Some interesting comments on our youth set-up from a player who we very nearly signed.

 

 

Bigger clubs soon took notice. He spent a week with Barcelona, three days with Milan and had two trials with Chelsea, at the age of 14 and 15.

 

Chelsea liked what they saw but not enough to offer Eriksen a contract. "I was not disappointed, for me it was just to see how it goes, it was not really for going [there]," Eriksen says. "It was another world. It was not like Denmark, or like this, where it is open and everyone can come [to training]. Everything was closed and if you are there as a 16-year-old and you have to be so closed, you lose a lot of things. And we thought the football was a little bit more power than what I wanted.

 

"Also Chelsea is such a big club, they have so much money that if they need someone for the first team, they just buy them. Ajax buy them if they are young and they see talent. And it's easier to go to the first-team here and that was also what I saw. At Chelsea it was like, Under-17 own world, Under-19 own world and then the first team another world. For a [young] player it was difficult to see how there could be a possibility."

 

Chelsea's decision not to sign Eriksen was influenced by the fact that they already had Josh McEachran, who played in a similar position and was a year younger. Fast forward five years and McEachran has made one Premier League start for Chelsea and is on loan at Middlesbrough. Eriksen has played 136 times for Ajax. "Exactly," Eriksen says. "Of course it's a different league. And a lot of players in England, when they are with big clubs, they go out on loan. That hasn't ever really been spoken about here because I played. For me, I am at the right place at the right time."

 

Ironic, but I guess it's very much the case that we only progress/utilise the very best of what we feel to be the very best or the completed model. Good luck to him because it's a tough world even at U8 these days and will CE ever turn out to be of the same player mould as Ryan Bertrand or JT or Lucas Piazon or Hazard remains to be seen.

I don't rate Eriksen. For all of his dad's talk of us not giving his son a fair shot, I simply don't see a player who will ever be Chelsea quality.