WHEN CHELSEA take to the field in search of their fourth top-flight title tomorrow, among the expectant- Stamford Bridge crowd will be a number of aspiring young talents plotting their ascent to the big time.
Some of the club’s newly-crowned FA Youth Cup champions are closer than others, but all are united by their common goal of replacing their idols as the new darlings of the King’s Road. Among them, is an 18-year-old Dubliner who wore the armband all season and scored a belting long-range effort with seven minutes to go to beat Aston Villa.
Former Cherry Orchard and Crumlin United midfielder Conor Clifford led a side comprising nine nationalities on Tuesday. His team-mates were plucked from Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Italy, Germany and Slovakia. Clifford? From Palmerstown.
The first Chelsea side to win the competition in 49 years has much in common with the senior side that claimed the first league title in half a century in 2005.
Expensively assembled, it featured players from all over the globe, a smattering of English talent and a lone Irishman.
This time, though, the sizeable outlay is designed to actually save Roman Abramovich money. Dutch defender Jeffrey Bruma has already featured for the first team this season, as have Fabio Borini and Gael Kakuta. There are many who believe Oxfordshire’s Josh McEachran, Bergamo’s Jacopo Sala, Cologne’s Gokhan Tore and, of course, Clifford will follow suit.
The Dubliner “couldn’t have wished for anything better” on Tuesday. The winning goal to his name in a 3-2 aggregate win. The pride of lifting the cup in front of Stamford Bridge and no less than 22 family members. Victory, he says, was not only built on talent but on an irrepressible team spirit, another trait of Jose Mourinho’s two-time league winners.
“That is the main reason we won it this year”, he says. “We’ve had good players in the past, but there wasn’t much team bonding, they were just individuals. This year we had both, we had a good team ethic, we were altogether and everyone worked hard for each other. We are all pretty close, we go to the cinema together and out for meals and stuff like that, so we’re a tight group.”
As captain, he tries to lead by example. Not one for the hairdryer treatment, though he adds: “If they need to be told, I’ll do it, but that wouldn’t be my style, to be honest.”
He is flattered but not fazed by comparisons to Frank Lampard. Like the England midfielder, he stays after training to practice his shooting. And it shows. “He’s my favourite player. I try to model my game on him. To be put in the same light as Frank Lampard just gives me more confidence to push on and try to make it at Chelsea.”
That last leap is always the hardest but the Republic of Ireland Under-21 and former Under-19 captain will be helped by new FA rules requiring at least eight “home-grown” players in each match-day squad.
Plus, he has talent and time and is making all the right noises on and off the pitch.
“A lot of my friends at home love to go out and party, but over here I’m a footballer and I’m with a lot of the foreign lads, like the Italians, and that’s not their culture. Being with them has helped me a lot . . . just concentrating on football.”
Music to the ears of Chelsea and Ireland fans alike, though we’re not sure how Frank feels about it.
