Callum Hudson-Odoi, Fikayo Tomori, Reece James, Marc Guehi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham.
This is not a list of club academy products who have made the breakthrough into Chelsea’s first team in recent years.
Or at least not only that.
These are the names of as many as seven players who have indeed broken through into Chelsea FC’s senior squad, but they have all done so having first joined the club’s academy as early as at under-8 age category.
They became blues over 10 years ago.
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“From what age do you classify players as your academy products?”, coaches Przemysław Małecki and Hubert Wędzonka were asked upon presenting Lech Poznań Academy’s XI at last year’s tenth edition of Lech Conference coaching conference in Poznań.
“An academy graduate is usually a product of a number of clubs’ work“, was the somewhat smart response from Małecki.
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While many, if not the majority, of the Lech Poznań Academy graduates presented above only joined the club in their teenage years, Chelsea FC have now found themselves a step ahead.
As many as 56% (20 out of 36) of the club’s internationals – from under-16s up to seniors – have been at Chelsea since the age of 8.
Out of the last 21 players to win their first senior England cap as many as 9 of them went through the Chelsea Academy. This list includes Loftus-Cheek, Hudson-Odoi, Mount, Abrahim and Tomori as well as Declan Rice (now of West Ham), Jack Cork (Burnley), Dominic Solanke (Bournemouth) and Nathaniel Chalobah (Watford), who is the only one of the nine to have joined the club later, i.e. from the under-10 age group.
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All these numbers were presented at #LechConference19 by Chelsea’s long-term academy coach, Ben Knight, who – by showcasing all the data – belied the perhaps seemingly common knowledge that Chelsea did not care about their Academy and only earned money out of loaning their graduates out to other clubs.
It appeared, in fact, worth taking into account that while Roman Abramovich had invested over 1 billion pounds into the club since 2003, he had also put a considerable amount of finance into the Chelsea Academy.
In time – according to Knight, the Chelsea Academy have followed the same principles for about 10 years – the return on investment has started to emerge.
In the shape of proper academy products in the club’s first team.
This post was originally written in Polish and published on 9 December 2019.
BREAKTHROUGH 