Chelsea’s teenage debutants: What became of them after their bow in Blue?

Maurizio Sarri has yet to play anyone who could be considered a Chelsea youth player, let alone give one a debut. Considering the careers of Chelsea’s teenage debutants in the last 15 years, perhaps fans should not be in a rush to see young players on the pitch.

If you really want to wreck your Twitter mentions, make a comment about this Chelsea coach or that playing the youth. Point out a few quantitative facts about Antonio Conte’s promotion of youth players or Maurizio Sarri’s desultory record with Napoli’s U23’s and, well, just blame us. We’re used to it.

Advocates for Chelsea’s youth may want to curb their enthusiasm a bit, though. As exciting as it is to see a teenager make his debut, it’s usually all down hill from there. A stoppage time run-out in the Premier League or even a start in the League Cup does not indicate any level of hope, let alone success, for that young man at Stamford Bridge. The boulevard of broken dreams may just well be Fulham Road in SW6.

Since 2003, 28 teenagers have taken the pitch for Chelsea FC. For all but five of them, their first appearance for the Blues was their first in senior-level football. The players who came to Chelsea with first team experience include Oriol Romeu, who notched a single appearance with his childhood club, FC Barcelona; Kurt Zouma, who played 71 games for St. Etienne in Ligue 1 and France’s domestic cups; and Patrick van Aanholt, who had 27 appearances in League One and the Championship while on loan from Chelsea before making his bow as a Blue.

Only one of those teenagers would go on to play over 100 games for Chelsea: Mikel John Obi. He skews the stats much as Arsene Wenger did for Premier League managers last year. With Wenger, the average tenure of a manager was measured in years. Without Wenger, months.

Likewise, without Mikel, the average and the median number of lifetime Chelsea appearances by these once-promising teens is quite paltry: 14 and 8, respectively. Kurt Zouma (71) and Andreas Christensen (46) have the most Chelsea appearances behind Mikel. After that, only 11 get out of single digits.

Most of the players who debuted at Chelsea as teenagers have continued to accumulate games elsewhere. These 28 have played 5,334 games for all clubs in all competitions since leaving the Blues. About two-thirds of those games have been with top-tier clubs, and one-third of the total have been in the Premier League. Again, though, the Premier League data is heavily skewed by Mikel John Obi and Romelu Lukaku.

Ten of them are currently still under contract with the Blues: four are with the club, and six are in the loan army.

The data on the teenage debutants raises the well-trodden question of what is the purpose of Chelsea’s academy, youth and loan systems. Is it to develop Chelsea players? Premier League players? Top-tier footballers? Or are they there to generate transfer fees, either directly or through sell-on clauses? Does the occasional sale of Romelu Lukaku or Nathan Ake make up for the much more common John Swift, Miroslav Sotch, Ben Sahar and Jimmy Smith-level deals.

This look through the data also shows why top clubs have so little incentive to play, promote and integrate young players. Succeeding at an academy like Chelsea’s or arriving at the club with highly-rated potential is a weak indicator of the career ahead. Yes, Chelsea are the hoarders of the football world. They are not only content to take in dozens of young players in the hope of finding The One and discarding the rest, they have built a business and football empire upon that process. For a club with Chelsea’s ambitions and the pressures they lay upon their managers, nothing less than proven success makes sense for inclusion in a matchday squad. The risks are too high and returns too low for all but the most confident managers.

Those managers, though, are the ones who leave their mark on their clubs, their players and the game. Early and sustained commitment from a club and manager towards a young player could be the difference between that player being on my spreadsheet of broken dreams, and that player starting in the Champions League final. These decisions not only keep the player in the top-tier, first-team environment, but they fill him with invaluable confidence for the challenges ahead. None of these outcomes are predetermined.

On a different note, collecting this data gave me an even greater appreciation for the breadth of the Chelsea world. There’s hardly a league in Europe that does not have at least one player who once wore Blue. For example, I ended up excluding Filipe Oliveira because he debuted before 2003. After his eight games for Chelsea he went on to play for nine other clubs. He played the most games – 157 – for MOL Vidi. And here we thought the two clubs had no connection until the Europa League draw.

Chelsea here, Chelsea there, as the saying goes. Hopefully these players scattered across Europe have a fond memory of their first-team debut. There certainly are enough of them, and it would be a shame of Chelsea left a sour taste in their mouth over what happened next.