Maurizio Sarri needs time if he is to give Chelsea a new identity

It was a sweltering, shirtless Sunday in the English capital for Maurizio Sarri’s first competitive game as Chelsea manager. He might have realised the spotlight would be remorselessly bright when he took the job; he probably didn’t expect the sunshine to be. It has been a long journey for the 59-year-old Italian — from his beginnings as a moonlighting coach in the lower echelons of Tuscan amateur football to those defining three years at Napoli, the southern insurgents against the traditional northern powerhouses of Italian football. Now his career has received its crowning investiture, at the head of one of English football’s main 21st-century seats of power and the most successful London club of the past decade, and the thought occurred as Sarri stood on