Not sure where to post this, because the content spans both General and Youth Forums. No doubt Mod will sort as appropriate…

 

Okay, I know the beginning does not bode well, but, if you ignore the anti-Chelsea bias prevalent in most newspapers these days and particularly apparent in the opening three paragraphs of this piece, please read on regardless - it is worthwhile. The article appears in The Times today and, in my humble opinion, is the first [possibly the last] to openly acknowledge the good Academy work being done at our club and the significance of it in relation to youth development at International level in this country.   

 

“Chelsea scouts will be in attendance.” It was a siren call that no ten-year-old boy could resist when the note came home from primary school. So there we were, wary parents shepherding excited children into a teeming sports hall one Sunday. We walked in to find a frenzy of small-sided games. Give boys an hour to prove themselves a budding Eden Hazard or Diego Costa, and the evidence is that it quickly becomes a back-heel and step-over convention. Casting anxious glances to see if any of the coaches had spotted their skills, they finished red-faced with effort. They were soon being ushered off to allow the next bunch on to the conveyor belt.

 

The session was run by a private coaching outfit with Chelsea’s blessing - the Barclays Premier League club hoping to unearth the odd special kid, the company trying to sign you up to holiday camps on the way out - and it felt part of an industrial-scale sieving process. It came with a blunt conclusion that only a lucky handful would be picked out, and the head coach warning rather starkly that if you were not in an academy aged ten, it was probably time to start abandoning those dreams of being the next Lionel Messi.

 

Heads dropped - and that was just among the pushy parents - but knowing how much Chelsea put into finding the best talent, and not just in southwest London, that dose of hard reality was not a shock. Chelsea’s academy is widely regarded as one of the best in the country for its facilities, coaching and ability to attract top talent.

 

For kids of a certain age, that requires substantial sums of money, and relocating families to leafy Cobham. Chelsea are not alone in the lengths they will go to - when the parents of one boy in Arsenal’s academy said the constant lifts to training were becoming overbearing, the club said they would send a taxi for their child, aged 12 - but they are far more effective than most. It works. For the fourth successive season, Chelsea Under-18 have reached the final of the FA Youth Cup. No club has enjoyed such sustained success by its teenagers since Manchester United were sending out a youthful Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards.

 

And there is much more evidence of Chelsea’s dominance in this market. Examine the England junior teams picked ahead of this international break, from under-21s to under-16s, and you can see cast-iron proof of what one senior FA coaching figure has described as a reliance on Chelsea. They had 18 boys called for England duty which was not only the most of any Premier League club (five more than Tottenham Hotspur’s 13) but more than Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool put together. It was more than twice the number from Southampton, also recognised as a leader in the teenage field.

 

And it was not just the numbers but the quality of them: Patrick Bamford (forced to withdraw from the under-21s after excelling recently on loan at Middlesbrough), Lewis Baker (captain of the under-20s), Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Izzy Brown with the under-19s, Dominic Solanke, winner of England’s Youth Player of the Year who was suddenly told to leave the under-18s to train with the senior squad - and scored - this week.

 

England Under-16 involved as many as five Chelsea players, including Dujon Sterling who will surely cut the mustard. So when we talk about whether we will get an England team to be proud of - as we frequently do because nothing brings the country together like the national football side, even if it is to be united in frustration - we need to care about what is happening at Chelsea’s academy.

 

When we ask if England can ever produce a team capable of winning a major tournament, what is happening at Chelsea is a distillation of so many of our hopes and fears. In Chelsea’s academy, we can see the quality which, I believe, reflects a slowly changing culture in England. There are talented kids coming through, if not yet remotely in the numbers required, then certainly with technical abilities which mark them as modern, progressive players, aspiring to be part of a new era.

 

Yet, with Chelsea more than anywhere in the English game, we also see the perils which Greg Dyke, the FA chairman, has once again been discussing this week with phrases like a “blocked pathway” and “glass ceiling” - terms that are now as much in everyday English football lexicon as “man on”. While Dyke went oddly silent yesterday at a meeting of Premier League clubs when representatives from Southampton asked him to explain his proposals to enforce more home-grown players, no one can dispute his claim that English youth is struggling to break through into Premier League first teams.

 

At Chelsea the competition is stiffer than anywhere given the youth ranks feature not only the best of English, and British, but kids from all over the world like Charly Musonda, Andreas Christensen and Jeremie Boga. José Mourinho does not even try to deny how hard it is to blood young players, talking of how the pressure, the expectations on the first team mean that “this is not the best habitat for a young player to be developed”. None have made it through since John Terry. Hence the ridiculous frenzy when Loftus-Cheek played just seven minutes in a Champions League dead rubber and one minute against Manchester City.

 

Chelsea talk of their desire to promote one home-grown player into the first team every 18 months. The culture must change from the top, pulling the talent through. Will Roman Abramovich demand a punt on youth? This is a question to interest all English supporters when we see the local talent gathered at Chelsea and the risks of blockage, of stagnation. Yes, these English starlets can be sent out on loan, or sold, but we also know something can be lost in those critical years around 17-20 - and never recovered - if a young player is not exposed to regular, competitive, men’s football; if teenagers are not given first-team responsibility, if they do not follow a sustained path of progress, if they are not trusted but are just tossed away.

 

So we watch with fascination over the coming months and years to see if any of these English talents so painstakingly recruited by Chelsea are given that chance; the clock ticks, just like it does in the coaches’ room at St George’s Park which counts down to the 2022 World Cup Final when, according to Dyke’s forecast, England are supposed to be triumphant.

 

It is not nearly as simple to say that if Chelsea fail, England fail - but you only have to look through the youth ranks at Cobham to see that fates of club and country are closely linked.”

 

Matt Dickinson (The Times, 27th March, 2015)

 

For me, Dickinson’s closing sentence reads like a parting shot across the anticipated furrowed brows of the vast majority of his newspaper’s readership, a warning to those who instinctively label all things Chelsea as bad for the health of the game. A warning writ long and large that this issue is not as they might automatically perceive it to be, despite Greg Dyke dicing with a depressing narrative clearly designed to be taken, if one is so inclined, as another official FA governmental Chels health warning. 

 

But most importantly of all, a warning that Chelsea are in pole position to eventually reap what the club has sown so assiduously over a number of years, and, if that bumper crop ever arrives at our top table, a warning that English football as a whole should start to think about applauding the success of the project, rather than just be surprised by its existence.       

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A lack of bonding at a club level could be part of why England never had much success despite all the talent of the "Golden Generation".   

 

 

And there is much more evidence of Chelsea’s dominance in this market. Examine the England junior teams picked ahead of this international break, from under-21s to under-16s, and you can see cast-iron proof of what one senior FA coaching figure has described as a reliance on Chelsea. They had 18 boys called for England duty which was not only the most of any Premier League club (five more than Tottenham Hotspur’s 13) but more than Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool put together. It was more than twice the number from Southampton, also recognised as a leader in the teenage field.

  Really like that bit.  Can't help but think that should merit an article in itself but I wont hold my breath.  Be great if England finally tastes success with core of the national team featuring many CFC players.

It's a good article but certainly not a first.

 

There have been quite a few articles which openly praises our youth payers and mentions how many of our players make the England squad, it's part of the reason why they are so critical when they don't get the chances. 

Thanks for posting that Dorset - imo a fair & balanced article. And as Rem says, the truth of what Chels has/is doing with the kids is now starting to dawn on many. The pressure placed on kids these days! I don't know how I would have felt at 10 if I'd been told that I didn't cut it & the dream was, well, just a dream all along. The flip-side of all this are those rare & uplifting narratives that come out from time to time of the kid who is rejected at these early stages but who sticks with it & who later emerges against all the odds to become a top player. However, another part of me also believes that it's a shame that by this, we seem to be implicitly accepting the notion that childhood should not be insulated from the mechanics of professional sport.

Great article, I am totally against Greg dykes proposal to increase homegrown players, as I can see it having the opposite effect by reducing the overall quality of the league.

I think a much better idea would be to increase the match day squad to a full 22 players, but have a minimum of 8 hg or u21 players in it.

in 2007 i arrived late to the millenium staduim in cardiff and missed my tout. i got another ticket at face value where i sat with the academy kids. i was pretty surprise that the majority were all English. i can still remember some blond kids teasing another for being a y*d! it occurred to me that we must be trying for ages to get more English stars like JT into the first team. after all if you look around the biggest success stories for clubs are the homegrown. people like dyke seem to spout crap without actually seeing the club and experiencing what the club is doing. sitting with those kids was quite an eye opener along with a swearing cockney!

Probably the most favourable bit of journalism for the future prospects of our youth, and certainly worth a bump.

Edited April 1, 201511 yr by coco

Good Read Dorset ,

Having a nephew going through the system at the moment (currently at Brentford Academy ) I was shocked at how many clubs have academies in London . Barcelona use Cobham ....Ipswich , Norwich , Southampton and a host of other clubs now have set ups in the London area .

Certainly raises the question on the "lost generation " of 17 -22 year olds in football , not just players but fans as well.

I still feel it would be better for the English games if premier league clubs could have much closer links with lower league teams rather than having to farm out a number of players overseas. Wouldn't it be better to have 8 players at AFC Wimbledon learning there trade before coming back to the first team .

Great article, I am totally against Greg dykes proposal to increase homegrown players, as I can see it having the opposite effect by reducing the overall quality of the league.

I think a much better idea would be to increase the match day squad to a full 22 players, but have a minimum of 8 hg or u21 players in it.

I quite agree. Greg Dyke's proposal smacks of yet more desperation from the FA, another attempt at blaming the clubs for England's lack of success at international level.

 

Rather than adding ever more stringent rules, which as you so rightly say, will almost inevitably lead to a lowering of the quality of the league whilst having no real impact at international level, Greg Dyke would be better advised to take a longer term approach, a complete overhaul of the entire structure of youth football. This will obviously take some considerable time, and so a great deal of patience is required, a virtue that is all too often at odds with the modern day culture of instant gratification.