Many people will regard Chelsea’s youth academy to be non-existent because of the lack of success when it comes to developing a real first-team player. However, not many people will realise that there have been some good young players in the past, who have gone on to make decent careers. One of them is Fabio Borini, who has recently completed £ 11 million transfer to Liverpool. He left Chelsea as one of the many young players who failed to come through the system.
I am sure that there are still some extremely good players within the youth academy, and that the person in charge of the transfers should first look at the academy first. Had this been the case, we would still be having Fabio Borini rather than looking at bringing in Andre Schurrle for around £ 20 million.
The same goes for the signing of Gael Kakuta, who was once described by Carlo Ancelotti as the best young talent he has ever seen. Instead of bringing in Marko Marin for around £ 7 million, Chelsea could have easily integrated Kakuta within the team. Sure, he may have his negatives, but who doesn’t?
“All the young players here know it’s not easy featuring regularly in a top team like Chelsea, but they can still improve very quickly by training every day with top players”
said the former Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti two seasons ago. I would say, what is the point? If the new signings Eden Hazard, Marko Marin, and possibly Brazilian midfielder Oscar turn out to be excellent signings, then it would be at least a while before we get to see a youth team product.
Protagonists might say that Chelsea can carry on spending because they will be able to find a way around the UEFA financial fair play rules, but it is not my point. A major reason for such attacking potential to join Chelsea this season is last season’s Champions League victory. Without that success, we could have not had any of these players coming to Stamford Bridge. Youth team players, however, will always want to make the grade, which is the reason for the special relationship they have with the fans.
Roberto di Matteo’s arrival, though, gives hope because of the way he utilised Ryan Bertrand last season. I hope Bertrand is first of many in this new era for the club.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with CFC academy except that the great expectations from the CFC management makes it difficult for any incumbent coach\manager to experiment with the upcoming players. I believe that once a coach/manager is given time to integrate these young players, it will not be long before we see a quite good number of them evolving from the rank.
Our policy of no trophy no deal syndrome will never permit us to integrate these young promising lads, since the manager would be more interested in protecting his job by using the best and most tested and experienced players in title quest.
@manchasey
Exactly. The policy has to change sometime. It is the way forward.
I am afraid I will have to disagree with regards to the policy changing. We can still integrate youth into the team without compromising on our trophies, All the good managers have done it successfully. Look at the Alex Fergusons or Pep Guardiola while he was at Barcelona.
I think the trick is trying to find the right balance and not just going in and doing a drastic overhaul, while having a lot more faith in our youths. I like the way RDM is going with taking team members like Piazon, Todd Kane and Chalobah on the tour. Considering how many fronts we generally compete on, being able to rotate between the new signings and our youths could be the ticket to keeping the squad fresh and competing on all fronts…
Plus there is always the Carling…. sorry Capital One Cup (God I hate the new name).