I’M NO BABY BLUEON
Mount has always been a ‘man’ the pitch... but he needs to work on his childminding
PROFESSIONAL football has been little more than child’s play for Mason Mount.
Which is a good job really. Because child’s play is one part of life where the Chelsea midfielder doesn’t excel.
He got over his European Championship disappointment with the Three Lions last summer by looking after his oneyear-old niece on holiday in Greece for a couple of days.
And he reckons facing the toughest rivals on the continent was preferable by comparison.
Asked about his family duties and whether he feels he’s come of age on the pitch, however, and there’s only one answer from a player who is now a club world champion as well as Champions League winner.
Mount, 23, said: “I don’t think I’m trusted to fully babysit yet.
“That’s something I need to keep working on!
Switch
“But as soon as I made my professional debut I refused to look at myself as a young player anymore.
“I was in the professional leagues and I had to be a man in everything that I did.
“When I made my debut at Vitesse Arnhem, that was the change – the switch in my head not to look at myself as a youngster where it didn’t matter if I did something wrong or made a mistake on the pitch.
“Now I needed to grasp every opportunity I had.
“I feel that’s helped me. I try not to look at everything that’s happened over the course of the last four or five years because it’s been a roller-coaster.”
Mount was warned last week by Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel (circle) that he was ‘far from having reached the top level’ despite Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer claiming he was ‘one step ahead of everyone else,’ after last week’s FA Cup quarter-final triumph at Middlesbrough.
Mount acknowledged: “I know within myself there’s more to come – adding everything together and being a complete player. That’s what it’s about.
“You look at how much statistics affect the modern game.
“Stats are massive. It’s all about how many goals and assists you’ve got. You’re rarely judged performance-wise.
“Yes, I want my stats but I want my performances to be up there as well. To be so consistent – eights, nines, 10s every game alongside goals and assists. Once I hit that, I’m a complete player and I’ll be happy but I’m nowhere near that.”
Mount has more than 200 games under his belt as a professional.
Along with the accolades at club level, he also started in the European Championship final for England.
He believes: “We must keep pushing.
“Everything is set up and we know we can do big things – we showed that last summer.
“We didn’t quite make it but now the hunger to go the extra step means the flame is burning even more strongly.”