Neil Bath, the role of Cobham, and the soul of Chelsea

His departure is awful news... but Chelsea goes on

One thing which the news of Neil Bath and Jim Fraser leaving has brought into focus is the role of the academy.

First, lets address their departures. Fraser being forced out, as Si has reported on this site, is a disgrace. Absolute disgrace, given what he’s done for the club. I don’t blame Neil Bath for walking out in those circumstances, and both of them leaving is just a disaster. It should never have been allowed to happen, and the ownership and sporting directors need to be held to account for this. It’s totally unacceptable.

Aside from this though, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the academy. The goal is not simply to produce players for the first team. The academy is essentially a Harvard for footballers.

Selling parents the dream of playing for Chelsea for every player, and that anything else is failure, is to me, a wrong way to do it. Of course, there is the opportunity if you’re good enough to make it at Chelsea, to train at Cobham. But the big dream is getting elite coaching, training and development with the goal of becoming a top level footballer - at Chelsea or elsewhere.

Young talents get great coaching, training, development as players, plus a high standard of education to prepare them for a career outside football if they need it. History tells us, only 20-30% of these will even have a chance of making it at Chelsea. So the goal for Cobham players isn't simply to make it at Chelsea, but to have a good professional career at a relatively high level, as well as be prepared for a life outside of football.

That’s it.

If Cobham players make it at Chelsea, that’s brilliant and we all want that and love that. If they don’t, they move on, make money for the club, and have great careers. Cobham is seen as one of the best academies in football and is successful because it produces players for Chelsea AND top level footballers who have great careers elsewhere.

If I had a son, I’d send them to Cobham if they got offered a chance there, but I wouldn’t promise them they would make it at Chelsea, I’d tell them to work hard, do their best, be the best they can be, be professional, learn all they can, and whatever happens, they will have a great career.

If young players don’t make it here, it's not a failure if they have a good career.

The other issue people have is signing too many South American talents. Now, I’m not against the signing of a lot of these South American talents - Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian, for example, are truly generational.

I do think it's gone too far however, we’ve signed too many for small fees who aren’t at their level, who we either should not have signed, or loaned. That’s one of the many reasons I think Bath has left, and make no mistake, his departure is a disaster for the club.

As for the “soul of the club”, Chelsea is a 119 year old club. Chelsea’s soul is bigger than Cobham, and bigger than any legend of the club. We’ve had great teams with no academy players in them.

Many, many, players we’ve signed from outside have come to represent the soul of the club/. Lampard, Drogba, Cech, Dennis Wise, Eden Hazard are just a few examples of this. No Chelsea connection before joining us, but become legends who are almost the soul of the club. This idea gets passed down by players, by staff.

The greatest Chelsea team of all time, between 2004-2012, had ONE academy player. Chelsea still had a soul. We still had a heart. We didn’t need a bunch of academy players to have a soul, we needed one person who got the club and passed this onto everyone else.

Right now, we have Reece James, Levi Colwill, Conor Gallagher (who might now stay, by many accounts), Alfie Gilchrist, they all get the club and feel the club, and they have and will continue to pass this on to the other players in our squad. Caicedo is a Chelsea fan who came here because he idolised Kante. We’ve seen the passion the likes of Enzo has for the club. So many of our signings know the legend and history of Chelsea, and joined us because of it. Willy Caballero, our assistant manager, was a player here when we were winning major trophies, he feels that too. We also saw last season, the spirit, the mentality, the sense of family and community in this squad. This set of players care about the shirt, they feel it, they work hard and fight for it. To me, that Chelsea spirit is still there.

Not to mention, we’re all still here. The fanbase carries that passion, that soul, that energy for the club. The games where the Bridge is loud, we feel that.

Neil Bath and Jim Fraser leaving is awful news. But Chelsea goes on, Cobham will go on, under Joe Shields - who is a Chelsea fan, and I completely trust to do a great job.

Chelsea’s soul will never die. Not whilst we’re all here. Not whilst you have the likes of Reece James, Levi Colwill, Conor Gallagher and others passing on that torch.

Chelsea go on.

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