Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri’s rather brazen dismissal of Callum Hudson-Odoi’s desire to leave Stamford Bridge is in many ways a contrast of commendable authority mixed with hopeless delusion. “Callum is 18yrs old and he has to respect the club, the academy, everything. He has time. If you are one of the best young players in Europe, maybe the academy helped you. So you have to respect this. Callum’s a great player. He’d become one of the best in Europe in another team, too, but he has to respect the work of the academy coaches.”
There is little doubt that Sarri has a point. After all Chelsea have invested a great deal of time and money in developing Hudson-Odoi through their academy system. But equally Sarri must recognise that he and the club owe not just Hudson-Odoi but all their youthful proteges at least the distant possibility that their own endeavours and dreams can be suitably realised and rewarded with realistic hopes of progressing into the first-team squad. It is a scathing indictment of Chelsea’s short-term mentality that the last graduate from their youth system to establish themselves in the first-team was John Terry….back in 2001! In eighteen years since Terry’s emergence there has not been a single Chelsea youngster achieve anything approaching a first-team career at Stamford Bridge!
Hudson-Odoi has yet to start a single English Premier League match. Yet Bavarian giants and five-time European Champions League winners FC Bayern, a grander club than Chelsea in every sense, value his potential to such an extent that they are prepared to pay an eye-watering £35M+ to acquire his services. And with the renowned pair of Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery nearing the end of their illustrious careers, Hudson-Odoi will harbour real hopes of establishing himself among the cream of European elite.
Purely by chance in the wake of FC Bayern’s interest, Sarri selected both Hudson-Odoi and fellow prospect Ethan Ampadu to start Chelsea’s recent FA Cup victory over second-tier side Sheffield Wednesday. Both performed well, including a goal for Hudson-Odoi, yet few observers expect anything other than a recall for Pedro and Eden Hazard and a speedy relegation back to the substitutes bench – at best – for the duo when EPL action resumes this evening.
And this is where Sarri’s preaching loses its credibility. In many ways his hand was forced into selecting Hudson-Odoi in a pathetic attempt to convince him that Chelsea have not dismissed the merits of their academy completely. And against a lower ranked team, in a cup competition that has lost all lustre in witnessing weakened team selections across the board and has already seen the elimination of Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Everton, Wolves and one of Man Utd or Chelsea in the next round, Sarri is begrudgingly prepared to afford a coveted first-team spot to a couple of youngsters. But when push comes to shove, in the cutthroat world of the EPL, with Sarri already facing growing murmurings of discontent from the crowd and the signature cracks of dissent from a near-permanently fractured dressing room, his self-preservation supersedes any concept of medium-term planning – let alone the wider picture – and his desperation ensures a return to the tried-and-tested experience of his senior players.
This is by no means solely a Chelsea issue; despite the millions invested in youth development across the EPL the harsh reality of short-term rewards taking precedence over longer-term benefit has seen fewer and fewer players emerge from the academy structure to establish themselves in the first-team. Only Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard at Man Utd, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Raheem Sterling (before his departure to Man City) at Liverpool and, belatedly, Harry Kane at Spurs spring to mind over recent years. Even the traditionally vibrant youth systems at Man City, Everton and West Ham have struggled over recent years – although the emergence of Phil Foden at City (but he faces a similar ‘here-and-now’ barrier to that at Chelsea), Tom Davies and Ademola Lookman on Merseyside and Declan Rice in east-London suggest there is still some cohesion between the youth structure and the first-team squad.
The problem for Chelsea and for Sarri is that their craving for instant success has very obvious consequences for the progression and relevance of their youth structure. Chelsea’s short-term managerial merry-go-round policy places an insistence on the here and now that simply does not align with a progressive youth development; while the incumbent manager, in this case Sarri, cannot afford to gamble on promoting a prospect that will very likely only reap rewards long after his tenure has been unceremoniously cut short. At the very time when Hudson-Odoi will cast envious glances towards the success of Jadon Sancho and Reiss Nelson in the Bundesliga – having left the academies of Man City and Arsenal and all the inherent frustrations behind to grasp first-team opportunities and flourish at Borussia Dortmund and Hoffenheim respectively – so Chelsea spent the January transfer window finalising a £60M+ deal to sign American winger Christian Pulisic in Hudson-Odoi’s position.
Yes Sarri is right to promote the investments made by Chelsea in their academy prospects and, in some regards, the duty of those youngsters to demonstrate loyalty towards the club. But Sarri also needs to recognise the responsibility of both the club and himself to be honest in determining whether, in reality, there is any genuine trust and faith in that youth structure and any real intention of promoting those prospects into the first-team. If, despite all the evidence to the contrary, there is a chance for the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ethan Ampadu and for that matter Ruben Loftus-Cheek then so be it. But if there is not – which seems obvious – then surely they can not whinge when a youngster’s ambition stretches beyond the Chelsea reserves….
The Eye of the Fly 