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In the summer of 2023, a primary school-aged player left a Category 1 academy to join a rival more than 100 miles away from home. He has since moved onto another club, the family benevolently compensated for their willingness to do so, in a potentially worrying example of what the academy and development ecosystem in England could look like by 2030 if current trends continue without intervention. The Elite Player…
On Friday night Chelsea’s Development Squad kick off a new academy season at home to defending Premier League 2 champions Tottenham Hotspur at Kingsmeadow. The following morning, Hassan Sulaiman’s Under-18s get under way against Brighton as they seek to retain their South league title and go one better than last year, when they finished runners-up for the national crown. To preview a new campaign, though, is to reflect on as…
Sometimes, Chelsea’s class of first-year scholars come into their new full-time jobs a little inexperienced. Take last year’s nine-strong cohort, for example; Kiano Dyer and Ollie Harrison had effectively played a full season of youth team football as Under-16s (Harrison at Newcastle before moving down South) but, of the other seven newcomers to Hassan Sulaiman’s group, only Frankie Runham had really even flirted with a breakthrough, and half of them…
Perhaps it was obvious what was going to happen from their very first statement. On May 30th 2022, two years ago today, the consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital completed their takeover of Chelsea Football Club and immediately laid out their plans. Boehly’s welcoming words spoke about being “custodians of (the club)” and a “commitment to developing the youth squad and best talent”, while Behdad Eghbali and José…
Four minutes after Josh Acheampong’s equaliser in the Under-18 Premier League National Final, Donnelly McNeilly clipped a shot agonisingly wide of the post at the Matthew Harding End. Two minutes after he’d restored parity in the PL2 Playoff Semi Finals, Deivid Washington watched as his effort hit the inside of the post, rolled across the face of goal and away to safety. Chelsea lost both of those matches by fine…
In each of the last three seasons we’ve previewed Chelsea’s FA Youth Cup campaign with something of a proclamation that it was about time the Blues brought the famous trophy back to Cobham once again. Five straight triumphs between 2014 and 2018 set a certain level of expectation and history – the club is the second-most successful in the competition’s history behind Manchester United – that has not been met…
The 2022-23 academy campaign at Chelsea was interesting and largely promising, yet there was a sense of business left unfinished, of meat being left on the bone, and of work still to do. Mark Robinson’s Development Squad challenged long and hard for the PL2 title before falling short in the season’s final weeks, while the Under-18s saw a good start fall away to a tough middle before finishing strong under…
Here we go again, then. It hardly seems like yesterday that we were welcoming the sixteen-strong class of 2022 but, after a year in which those players made significant strides in their first season as full-time footballers, it’s time to welcome another cohort of scholars into the academy. The class of 2023 is a little different to most recent intakes in that the number of graduates coming through the Cobham…
This summer is reportedly set to be a seminal moment in the grand history of the Chelsea ‘Loan Army’. For a decade or more now, the Blues have been at the forefront of the organised outsourcing of youth development for 18-22 year-old prospects considered too good for academy football but not quite ready for the big-time at Stamford Bridge. Those prospects have occasionally yet consistently been joined by overflow from…
In the last few editions of these summaries, I’ve made a point of noting how long it’s been since the academy won the FA Youth Cup or dominated in the silverware department. After another campaign without a trophy at Under-18, 19 or 21 levels, it would be easy to do that. With each passing year, though, it becomes less relevant; an inaccurate barometer of where Chelsea find themselves right now….