Frank Arnesen Urges Chelsea FC To Promote Youth Talent

Former Chelsea FC youth development director, Frank Arnesen, has criticized Chelsea FC’s youth policy in a recent interview he granted to Telegraph Sport at the inaugural Sporting Directors’ Summit at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

He insisted that Chelsea should give opportunities so some of the players who played major roles in helping the club secure the recently concluded F.A. Youth Cup (which the club won after beating Manchester City’s youth team by 5-2 on aggregate) as well as the UEFA Youth League.

Arnesen, who failed to produce a single first-team regular at Stamford Bridge during his five years there, claimed his work had finally borne fruit with the emergence of three or four “special” players good enough to be part of Jose Mourinho’s plans.

"“It was obvious that, in the last years, the best youth players in England, by a mile, came from Chelsea. But because of the philosophy of the first team, they never got a chance. And if you don’t get a chance then you can never say they weren’t good enough.“Chelsea have chosen that and have not given the time or the places to the young kids to go in and be developed. It’s interesting to see this bunch of players, which is probably the most talented. They were there when I was there. They were only eight or nine years old, like Tammy, like Solanke, Colkett. That was a fantastic job from the scouting at that point”"

Arnesen resigned from his role as Chelsea FC’s youth development director in 2010 after showing his displeasure at the club’s refusal to promote some of the top talents recruited by him to the first team. He later took up the role of sporting director at Hamburg and initiated the signings of several of Chelsea’s young talents like Jeffrey Bruma, Gokhan Tore, Michael Mancienne, Jacopo Sala and Slobodan Rajkovic for Hamburg.

Chelsea’s refusal to give youth a chance has been an ongoing debate among football enthusiasts and has been a stick to beat the club with. The club has not been able to promote anyone from the youth team since John Terry in 1998 and the player who was closest to achieving that status in recent times, Ryan Bertrand, was sold to Southampton for 10 million pounds after spending the first half of the season on loan at the club.

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He has eventually gone on to be named in the PFA Team of the Year at left-back after some stellar performances for Southampton this season, notably in their 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge in the EPL. Chelsea chose to let Bertrand leave while signing Filipe Luis for 16 million pounds.

In spite of the huge transfer outlay, the 29-year old Brazilian international has failed to dislodge Cesar Azpilicueta, a £6.5 million right back signed from Olympique Marseille in 2013, from the left-back position. Which begs the question… why was Bertrand, a 25-year old home-grown talent, allowed to leave to sign a 16 million pounds 29-year old left-back as back-up?

Patrick Bamford is currently wowing all and sundry in the Championship for Middlesbrough, scoring 19 goals for the club who are currently trying to secure a Premier League spot through the play-offs. He was also named the Championship player of the year and has been pretty outstanding, playing and excelling in several attacking positions for Aitor Karanka’s side.

Yet Chelsea have been forced to negotiate the run-in for the EPL title with 37-year old Didier Drogba as the only fit and available striker after Diego Costa and Loic Remy suffered hamstring and ankle problems in recent weeks. He has had to labour through 315 minutes of EPL football over the past 3 weeks in key fixtures against Queen’s Park Rangers, Manchester United, Arsenal and Leicester City and has shown his age in those games, failing to make any major impact in any of them save for the match against Leicester.

Credit: CFC Unofficial https://www.flickr.com/photos/cfcunofficial/17115315859/

Although he did score the equalizing goal in Wednesday night’s game against Leicester City, he missed 2 gilt-edged chances which he would normally have scored in his younger days. Bertrand Traore (at Vitesse), Nathan Ake (recently at Reading), Nathaniel Chalobah (at Reading), Lewis Baker (at MK Dons), Tomas Kalas (at Middlesbrough) etc are some of the club’s top talents who have been pretty impressive at their various loan clubs and were also impressive in past youth cup victories.

To make matters worse, several of the club’s big money signing over the past few years have failed to make any major impact at the club like Fernando Torres, Andriy Shevchenko, Mohamed Salah, Adrian Mutu, Khaled Boulharouz etc, to name just a few. Meanwhile, players who showed promise like Joshua McEachran, Miroslav Stoch, Daniel Sturridge etc have either regressed or been forced to leave the club due to lack of opportunities with the first team.

Chelsea’s current F.A. Youth Cup winning side is composed of some of the best footballing talents in Europe. Dominic Solanke has been showing a lot of promise since he was promoted to Chelsea’s under-18 side at the age of 16. In the 2013-14 season, he scored 20 goals in 25 games for the side and was instrumental in this season’s UEFA Youth League victory, scoring 12 goals in his 9 appearances to emerge the tournament’s top scorer.

His goal in the first leg of the F.A. Youth Cup final against Manchester City was his 35th goal of the season. He has also been a key player for the English under-17 and 18 sides as he emerged top scorer at the 2014 UEFA European Under-17 Championship, scoring 4 goals in his 4 appearances, which prompted the F.A. to name him the English Young Player of the Year in March 2015.

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