The star Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kante might be on his way to Barcelona in the upcoming transfer window. Kante has made only 22 appearances for the Blues in this season because of his injury. The 29-year-old French midfielder is currently not having a great time at Stamford Bridge. He has been in and out of the team at times this term.
The Frenchman is one of the best defensive midfielders if not the best at this moment. The club management of the Blues brought him in the summer transfer window of 2016-17 season. Kante was an important part of Leicester City’s fairytale Premier League win in 2015-16 season. After that season, the club management of the Blues was able to convince him to come at Stamford Bridge.
N’Golo Kante was forced to leave Chelsea vs. Manchester United after just 13 minutes due to injury 🤕 pic.twitter.com/RDowf74g0E
— B/R Football (@brfootball) February 17, 2020
Why Kante Is Essential To Chelsea’s Success?
Kante won the Premier League title again with Chelsea in the next season under the management of Antonio Conte. N’Golo Kante was always used as a defensive midfielder by Antonio Conte. Kante also won the World Cup for his National side in 2018. However, the things started to change when Maurizio Sarri was appointed as the manager of the Blues in 2018-19 season. The Italian manager brought in Jorginho from his previous club Napoli.
Maurizio Sarri used to play Jorginho as the ‘Regista’ who was supposed to control the gameplay of the whole team from the defensive midfield position. It was not the typical defensive midfielder role. So, N’Golo Kante was not fit for that position. Moreover, Jorginho’s distribution is better than that of Kante.
So, Maurizio Sarri started to use N’Golo Kante as a box-to-box midfielder. However, Kante’s attacking stats are not as good as his defensive stats. So, he has started to struggle to cope up at the new position in the midfield. The fans of Chelsea have expected that the situation will change after the appointment of Frank Lampard. However, things have not gone the way as expected.
Lampard’s Tactics And Kante’s Role?
Frank Lampard has started to implement 4-2-3-1 formation at Chelsea after his arrival. He also has given Kante the box-to-box midfielder role, while keeping Jorginho behind him in the pitch. After that, the Frenchman had picked up an injury. Mateo Kovacic has taken his place in the side. The stats are saying that Chelsea have won the most number of games this season when Mateo Kovacic and Jorginho have played together in the midfield.
Barcelona, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain are interested in landing N’Golo Kante in the next summer window. Barcelona are ahead of the other two clubs in the race because of another reason. The club management of Barcelona wants a swap deal between N’Golo Kante and Phillipe Coutinho. Phillipe Coutinho has no future at Barcelona and his current club Bayern Munich (where he has been loaned out) are also not interested to sign the player with a permanent deal.
However, Kante confirmed that he would not leave Chelsea unless the club management told him to do so. So, things will certainly get interesting in the coming days as the Blues have to decide whether to keep or sell this star.
