Chelsea want Sarri, the chain-smoking inventor of 'Sarri-ball' who has a fan in Guardiola

Pep Guardiola is generally a good judge of footballing genius and, to his mind, there are few excelling greater than Maurizio Sarri right now.

The Manchester City manager has had Napoli’s games on record in his city centre apartment, marvelling at the way in which he believes Sarri has transformed Italian football.

Chelsea have been an interested party too, with Sarri seemingly set for a job at Stamford Bridge once Antonio Conte’s said his goodbyes.

The 59-year-old has a fan in Guardiola, who claimed he is ‘one of the best coaches in the world’. That comes from studying Napoli, who ran Juventus so close to the Serie A title earlier this month.

‘With the ball, they are fantastic,’ City’s boss said before the Champions League group games. ‘For me, they are one of the three best teams right now in Europe.’

That is down to Sarri, who has defied the odds somewhat, particularly given Diego Maradona’s slight when he was appointed three years’ ago.

His ethos, a focus on quick rotation of possession and a tigerish attitude to winning the ball back, is certainly similar to City. It has been coined ‘Sarri-ball’ and would take Chelsea up a notch from the sort of style that has won them the Premier League and FA Cup under Conte.

Sarri is a man with cigarette in one hand and espresso the other during training sessions. He’s still fairly new to management, only being given his first Serie A job in 2014 and only left banking to pursue coaching full-time in 1999.

Coaching was a part-time hobby when working for as a banker for Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena in Tuscany. Sarri was on his sixth club, Tegoleto, when he finally quit his job and took up coaching permanently.

He is a workhorse, and meticulous with it. His players at Sansovino – in Italy’s sixth tier between 2000 and 2003 – were working on 33 different set-piece routines on the training ground. Little wonder he earned the nickname 'Mister 33' and it is a surprise he stayed with amateur teams for such a long time.

Now Sarri has proven he is a tactical innovator at Napoli and some of that derives from his methods behind closed doors as well as a pursuit of attractive football.

At Empoli, his first Serie A job before Naples came calling, the onus was on solidifying themselves defensively and the decision to buy a drone and film training was inspired.

Many have done that since but at the time it was a clever move, Empoli’s defence provided the backbone to staying in the division against the odds.

‘He will change something important and will be important for Italian football,’ Guardiola added.

He has, in the way in which Napoli have fearlessly attacked the division, but the writing appeared to be on the wall last month when Sarri diverted his eyes towards England because of the supreme dominance of Juve.

‘The only hope is that in life, everything has to end sometime,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later, the domination will end.

‘I must say, seeing the Premier League have this constant alternation of winners every year, it grows the love for teams and makes everyone have hope of success.

‘It’s a different situation here in Italy. The risk is that we’ll lose many fans, because they cheer on teams that will never win and they know that too well.’