Chelsea FC have a wildly talented group of young players. Young players’ potential is often less than obvious, making it hard to rate how good the team actually is.
Too many people discount the level of the current Chelsea team. Those naysayers are too uncreative to imagine the places the young Blues’ potential could lead. Much easier to judge the team on where they are at this exact moment while lamenting how Manchester City and Liverpool are great teams. Those clubs, unlike Chelsea, have a great deal of players in their primes and we all know what to expect from them.
Chelsea are at a different stage than those clubs, one in which we don’t know how good they can be. That is also an unfamiliar place for Chelsea supporters to be, particularly those who joined in the post-Abramovich era. This is not one of those articles that chastises those whose knowledge of the club is limited by the year of their birth. Of course not! Any who believe in the cause are welcome and always will be.
That said, under the Russian’s ownership, Chelsea have always had long-term professionals with many seasons of excellence on their records to be the club’s reference points. Now Chelsea have a team built with fairly few such players and little collective experience. Hope and a handshake is pretty much all the Blues have to work with now and, I must say, I prefer that.
For too long Chelsea have had a group of thankless, ungrateful, amateurish and puerile boys in mens’ bodies. They never seemed to understand what Chelsea and Chelsea supporters wanted or stood for.
We accepted them because they won. There’s not a lot of arguing you can do with the big name trophies they added to the cabinet. But in recent years Chelsea haven’t been adding those type of trophies, and, without a great deal of character to lean on, the hearts of the Stamford Bridge faithful have been left empty.
That is now changing.
If you’re honest, you’ll acknowledge that everything has lined up against Chelsea so far this season. They have a new coach, a good one to be on, but still a new one. Their best players have been injured. Possibly the best player, or at least the most talented player in the history of the club, left for the perennial temptations of Spain. A major personality betrayed the side and demanded a move the day before the season began. And they have a transfer ban.
That’s a lot to deal with, and yet somehow things feel relatively positive.
That’s because for the first time in a long time Chelsea are quietly a dark horse for success. Rather than being the rich unlikeable bullies from west London, this Chelsea team are unusually likable. They’re a generally young team who are proving themselves against the world, led by a fantastically personable coach in Frank Lampard who is doing the same.
A good example of this team proving themselves to the world against the odds is their goalkeeper. Kepa Arrizabalaga this week displaced David De Gea as goalkeeper for the Spanish national team. To those who don’t pay attention every week, the Manchester United goalkeeper is one of the biggest names in world football and an easy choice.
But Arrizabalaga has quietly gone about becoming the best goalkeeper his age in world football. He has buried last season’s controversies behind a great array of shot stopping, reflexes, foot work, spatial judgement and reading of the game.
As he gets older and develops more of a relationship with his defenders, takes a better grasp on the language and continues maturing, it’s undoubtable that he will be one of the best three goalkeepers in world football. There’s a legitimate chance he becomes No. 1 globally, just as he has now for Spain.
The rest of Chelsea’s team is in much the same place.
Tammy Abraham is discounted constantly despite immeasurable excellence. Callum Hudson-Odoi, should he make a full recovery and sign his new contract, will do the same. Mason Mount is proving to be a fantastic player and was recently called up to his senior national team as well. Reece James has the potential to do the same and Ethan Ampadu, should he continue to kick on at RB Leipzig on loan, is the best young central defender I have seen in years, with shades of Sergio Ramos and Fabio Cannavaro.
This Chelsea team is built to make a run at all the important trophies in coming years. More importantly, they will do it with character, heart and a certain amount of the “it” factor that has been missing at Stamford Bridge for several years.
It’s not obvious because their players did not arrive on big money transfers and they are not the first name on the team sheet for their international sides (yet).
This Chelsea side, though, have the makings of the Class of 92, who started off much the same way. Gary Neville wasn’t England’s first choice right back initially. Neither David Beckham nor Paul Scholes waltzed into the side. In time, though, their bond and success at the club level led to their ascending the positions in the international game as well.
Chelsea can do that same thing, and then all the suffering will have been worth it. Doing things the right way is always worth it, and the satisfaction will take many forms along this road.