The Cheeky boy who became a Rolls-Royce
RIO FERDINAND’S attention had been caught by the imposing figure bedecked in blue, running the game from the centre of defence. It was 2011 and the Nike Cup, the Under 16 tournament, was being staged at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground. Chelsea had reached the final and were playing the Right To Dream Academy, the physically imposing representatives from Africa. Chelsea were under pressure but Ferdinand’s eye kept being drawn to how the young man he had spotted stayed composed and made his decisions with clarity. At the end, after Chelsea had won 1-0, he sought out Joe Edwards and Andy Myers, the team’s coaches. He had one question. ‘The lad at the back,’ said Ferdinand, ‘who is that?’ ‘That’s Ruben Loftus-Cheek.’ Nobody will need to ask who Loftus-Cheek is after his headline-grabbing England debut against Germany last Friday, which brimmed with power and grace, but the theme of sticking out from the crowd has been a constant all the way through his career. Scouts flocked to watch him when he started playing for Springfield FC on Sunday mornings aged seven but it was Alf Blandford who ended up ensuring he joined Chelsea’s development school in Catford. ‘He is like a Rolls-Royce,’ purrs his father, Trevor, who was in the stands at Wembley on Friday. ‘He used to win all of the player-of-the-year awards. But once Chelsea clapped eyes on him they knew he was special.’ The ‘Rolls-Royce’ reference cropped up continually in conversations with those who have nurtured him. The reason it is so easily used is because he is big and powerful but does everything so smoothly. There is grace about the way he moves — which may come from endlessly watching, as a child, videos of Thierry Henry. Those ingredients ensured Chelsea would not let him slip from their grasp. Michael Beale remembers his first encounters with LoftusCheek at the Cobham training base close to the family home. ‘Ruben was always athletic, right from the start,’ said Beale, who coached Loftus-Cheek for the Under 9s and Under 10s, then again for the Under 13s and Under 14s. ‘He was in a group with Tammy Abraham and I’m delighted for them. ‘Ruben is a quiet lad — he’s a really good kid, very grounded and comes from a lovely family — but he is one of those boys who comes to life when you put a ball at his feet. Everyone knew that he had a real chance of going to the top. ‘In the summer, he would come to us for six weeks over the holidays and I was responsible for bringing him from Kent. ‘Adam Gemili (the GB Olympic sprinter) used to be in the car with us. It’s amazing how things have worked out. ‘People within the academy system have been aware of him for a long time and the loan to Crystal Palace has really helped. Gareth Southgate can change what is happening in club football when he makes selections such as this.’ Southgate knows he is a player who can become an emblem of the England team he is trying to build; he took him with the Under 21s to Euro 2015, for example, to educate him about the pressure of tournaments and prepare him for the future. ‘The national coaches sit down after every round of matches with (technical director) Dan Ashworth and Gareth,’ explains Under 18 head coach Neil Dewsnip, whose first memory of Loftus-Cheek is watching him run amok against Wales at Cheltenham seven years ago. ‘He will have been aware of exactly where Ruben has been all the way through and he won’t have been shocked by what he did against Germany because he is fully aware of the development path for all these young players.’ Southgate also knows the other parts of Loftus-Cheek’s back story: the frustrations that have dogged him at varying times. There was a point, for instance, when he was 14 and he missed almost an entire season with glandular fever; he then suffered several injury-enforced absences through growing pains, leaving him and his club frustrated. Then there was money. LoftusCheek was given a lucrative contract at 16, which led critics to say he represented the too much, too soon generation; those who knew him insist he would be the same whether he was playing for £20 or £20,000. Above all, there is the disappointment that he has not made Chelsea’s first team as much as he should have done. He made 11 appearances last season but most came from the bench and the switch on loan to Crystal Palace was crucial. ‘Jose Mourinho held him back,’ Trevor, his father, argues. ‘He should have been playing. Everyone behind the scenes was asking, “Why isn’t he playing?” If Ruben had been playing for Mauricio Pochettino, he’d have 70, 80, 90 first-team appearances by now.’ After the way he performed against Germany, though, it would appear that his time is finally coming. As he showed that day when grabbing Ferdinand’s attention, he has too much talent to stay in the shadows.