John Terry cropped up in Antonio Conte’s pre-match briefing for Sunday’s game. It says much about the Italian’s reinvention of this team over recent months that the subject of Chelsea’s captain of 15 years had rather faded from the news agenda. There had been talk of the England setup using the defender as a mentor for younger players, or of coaching opportunities ahead, and almost an assumption his playing days are all but over. Conte was not quite having that.
The centre-half is still recovering from a muscle problem in his buttock, ruling him out of the visit of West Bromwich Albion to Stamford Bridge, and has played six minutes since mid-September, but he has a role to play if this team are to extend their winning run.
“He’s still a footballer who is just injured at the moment, but he’s continuing to be a leader in the changing room,” Conte said. “John asked me if he could come with us to Manchester City and stay with us before and during the game. That was important for me: John is our captain and you are a captain if you play or not, or if you are injured or not. He’s showing great commitment at the moment, and I’m pleased with this.”
That is a very different role to organising and inspiring, barking orders and summoning tackles on the pitch, but it is one the 35-year-old has embraced. He is still there cajoling and encouraging, attempting to coax progress from Kurt Zouma after his own long-term injury problems or offering Nathaniel Chalobah advice on making his mark.
The veteran is studying for his Uefa coaching badges and has been spied, stopwatch in hand, overseeing the unused substitutes’ post-match warm-down sessions during his absence from the first team. The interest from abroad that will surface formally in January as his contract enters its final six months – led most likely by his former team-mate Gus Poyet pushing Shanghai Shenhua to offer the player terms – will not distract him. Terry feels he still has a role still to play in this club’s title challenge and that will be his focus.
His absence from the team has created a void into which Conte hopes others will now step. Chelsea are not blessed with the same imposing characters of the recent past, when Petr Cech and Frank Lampard, or Didier Drogba and Terry, would maintain standards and drive the team on. The manager has conceded it is time for some to grow. “It’s important to increase the leadership qualities in the other players,” he said. “I like to see this and I ask it of my players, but we are improving on this aspect.” And they are coming from unlikely sources.
Gary Cahill is a player reborn in Conte’s back three, and a centre-half who is benefiting from David Luiz’s charisma and César Azpilicueta’s consistent excellence at his side. Eden Hazard has publicly admitted he has to raise his team-mates with pure skill on the ball rather than any tub-thumping in the dressing-room. “I will never be like John Terry in that respect,” he said recently. “But I can still be a leader in my own way.” The same might apply to Diego Costa. The striker joined his manager and team-mate Pedro Rodríguez in claiming a personal award for his performances for November – Chelsea have the manager and player of the month for the second time in succession, while Pedro scored the most eye-catching goal to complete the clean sweep – and has arguably become the biggest inspiration of all.
Costa used to be trouble. His was such a surly presence for most of last season and disquiet has now surfaced from within his camp over successive summers suggesting he still pines for life back at Atlético Madrid. Yet, from the petulant figure waving his arms in frustration at Conte during the victory over Leicester City in mid-October early on in the team’s revival, he has suddenly become an example for all to follow. He still bullies his markers brutally, as Nicolás Otamendi discovered so uncomfortably at the Etihad Stadium, but his weight of goals – 43 in 68 Premier League games, even with one largely duff season incorporated – sets him apart.
Just as significantly, he no longer appears a player at war with the world. He has gone nine games without a caution, a fourth of the term for some industrial language directed at the referee, Michael Oliver, at Arsenal when Chelsea last lost in the league. The striker has never gone so long without a card in his 11-year professional career.
Conte could not really pinpoint what he has done to curb Costa’s inner fury while maintaining an acceptable level of aggression in his approach. “Diego is a real warrior and good for the team, because every game is a battle – a sporting battle – and it’s important to have warriors in your side. He’s improving a lot and putting his passion in the team in the best way.”
Even the manager had to fight to suppress his incredulity at recalling Costa the peacemaker during the melee, sparked by Sergio Agüero’s lunge on David Luiz, at the end of the victory at Manchester City. “Diego is showing his best side now. Before, all we heard was he was showing ‘bad passion’. Now he’s showing his real character.”
All the frustration that would leave him a raging bull surrounded by opposition defenders has been channelled, his focus now on movement, strength and maintaining a goal tally swollen already to 11 in 14 league games. “In every game I ask the same things of my players: to be focused on the game, be focused to play football, only this,” Conte said. “The other situations don’t matter. Is Costa the best striker in England now? Yes, but I’d always talk up my players. If you ask me the best goalkeeper or the best defender, I say my players. My players. I trust in them.”
There were times last season when Chelsea could not place such trust in a loose cannon of a forward, but now they take reassurance from his presence. The Brazil-born Spain international is not the same kind of driving force as Terry, and the club’s natural born leader will always be missed, but this team are filling the void.
