Defying dad paid off for Chelsea’s wonderkid
In the fifth part of our series profiling the Premier League’s top young talents, Matt Law charts the rise of Mason Mount – a player who is ready to follow the greats at Stamford Bridge
Mason Mount was 14 when his father told him to leave Chelsea. His reasoning seemed sound enough – young players, he explained, do not get a chance at the club.
Tony Mount told academy manager Neil Bath, too, expressing his doubts about the pathway that was being promised, and he also spoke to other interested clubs without Mason’s knowledge to see what his options might be.
Manchester United had already taken an interest after scouts working for the club spotted Mount playing football while on a family holiday in Egypt. But when Tony laid it on the line to Mason, telling him that no academy graduate had made it into the first team since John Terry and that he would be “silly” to stay, the teenager’s response was emphatic.
“Mason just said, ‘Well, I’ll be the next one’,” said Tony. “He was absolutely adamant he wasn’t going to leave and that he could make it.”
Mount grew up as a Portsmouth fan and particularly took a shine to Argentine midfielder Andres D’alessandro, whose signed shirt he had framed and has still got. Portsmouth offered Mount a place in their academy when he was eight, but he opted for Chelsea, with whom he had been training from the age of six. At one stage, Tony was driving his son to Cobham for Saturday-morning training and then back to Fratton Park to watch D’alessandro and his team-mates in the afternoon.
Tony most likely still had his doubts about his son’s hopes of a first-team chance until about two months ago, when the stars started to align for Mount and Chelsea’s other talented youngsters.
Chelsea chose not to try to get their transfer ban frozen and Frank Lampard succeeded Maurizio Sarri as head coach. All of a sudden the path opened up for Mount.
If history is anything to go by, then Mount should be backed to grasp his chance as he has a habit of making an early impression. He was aged just five, and playing in his first mini-football tournament
in Fareham – and for the first time on grass – when Chelsea scout Rob Winzar spotted him and invited him to train at the club.
Winzar had been working for Chelsea for only three months and already knew Tony from their days in non-league football.
“I got lucky, really,” said Winzar, 54. “I went and had a chat with Tony and he said his lad was playing, so I had a look at him and there was Mason and Luke Mccormick, who is also still at Chelsea, playing in the same team.
“I’ve still got my notes from the tournament and all I’d written from watching Mason was ‘follow up’. That’s all I needed because straight away he stood out. Not so much because of his skill or technique, but his aggression, not in a physical way, to get the ball back and run with it.
“He’s the best one I’ve seen in 15 years of scouting for Chelsea and I saw Mason in my first year, in one of my first-ever scouting trips for the club. I still haven’t seen a player as good as him at that age.”
Tony, a former non-league player and manager, was initially reluctant but eventually allowed his son to train with Chelsea once he had turned six. He progressed through the age groups and later signed a scholarship after ignoring his father’s advice to leave.
Lampard, Terry and Ashley Cole would, on occasion, train with Chelsea’s star-struck academy youngsters, while Mount also took a shine to David Luiz, with whom he had a picture taken.
Luiz posted the photo of himself alongside Mount, when he was an academy player, on social media next to an image of them together on Chelsea’s pre-season tour of Japan this summer, with the caption “life is great”.
Now team-mates, Mount and Luiz have developed a “bromance’ that has helped the 20-year-old to quickly settle into the first-team squad, but he had already proved he can step out of his comfort zone and into new environments.
Aged 18 and on the back of an excellent season playing for Chelsea Under-23s, Mount could have stayed put and enjoyed another comfortable campaign surrounded by familiar faces and some of his close friends. But he chose instead to go on loan to Vitesse Arnhem, where he scored with his first touch after stepping off the substitutes’ bench against FC Utrecht in October, before again demonstrating his determination during the Eredivisie winter break.
“Mason hadn’t played too much because he had missed pre-season after being away with England Under-19s,” said Tony. “He had about 10 days off over Christmas and I said we’d talk to Chelsea about sorting him out another loan where he might play more. But Mason said no and told me that he wanted to stay and prove himself. He wouldn’t leave. I was really proud of how he adapted, never complained and turned it around.”
Mount scored on his first appearance after the break against Sparta Rotterdam and never looked back, as he held down a starting place and performed so well that he won the player-of-theyear award. Technical director Marc van Hintum even claimed the youngster was the best player in the Eredivisie.
“We have been able to enjoy a great talent,” said Van Hintum. “At Ajax, there are no better players in the midfield. No, not [Hakim] Ziyech either. Mason has everything: work-rate, stamina, tactical ingenuity, technique, depth and dynamics. He can put pressure on and has scoring ability. He can even head. He has the right mentality and he is intelligent. All conditions for a top career.”
Other than impressing on the pitch in Holland, Mount grew up off it as he spent a year on his own
‘Mason said he would be “the next one”. He was adamant he wasn’t going to leave Chelsea and that he could make it’
in a three-bedroom house in the sleepy village of Doorwerth, just outside Arnhem.
When his father and mother were not visiting, Mount cooked for himself, washed his own clothes and picked up enough Dutch to get by. But at the end of his first season playing first-team football, Mount wanted to push himself once more with a loan to the Championship and, again, he made a quick impression.
Derby were on course to lose Lampard’s first game as a manager, last August, until the ball broke to Mount 20 yards out, and his left-foot shot squeezed past Reading goalkeeper Vito Mannone.
That set the tone for Mount’s season, in which he won a senior England call-up in October and finished with 11 goals and helped Derby reach the Championship play-off final at Wembley, which they lost to Aston Villa.
The assumption at the turn of this year was that the logical next step for Mount would be to go on loan to a Premier League club this season to get top-flight experience.
But after succeeding Sarri, Lampard quickly told Mount he would not be leaving on loan and would instead be part of his squad. The club further underlined their faith in him by handing him a five-year contract worth around £77,000 a week.
Yet again, Mount has not hung around in showing what he is capable of in pre-season. He scored on his first senior appearance in the friendly against St Patrick’s and netted two more against Reading.
“I’ll be really proud when he plays for Chelsea in the Premier League,” said Winzar. “But it’s what Mason and his family have done, really. Tony has been fantastic. Mason will be a superstar.”
‘He has the mentality, work rate and is intelligent. All conditions for top career’