How quickly things can change in football. Callum Hudson-Odoi went from being a youth player knocking on the door of the Chelsea first team to a highly-paid star in under a year.
Less than a year ago, then Chelsea manager, Maurizio Sarri, sensationally claimed that Callum Hudson-Odoi “wasn’t ready” for the Premier League. Just this January the teenager handed his boyhood club a transfer request after growing disillusioned with life under the Italian manager. Things would start to change for the Chelsea youth product, as Sarri started to give him more and more first-team opportunities before his season ended with a ruptured Achilles.
Now reports have emerged that Hudson-Odoi has agreed a new five-year contract at Chelsea that could earn him as much as £180,000 per week.
Frank Lampard being manager at Stamford Bridge instead of the dogmatic Maurizio Sarri will certainly have played a part in the teenager’s decision. But it is simply not as straightforward as the change in management that has seen the Blues tie down three of its most promising academy graduates to lucrative new contracts in the span of a month.
For years now Chelsea have had one of the best youth academies in the world. They have managed to win an astonishing seven FA Youth Cups and two UEFA Youth Leagues over the last decade.
But for all their success, no Chelsea academy graduate has become a first team regular for the club since John Terry. As a result, promising players like Nathan Ake, Ryan Bertrand, Patrick van Aanholt and Bertrand Traore slipped away while many others saw their careers derailed.
Major changes might be on the way with a transfer ban in place and a man eager to give a chance to the club’s academy graduates at the helm.
In spite of the fact that Lampard has only been a manager for a mere season, he has already shown the tactical flexibility that his predecessor didn’t possess. After all, in a single season at Derby County he holds impressive wins over legendary managers like Jose Mourinho and Marcelo Bielsa.
Most importantly, it appears Lampard has managed to convince Chelsea’s youth graduates that they have a real shot at making the senior team. Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Mason Mount have already signed new five-year contracts with the club and Callum Hudson-Odoi looks set to follow suit.
This is a remarkable turn of events considering that the highly-rated winger had handed in a transfer request just six months back after Bayern Munich showed interest and offered him the No. 10 shirt.
Clearly many things have changed since then and the officials at the club deserve a lot of credit. Hudson-Odoi had been earmarked as the long-term replacement of Eden Hazard and losing him to Bayern Munich so early in his career would have been a major blow to the club. Fortunately they managed to convince Hudson-Odoi that his future remains at Stamford Bridge, although it came at a hefty price tag.
With a transfer ban hanging over the club, Chelsea has made major moves this summer in other departments.
The appointment of Petr Cech as technical and performance adviser should go some way in fixing the club’s subpar transfer strategy of the past several seasons. Frank Lampard’s hiring brings a feel-good atmosphere back to Stamford Bridge. Lampard’s assistant, Jody Morris, knows the academy inside out and should bridge the gap between the youth and senior teams that has prevented many talented youngsters from making the jump successfully.
For years Chelsea have failed to cultivate any form of stability at the club. There have been promises of dynasties under Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, but all of them crumbled as quickly as they had been constructed.
But this time around there is a genuine feeling among the supporters that if Lampard finds the same success as a manager at the club that he had as a player, he might be in the manager’s seat for a long time to come. Signing Callum Hudson-Odoi for the foreseeable future might have been one of the first big steps in that direction.