forward pass % of total, by match week. He spends little time passing to the back third, regardless of what people think they see. The only two three matchweeks he had an abnormally high rate of defensive third passing were 7, 14, and 16 (Liverpool, Fulham, Man City).
This one is showing passing numbers: Total Passes, Total Forward Passes, Middle Third Forward Passes, and Forward Third Forward Passes.
As can be seen, most of what he does is forward passing, people simply expect him to make 15-20 hollywood balls a-la Cesc Fabregas every match, which is an absurd expectation, and has little to do with the tactics of Sarrismo. Rather he controls possession from behind, attempting to create scoring possession chains from behind, and help allow forward runs into space via back and forth vertical passing. It’s not Jorginho’s fault that the Chelsea attacking 6 are for the most part not making good runs.
There are plenty of good resources online via articles and youtube videos, explaining the tactics of Sarrismo and why a player like Jorginho is important to the tactics. It’s a shame more people don’t go educate themselves better, and instead try to parrot bad information.
