“Cole Palmer is too small.”
That was the consensus at Manchester City when the skinny midfielder moved up to the under-16s and struggled to make an impression.
Coaches had always quite liked him and understood that he could make up for his lack of power and presence with skill – but that changed when he was 15 and moved to a new team.
“This coach was different,” Palmer says in a new Prime Video documentary called England’s Lions: A New Generation, before admitting his inability to accelerate away from players was indeed having an impact on his game.
His parents Jermaine and Marie were worried too, but convinced he would grow.
“They measure a bone in your hand and then tell you how big you’re gonna be and they said he was gonna be 5ft 9in,” Jermaine says. “Then he nearly got let go by City.”
But Palmer’s father, and crucially academy director Jason Wilcox, did not buy it – “it would have made him one of the smallest in the family!” – and continued supporting his son through the academy, “just hoping for the growth spurt”.
“I never believed that,” says Palmer himself. “I thought I was gonna be small.”
Jermaine, a former Stoke youth player whom his son says was “a Sunday League player”, was right: now 22, Palmer is 6ft 1in tall and retains the skill and ability that used to make up for his small stature. He is valued at well over £100m. But City never saw it.
He did make 41 appearances for the first team, but rarely from the start and not often playing the way he wanted. He wanted to go out on loan. City refused.
It left Palmer, who had been at City since the age of seven, facing a difficult decision.
“I did get a bit disheartened,” Palmer says. “You think like ‘Why am I not getting the chance to play?’. You just know when you’re ready to play.”
Chelsea came knocking, but the move south was an intimidating one.
Palmer adds: “I was so adamant for ages like ‘Nah, I’m not going’. I’ve never moved out of Manchester. I’ve always lived at my Mum’s. I just really didn’t want to go.”
Eventually, he agreed terms and a deal worth £40m took him down the M6 from Manchester to Chelsea.
His mum Marie said: “The minute that he went I thought City would be on the phone saying ‘Actually, don’t go’ but that never happened. So off he went!”
The fee, a hefty one for a 21-year-old, paid off almost immediately. Palmer scored 25 times in 45 games in his first season at Stamford Bridge, and topped it with a goal in the final of Euro 2024, although England were beaten 2-1 by Spain.
“When I come here [to Chelsea] I thought ‘Right, this is it’,” adds Palmer. “Probably the best decision I ever made.”
Some believe a player of Palmer’s talent would always have succeeded, no matter the club. But Jermaine still thinks the move was a “sliding doors” moment in his son’s career.
Jermaine says: “I don’t think he would have been doing this at City because you’ve got to play a certain way where now he can just freestyle. So it’s worked out well.”
England’s Lions: A New Generation is available exclusively on Prime Video on Saturday 15 March
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