How Mourinho’s Azpilicueta Experiment Backfired Despite Chelsea Win

Cesar Azpilicueta was somewhat of a shock inclusion by Jose Mourinho when Chelsea took on Schalke in the Champions League this week. Regular left-back Ashley Cole was injured, so there were no surprises to see him not named in the starting team, but many had assumed that his replacement would be Ryan Bertrand—a player who is more accomplished playing on the left hand side of the field than the 2012 summer signing in Azpilicueta.

However, the surprising selection of Azpilicueta was what Mourinho opted to go with on the night, and while the Blues walked away from the Veltins Arena with all three points and a clean sheet, it’s fairly safe to say that he won’t be picking the Spaniard on the left again any time soon.

The 24-year-old finished the night with a relatively sound performance on paper, anyway, with three tackles, two interceptions and four clearances to his name.

But the reality was that Schalke threatened to exploit him on the left all night, and very nearly did so through both Julian Draxler and even right-back Atsuto Uchida.

Uchida’s Action Areas Map shows just how much time and space he was afforded inside the Blues’ half, and how ineffective Azpilicueta was in shutting him down. The Japanese defender misplaced just six passes in Chelsea’s half all night and created two goal-scoring chances, and caused Azpilicueta real problems as he tried to work it out from the back—forcing the defender to misplace eight passes inside his own half between himself and Christian Clemens.

Perhaps the most alarming fact for Chelsea will be that both Clemens and Uchida spent more time in the deepest part of the right flank than Azpilicueta did. Clemens spent 23.94% of his time there; Uchida 23.58%, while the Spaniard only registered 12.36%.

Too often he was caught out of position—pressing too high—and that allowed the Germans to get in behind him and bring about goal-scoring opportunities in the middle. Had Schalke been more clinical with their finishing on the night, the final score could have looked very different in the end for the west London club.

Azpilicueta wasn’t the worst Chelsea player according to Squawka’s Performance Score, but he wasn’t far from it. Constantly caught out of position and giving his opposing number too much time in attack, the Spaniard could easily have hurt the Blues’ defence a lot more than he did in on the night, and Chelsea can count themselves fortunate that they didn’t lose this match because of him.