Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola reminds how different it could have been

Gianfranco Zola has been speaking about Chelsea’s youth revolution. The comments remind how different things could have been for these starters.

Gianfranco Zola will always be a Chelsea legend. His coaching career may never quite pan out (though he does put in the effort to learn) but nothing will ever take away his playing days at Chelsea.

Last season, the club attempted to tap into that status by making him the assistant manager. More or less, he served as the go between for Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri’s staff. It is difficult to tell how much coaching he actually did but he would have been right there for the training sessions.

Zola has recently spoken about some of the young players that have broken through at Chelsea. He mentions that he was not surprised by Tammy Abraham or Mason Mount making it but was about Fikayo Tomori. That is probably a bit of a blue tinted glasses look back on things because without Frank Lampard, none of those three would be starting for Chelsea right now.

One major reason why any of those three got any sort of look at all last preseason was the World Cup draining Chelsea of a large part of their first team players for almost the entirety of preseason. Whatever look they got had that asterisk attached.

It is also already known from Piet de Visser’s interview that Callum Hudson-Odoi only started playing when the board started mandating it. It is known from the same interview that Abraham was earmarked to be sold. Those are both board decisions and management decisions but for whatever promise Zola saw in Abraham last year, he was still on the chopping block.

Frankly, managers that will play youth will play them when they have alternative options. That was true in March, October of last year, and even June of last year. Transfer ban or not, the idea that Tomori, Mount, and Abraham would have had a role this season is a false one.

It is entirely possible that all three needed last season on loan to find their feet. Tomori was mistake prone and Mount untested physically when they went to Derby County. Abraham had failed in the Premier League once and may have needed Aston Villa to find his groove again.

But then those three would have come into this season the same way they did under Frank Lampard. None of those three were perfect when they first started seeing playing time this year. But Lampard trusted them and his own judgement and they played through their mistakes to solidify. That is simply something that would not have happened while Zola was still at the club.

It is difficult to properly evaluate young talent. But the managers who have a history of developing talent and playing them did not worry about that difficulty. They simply gave the kids a chance and let them play through the rough patches. As much as Zola may have rated Abraham and Mount after seeing them last season, they simply would not have been given a chance to play through those rough patches. They would have hit their snags and the management would have written them off to a few substitute appearances here and there.

And this is not just a Sarri and Zola issue; it is an Antonio Conte, Guus Hiddink, and Jose Mourinho issue. It goes back to Carlo Ancelotti who is perhaps the last manager to attempt to bring youth through consistently and then all the way back to Claudio Ranieri. It is not even as though they completely ignored the youth, but they would only consistently play the ones who were perfect right away. The ones that needed a little time to settle were lost. So much talent was wasted or sold away simply because at their first Chelsea speed bump their manger threw them from the car to steady out.

It did not necessarily need to be Lampard to make this youth revolution happen but it did need to be someone like him. Someone willing to give the youth a chance, consistently, to see where they land. Zola said he took the performances of Tomori in particular as a lesson but the simple fact of the matter is it would not have happened while he was assistant manager.

Not every youth player is going to be a super star. Not every super star is going to be a super star right away. If Zola learns anything from his time at Chelsea and what the club became afterwards, it may need to be that.