Chelsea must take action to ensure Lucas Piazon is the last of his kind

Lucas Piazon gave a completely unfiltered interview about his frustrations and anger over his time under contract and out of sight at Chelsea FC. He embodies the mountain Frank Lampard and Petr Cech must climb to rehabilitate this club’s image.

After all the nice things we’ve said about Lucas Piazon over the years, talking up his serial successes on loan to make the case for a deserved permanent transfer, you’d think he could have waited at least a day before completely undermining the article we led with yesterday morning. Barely a few hours after we said Chelsea could become a destination for underappreciated youth like Manchester City’s Phil Foden, Piazon’s interview provided an uncompromising “No. No, no, no, no, no, not gonna happen” in counterpoint.

While this is the first time Piazon has been this public on the matter, he says he had much the same conversation with Chelsea’s management three years ago. “It generated some discomfort,” he said, with as much understatement as a seven-time loanee can muster.

Chelsea should hand out copies of Piazon’s interview to every past, current and future member of the technical, developmental and player performance staffs.

Those employees who are now and will be overseeing the youth and loan system should commit to ensuring no player passes through Chelsea and leaves with a similar set of experiences and emotions. For those who had a part in bringing Piazon to this point, his words should haunt their dreams like a goalpost in Moscow.

Chelsea’s biggest problem is that there are many more Piazon’s out in the world than there are Mason Mount’s or Callum Hudson-Odoi’s in the pipeline.

The latter may earn more headlines (certainly more positive ones), but among the global chatter and assorted WhatsApp groups of young players, simply playing the odds, the next youngster considering signing with Chelsea is more likely to encounter a Piazon, Omeruo, Hutchison or McEachran. While optimism and confidence are essential for an up-and-coming young player, and he will surely believe he will be on the fast track to the first team, anyone providing him worthwhile advice will point to those players who were scattered and squandered, and will caution him accordingly.

This is the challenge facing Petr Cech, Frank Lampard and everyone else who is part of this development pipeline overhaul. They can still become the club we talked about on Tuesday, but it will require much more time, action and investment than a starring role for a few players this season and next.

As important as these first few players like Mount and Tammy Abraham are, the club have a lot of ground to cover before they become the exemplars of The Chelsea Way. A 20-year old breaking into a top-six first team will always be the exception to the rule. But the Blues need those players to be the first names that come to mind when people speak about the youth progression.

Aside from ensuring that the first players to break through are not the last, Chelsea also must not create any more loan monsters. Piazon must be the last of his kind.

That will be little or no comfort to him and the others, but it’s essential to the club rehabilitating their reputation. And it’s the right thing to do.