Can Chelsea juniors bridge the senior gap?
Success of dominant Under-18s will be judged on how many reach first team
N ot since the mid-1950s, when a teenage Duncan Edwards and Bobby Charlton were taking their first steps towards a professional career at Manchester United, have a club dominated the FA Youth Cup quite like Chelsea, whose win on Tuesday night sealed their fourth straight trophy.
It is an astonishing record, with the club now one more from equalling United’s run of five successive FA Youth Cups from the trophy’s launch in 1952-1953, and Chelsea may yet do it. They have dominated development football in the past decade, reaching eight of the last 10 FA Youth Cup finals and winning six of them.
To put that in perspective, when Chelsea reached the first of those finals in 2008 and lost to Manchester City – the club they have subsequently beaten in the past three finals – their previous final appearance was in 1961. The Roman Abramovich years, and his investment in the academy at all levels, have brought unprecedented success and yet the inevitable question is: when will one of these boys establish himself in the first team?
First of all, however, it is worth considering the achievement of this latest Chelsea Under-18s team, managed by Jody Morris, the last true west Londoner to come through the club’s youth system and become an established first-teamer. This latest team is the end product of the investment that began in 2005 with the appointment of Frank Arnesen as sporting director, who started the process of change with academy director Neil Bath.
For many years, that meant buying in talented 16-year-olds from all over Europe with mixed results but that has changed. Of the team that Morris selected to start the 5-1 second-leg victory over City at Stamford Bridge, nine have come all the way through the system since the very earliest academy years.
Juan Castillo, a Dutch midfielder signed from Ajax at Under-16s level, and Jacob Maddox, brought from Bristol City aged 14, are the exceptions.
Arguably the team’s most talented player, Callum Hudson-Odoi, only 16 and still at school, joined as an under-nine. The captain Mason Mount, 18, has been at the club since he was six. Trevor Chalobah, 17, brother of Nathaniel, also signed as an under-nine.
Many of the leading boys have been playing above their age group in the Under-18s, Under-19s and Under-21s since they were 16, a club policy that means they average around 40 to 45 of these junior games a season.
Chelsea have finally perfected the first stage of the home-grown success story, developing a batch of boys scouted largely in London and the south.
The teenager whom they paid the biggest fee to acquire, Charlie Brown, signed from Ipswich Town last summer, did not make Thursday’s squad.
Abramovich was there to watch and Antonio Conte spoke in the dressing room afterwards. On Friday, the Italian said he saw “four or five players with good prospects for the future”. Dujon Sterling, a 17-year-old who can play in defence and midfield, is one obvious candidate, although we have been here before with young stars who failed even to glimmer in the first team.
Ahead of these Under18s, the crop queueing to break into the first team are a formidable bunch. Tammy Abraham, 19, has scored 23 goals in the Championship for Bristol City this season and will likely next go on loan in the Premier League. Nathan Baker is on loan at Vitesse Arnhem and will play in the Dutch Cup final today. Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Nathaniel Chalobah, also FA Youth Cup winners, have 24 first-team appearances between them this season.
The club’s technical director, Michael Emenalo, regards loans as fundamental in bridging the development gap between academy and first team and many of the 18-year-olds from Morris’s team will follow Abraham to Football League clubs next season.
Although one can hardly fault the academy’s success rate, Chelsea will be judged on whether these players graduate to the first team. But, having relentlessly raised the standard of youth development in recent years, there will be other challenges ahead for them as the clubs they left behind in the past decade snap at their heels.
Tottenham Hotspur have not won the FA Youth Cup since 1990 but have a proven track record of getting boys into the first team as well as a new training ground and academy facility. Arsenal have also invested heavily in their academy and adopted a much more aggressive approach to recruitment in the London football heartlands. Their Under-15s are regarded as one to watch. West Ham are competitive when it comes to the top schoolboys. All have had to raise their game.
In the north, City have now contested the last three FA Youth Cup finals, while Manchester United are recruiting across the country, including London.
While certain clubs will always be able to offer bigger professional deals at 17, there is also a flattening out among the top clubs that means the resources and offers that once made Chelsea stand out are now being replicated elsewhere.
Chelsea’s scouting and recruitment may not guarantee them the top under-nines in the way it once did, which was a key part of putting together the 2017 team who have come through the ranks. It would be a pity to see Chelsea going back to signing 16-year-olds from Europe to take the places of boys who have been with them from the youngest age groups, but the competition for domestic talent is becoming intense
There is much that is flawed about development football’s arms race to
Chelsea’s 2017 side is the fruit of 10 years of investment leading to a team playing together for a decade
sign young players that has led to ludicrously inflated wages for unproven 17-year-olds.
In terms of the quality of recruitment and coaching, Chelsea have driven up standards. Their 2017 side is the fruit of 10 years of investment culminating in a team who have largely played together for the best part of a decade. That was how it used to work, although, as ever, they will eventually need a first-team chance.