Chelsea’s academy graduates were to the fore in Porto on Saturday, with Mason Mount and Reece James getting an A+ for their efforts against Manchester City as Thomas Tuchel’s side upset the odds and recorded a stunning second Champions League title.
On the bench, the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi, Billy Gilmour and Tammy Abraham watched on and joined the celebrations at the final whistle.
There has rarely been a better time to be a young player at a club that has hardly been renowned for giving youth a chance since Roman Abramovich took over in 2003.
After the game, the exhausted Mount and James would have been given everything they needed to refuel after a gruelling encounter – but it’s unlikely that junk food would have featured.
There was a time, though, when Chelsea’s youngsters had no choice but to be kebab shop regulars – and a period when the club were so hard-up that they struggled to pay their bills to the local eateries surrounding a then decrepit Stamford Bridge.
“I went in there once and the kebab man was banging his fist on the counter and shouting ‘Chelsea haven’t paid, they haven’t paid’,” says Craig Burley, who joined Chelsea’s academy in 1989. “The club were so short of cash that they literally couldn’t pay the kebab guy!”
As was the norm back then, the Chelsea youth team players in the 1980s and 90s would lodge with local families, be put through their paces at a training ground owned by Imperial College and then return to west London with a £2.50 allowance to spend around the corner in the local kebab shop.
“Sometimes you would get lucky,” says Frank Sinclair, who came through the Chelsea ranks at the same time as Burley. “If a player didn’t turn up, you would get their allowance too, so you had a fiver to spend. I was never much of a kebab man, to be honest. I would go for the burger and chips.”
It’s an approach to nutrition that would be anathema to a crop of stars who have played a full role in turning Chelsea from junk food kings to European royalty.
Since the 2009-10 season, the club have won the FA Youth Cup seven times. While a great many players in those teams have had to go elsewhere to find first team opportunities, the pathway to the Chelsea first team is now one that’s well and truly open to those good enough to break through.
The club’s relationship with local schools such as Whitgift in Croydon also offer an education in every sense. In recent years the likes Hudson-Odoi and Bayern Munich’s former Chelsea star Jamal Musiala have spent time there.
Burley and Sinclair came through a completely different school. That of hard knocks.
It may have been a little less refined, but it worked, with both forming part of a Chelsea side based around youth products that included the likes of Eddie Newton, Michael Duberry and David Lee.
“Different, is how I would describe it,” says Burley. “I’m not sure the youngsters today would hack it for too long. You grew up fast, though.”
When Sinclair made his debut for the club in the spring of 1991, Bobby Campbell’s back four had all come through the Chelsea youth system.
When they weren’t gorging themselves on kebabs and burgers, Burley and his young colleagues would be scrubbing the six baths in the home and away dressing rooms at Stamford Bridge.
Burley recalls the time when Lee ensured they could get away early after a midweek clash against Nottingham Forest, with the latter stuffing the bath plugs in his pockets so neither the home or away side could fill their tubs. Classic footballer antics.
The football was more rudimental back then too. Analysts? On yer bike.
If a time machine was available to transport Mount and James back to those days, they could be forgiven for thinking they had landed in a football equivalent of Jurassic Park. Although given the size of their wages, the club wouldn’t have to worry about providing them with an allowance.
The chances of Chelsea one day competing for honours in domestic competition when Burley and Sinclair first broke into the side were remote. The odds of them winning the Champions League? Stratospheric.
Now, though, with a team based on youth and homegrown talent, Chelsea fans are contemplating another crack at a third European crown next season. Mount and James, meanwhile, will be hoping to add a European Championship winners’ medal to complement the one they picked up in Portugal on Saturday night.
Whether the kebab shop that once helped feed the club’s youthful talent is still in operation is unclear. Tuchel’s side, though, have provided the rest of Europe with plenty of food for thought.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3fzL21G
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