Critics of Chelsea’s academy and development pipeline have one more argument at their disposal. While the Blues are near the top of the Premier League for sending young players into the top European leagues, they are well down the list across all European clubs.
For the amount of resources and talent at their disposal, Chelsea under-perform as a training club. Chelsea have 28 players they trained scattered across Europe, with 17 of them playing in the top five leagues. That leaves Chelsea in a tie for 46th place for preparing players currently in Europe, and 23rd place for players in the top-five.
Arsenal and Manchester United show better on both counts. Arsenal has 41 Emirates-trained players across Europe, with 21 in the top leagues. United have a massive 28 of their 35 trained players in the big five.
The CIES Football Observatory used UEFA’s definition of a “training club” in their weekly study. UEFA defines a training club as a team where a player spends three years between ages 15 and 21.
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Under this definition, Chelsea is the training club for many of their loanees. These players tend to arrive at Cobham in their early- or mid-teens, and play several years for the youth sides before beginning their loan tour. The accumulation of loanees starts when players reach their early-20s. That is when they are on their second or third loan with no clear path to Stamford Bridge or a forever home in sight.
The CIES study challenges common criticisms of Chelsea’s pipeline. Surprisingly, they are more comparable to Europe’s top teams in terms of producing future first-team stars in-house than they are in producing players overall.
Real Madrid and Barcelona trained more players in the top-five than any other clubs: 41 and 34, respectively. Of those, eight are still playing at Real and seven at Barcelona. That is, about 20%. The Blues and United, on the other hand, each have 14% of their top-five trained players in the club. This is a noteworthy difference, but is not the troublesome disparity between La Masia and Cobham that some lament.
Most of the clubs above Chelsea on both measures are well down the European table from the Blues. Ajax has trained the most players currently in Europe. The next five best teams, though, are Dinamo Zagreb, Partizan, Real, Sporting and Shakhtar.
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In recent months Chelsea have become more open about acknowledging that the academy pipeline exists to train professional footballers, not Blues. The academy’s role in the club’s manipulation of Financial Fair Play rules, the club’s continually regenerating short-term ambitions (no time to build! win now!) and the realities of the transfer market all serve to sever the academy from the first team.
However, Chelsea may not even be doing that well. The CIES shows that Chelsea are not only behind their domestic rivals, but also many clubs across Europe that are in no way comparable to the Blues’ wealth and resources.
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The Premier League as a whole falls short in this study, at a time when all aspects of English football are under scrutiny. The Blues still have much work to do at Cobham, if they can come to an understanding about what the academy is there to do.