Chelsea handed young Kurt Zouma a chance in one of the biggest and toughest games of the season, against Manchester City and while experts have expected the French man to do big things, he did stand out with his performance for Chelsea against the Premier League Champions. He was brought in place of English defender Gary Cahill and his performance might have provided a headache to Jose Mourinho, not in terms of playing poorly but Zouma shone for Chelsea last night and probably will be looking to get more chances for the club.
Zouma was up against Sergio Aguero and David Silva for most of the game, two players who can run rings around any defender but in the game Zouma had a 100% success rate in tackles and aerial duels. The 20 year old defender who was signed from St. Etienne hasn’t had a lot of chances to play for Chelsea with only 4 Premier League appearances but his performance against Manchester City should be accepted as a barometer of just how good he can be.
Pace and power
One of the things that has been missing from the Chelsea defensive pairing of Terry and Cahill is the pace, while Cahill is faster than Terry both players still rely on their reading and judgement of the game before doing anything, Zouma on the other hand can deal with pacey players and for a player who is only 20 years old, he doesn’t make rash tackles or decisions and plays to his strengths.
He did play against Liverpool in the Capital One Cup and was up against Raheem Sterling, who is one of the fastest players in the league and although he was one v one with Sterling a few times but he dealt really well with the player and effectively kept him quiet in the game. Against Manchester City, it was a quality performance with barely a foot put wrong as he took on everything that Manchester City could throw at him and dealt really well.
He had a total of 42 ball touches against Manchester City and he did distribute the ball really well, he doesn’t try to do things that he is not good at and his communication with the rest of the team seems spot on as well.
Playing along with a partner like John Terry should help Zouma in learning not only more about English football but learn about the art of defending as well, Zouma seems like a beast ready to be unleashed on the rest of the Premier League and with a few more games under his belt he could easily usurp not only John Terry for the future but Gary Cahill in the now. Zouma is a player who is in top form and playing him regularly now makes sense, not only for his development into a world class centre back but also to keep Chelsea’s charge for trophies intact.