Marc Cucurella may have been voted man of the match for Chelsea against Borussia Dortmund, but Kai Havertz was the man who made Graham Potter's game plan a success — and not simply because he scored the winning goal from the penalty spot at the second attempt.
In a match where Chelsea produced their most convincing high-level performance since beating AC Milan away in October, and despite having just 40 per cent of possession, Havertz was the team's link between defence and attack.
His attacking role became clear inside the first two minutes: dropping into his own half to receive a pass from Mateo Kovacic while scanning the field ahead of him before the ball arrives…
… then letting it run across his body to create an angle for a first-time pass behind the Dortmund defence for Raheem Sterling, who on this occasion is fractionally offside:
Note here that Havertz is not operating as a No 9, the position he has most often been shoehorned into at Chelsea ever since Potter's predecessor Thomas Tuchel lost faith in Timo Werner and Romelu Lukaku. Sterling was consistently the furthest man forward against Dortmund, tasked with stretching the Dortmund defence while the Germany international drifted into pockets of space behind him and linked attacks together.
You can see the average positions of Havertz (No 29) and Sterling (No 17) in the graphic below:
Havertz played 10 progressive passes — defined by Statsbomb as passes that move the ball at least 10 yards towards the opponents' goal — against Dortmund, more than double any other Chelsea player. As a left-footer, his tendency was to float towards the right side where, facing infield, he could pick between the greatest number of passing options.
The graphic below illustrates where Havertz had the bulk of his touches against Dortmund:
Here he is receiving the ball a little wider than that area, by the right touchline at the beginning of the second half, and directing Reece James to make an underlapping run forward:
James' run forces Emre Can to track him and Havertz uses the window created to clip a low diagonal pass into the feet of Sterling:
The England international spins Niklas Sule and quickly switches play out to an overlapping Ben Chilwell, whose attempted cross hits the hand of Marius Wolf, leading to the decisive penalty.
One of Havertz's less frequent forays over to the left had also helped create Chelsea's first goal. Under severe pressure from two Dortmund players, he manages to sneak a backheel between them into the path of Kovacic, who drives forward towards the penalty area. He is dispossessed but the ball breaks for Chilwell, who crosses low for Sterling to score:
Havertz's license to roam allowed him to do one of the things that made him such a coveted young attacker at Bayer Leverkusen: arrive late in the penalty area from deeper positions, rather than try to connect with crosses and through passes from a standing start in the box while battling bigger, more physical defenders.
Midway through the first half, again finding himself on the right side, Havertz threads a pass between three Dortmund players to James in a crossing position:
James' delivery is aimed towards Sterling. Dortmund half-clear it, but Havertz has quickly relocated to a spot where he can reach the loose ball unmarked. He meets it with a brilliant first-time shot that beats visiting goalkeeper Alexander Meyer and is extremely unlucky to cannon off the inside of the post, spin across the goalmouth and away to safety:
A similar dynamic unfolded later in the first half with Havertz following in a saved Sterling shot, gathering the ball on the edge of the penalty area and curling a brilliant shot in off the underside of the crossbar — only for Sterling's initial run behind the Dortmund defence to be flagged offside.
Havertz's speed also made him a threat on the run from his more withdrawn starting position beyond Sterling. In the eighth minute of Tuesday's match, he clicks into top gear the moment he sees Sterling heading the ball down towards the feet of Joao Felix:
Joao Felix plays a sublime first-time dink over the Dortmund defence on to the chest of Havertz as he runs through, and he barely breaks stride before setting himself for a fierce right-footed shot — only for a well-timed nudge from the recovering Can to throw him off balance and send his effort into the side netting.
Havertz had more shot attempts (four) than any other Chelsea player despite operating behind Sterling and, later, substitute Christian Pulisic. He had good opportunities to create even more for others in the second half as Dortmund took greater risks in search of an equalising goal.
Here he brings down a Kepa Arrizabalaga goal kick with a Dennis Bergkamp-esque first touch that sends him spinning into space…
… and draws another defender towards him before looking to spring Sterling. Unfortunately, the England international's touch is loose and the ball runs away from him:
In the final minute, he picks another smart position to show for a pass from substitute Ruben Loftus-Cheek:
Havertz's control wrong-foots Jude Bellingham, giving him the opportunity to run directly at the Dortmund defence with Pulisic in support:
Again he waits for the right moment to play the pass, but on this occasion he overhits it and Pulisic is pushed too wide to drive into the final third:
Barely a minute later, now into stoppage time, Havertz springs Chelsea forward again, gathering the ball won back by Denis Zakaria just inside his own half, drawing a defender towards him and dinking a pass into space into which the Switzerland international can charge:
In short, this performance was a reminder of everything that makes Havertz such a tantalising talent. Arriving just when doubts about him within the Chelsea fanbase were being voiced the loudest and when Potter most needed a win to ease pressure on his job, this contribution could not have been more timely.
Two years ago, it seemed Tuchel saw Havertz more clearly than most.
“He is a unique player,” Chelsea's former head coach said of his compatriot. “It's not so clear where he needs to settle. Does he need to settle on one special position? Or is he kind of a hybrid player? Today, I would say he's in between a nine and a 10.
“He's very comfortable in the box; he's very comfortable in high positions, he's very good at offensive headers, he has good timing to arrive in the box, good finishing, good composure in the box, around the box, and is very comfortable in high positions… so between nine and 10.”
So a 9.5, then. That was largely the way Tuchel deployed Havertz for the second half of the 2020-21 season, with Werner the forerunner to Sterling: the direct speedster who stretched and stressed opposition defences while Havertz exploited the spaces created and picked his moments to run into the penalty area.
Havertz rewarded Tuchel with the most convincing stretch of football in his Chelsea career, capped by a Champions League final-winning goal in Porto made possible by Werner's selfless decoy run to lure Ruben Dias away from the central area in front of Ederson.
Havertz evades Ederson to score Chelsea's winning goal against Manchester City in the 2021 Champions League final (Photo: Jose Coelho/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Things changed in 2021-22. As trust in Werner dwindled and Tuchel struggled with and then abandoned the idea of re-focusing his attack around Lukaku, he took to fielding Havertz at the point of Chelsea's attack as a Roberto Firmino-esque pressing No 9.
“What he gives us is huge volume,” Tuchel said of Havertz in February 2022. “He covers a lot of metres in high intensity, so he finds the intensity no matter what the system the opponent defends against us. He finds intensive runs, he finds distances. This is what makes him and he uses his body more and more.”
Havertz has worked hard ever since at the head of Chelsea's press under Tuchel and, more recently, under Potter, but he is badly miscast as the primary scorer in an elite team.
For starters, he does not even shoot as often as the players with that responsibility in rival Premier League teams; his average of 2.1 attempts per 90 this season is well short of the likes of Gabriel Jesus, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Marcus Rashford, who all register at least three shots per 90 minutes.
Havertz's best career tally for non-penalty goals in a league season is 14, registered for Leverkusen in 2018-19 when he was deployed first as the No 10 in a 4-2-3-1 by Heiko Herrlich, then as the right-sided attacking midfielder in replacement Peter Bosz's 3-4-2-1 system.
Operating higher up the pitch as a striker limits Havertz's opportunities to link play between the lines and arrive late into the box. If he tries to do so as the No 9, Chelsea's lack of an aggressive goalscoring wide forward like Salah or Rashford means lengthy spells of possession regularly fizzle out once they reach the opposition penalty area.
As you can see in the table below, the Havertz that carved open Dortmund at Stamford Bridge is statistically more similar to the version of Havertz who shone at Leverkusen in 2019-20:
Havertz's attacking numbers in focus vs Dortmund 2022-23 PL average/90 2019-20 (Leverkusen) average/90 Non-penalty xG0.30.330.31xA0.10.140.29Shot Attempts42.12.12Progressive Passes102.75.1Shot-Creating Actions42.14.5Take-ons (Success %)3 (100%)1.9 (28.9%)4.4 (47.9%)Progressive Passes Received57.59.2Touches444365.6Carries3324.142.4Progressive Carry Distance7448.1122.5
Is it possible to unlock this Havertz on a more regular basis in the Premier League? Dortmund were particularly accommodating opponents in this regard, aggressively pressing high up the pitch and leaving plenty of space behind their defence for Sterling to exploit, thereby stretching the game enough for Havertz to ignite transition attacks from the middle third.
Their approach turned it into something more akin to a classic Bundesliga match. Most of Chelsea's domestic opponents do not play this way, instead sitting in a low, compact defensive block and compressing the spaces between their lines. On these occasions, it might take more than the fast, direct running of Sterling and the width supplied by Chilwell and James to break the game open.
Chelsea's newly-restructured recruitment team are well aware that Havertz is not an ideal No 9, and a lack of time was the primary barrier to the club pursuing a true striker in an incredibly busy January transfer window. It is regarded internally as a top priority for the summer, in addition to the long-awaited arrival of prolific forward Christopher Nkunku from RB Leipzig.
Until then, Potter will have to find enough goals with the imperfect array of options currently at his disposal. Havertz has undeniably been part of Chelsea's broader scoring problems over the past two years. But his masterclass against Dortmund underlined that, in a role that maximises his best qualities, he can be part of the solution too.