For a moment, a handful of seconds, he seemed alone on the field. Straight as a post, holding the ball perfectly, he crossed the opposing half of the field before delivering the decisive pass for the second goal. That of the station wagon. Facing Lille (2-0), Tuesday, February 22, in the round of 16 first leg of the Champions League, N’Golo Kanté ultimately only did N’Golo Kanté. And it’s already huge.
To sum up the match of the new favorite skull of the French to this simple action would be very reductive. Facing Losc, everything went through him. Good chances like bad balls. And when the ball did not come to his feet, N’Golo Kanté went to look for it in those of his opponents. This was the case in the 29th minute before Hakim Ziyech does not suffer the return of Sven Botman in his area. This was again the case after returning from the locker room (54th), but this time it was Marcos Alonso who saw his strike blocked.
Faced with a sometimes overwhelmed Lille midfielder Xeka-André, Kanté devoured the spaces, always quickly putting himself in the right direction on oriented checks as clean as they seem easy, before launching his teammates to attack the wings. French, often in difficulty. In total, the No. 7 of the Blues accounts for 91% of successful passes. Better, itis the midfielder who has lost the fewest duels (46%), the two teams combined.
The Chelseaboys.
1-0 ⚪️ [22’] #CheLil pic.twitter.com/72t1nEEGtg
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) February 22, 2022
Over the course of the match, the English midfielder he composed with Mateo Kovacic continued to nibbling ground on his vis-à-vis. A strategic bias explained by the London technician Thomas Tuchel at the end of the meeting, at the microphone of Canal +: “In the second half, we looked for a solution to have three players in the middle, we changed the structure to have higher balls with N’Golo who was great today”.
“We started with a mid two flat, then Mateo (Kovacic) had a little problem, he went out. So I was a little more in front, I had a few balls to play higher and I’m happy. to have contributed to the work of the team”, soberly commented on the main interested party, still at the microphone of Canal +.
Ten days after winning the Club World Cup and five days before the English League Cup final against Liverpool, the man with the number of lungs written on the back of his shirt (7) has never seemed in trouble. As usual, he kept running, even in the void, until the final whistle. As brilliant as he is essential, Kanté is not necessarily a man of statistics. His assist for Pulisic is just his second in 26 C1 games. The first dated from December 2, 2020, against Sevilla FC.