Chelsea’s visit to Manchester City on Sunday will be a homecoming for members of the travelling party. Five Chelsea players were nurtured at the academy that sits a few hundred yards from the Etihad Stadium, on the other side of a bridge.
The London club’s recent recruitment has been heavily influenced by City’s teaching of players and coaches. Tosin Adarabioyo, Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Roméo Lavia were members of City’s youth ranks, most working there under Enzo Maresca. If one thread was unpicked this week when Maresca dramatically departed Chelsea, the link remains strong because Sunday’s caretaker, Calum McFarlane, was formerly the under-18s assistant manager at City.
Palmer and Delap won the FA Youth Cup with City in 2020, defeating Chelsea in the final alongside Morgan Rogers, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Oscar Bobb and James McAtee. “We had so many unbelievable players,” says their former City teammate Ben Knight. “When you’ve got that many top, top players, you just feel like you’re never going to lose. And we had a season at under-23s after we won the Youth Cup [when] we were just ridiculous, even when we played against the men’s teams in the Papa Johns [Trophy]. I don’t really remember ever losing.”
Adarabioyo and Lavia had first-team opportunities under Pep Guardiola, and Gittens spent two years in Manchester after joining from Reading. City’s selling of academy graduates is a key part of the business model, earning £40m from the sale of Palmer to Chelsea alone. Lavia, Gittens and Delap moved elsewhere but sell-on clauses further boosted income via Stamford Bridge. The thing all five have in common is that their path at City was blocked.
Joe Shields, the co-director of recruitment and talent at Chelsea since October 2022, worked at City as head of recruitment and talent manager, giving him knowledge of the next generation. All five former City players have joined Chelsea on his watch.
“Having the City education and then putting your own spin on it and being able to play with freedom has definitely benefited Cole,” says Knight, now of Cambridge United. “Cole was the type of player that needed a bit of freedom to be at his best. I wouldn’t say he really had that at City. It was quite structured in the way Guardiola wants people to play. Cole’s gone to Chelsea as the main man; he can go where he wants to go and get on the ball and do what he wants to do. He’s always been quite a relaxed character with so much talent, and the best thing for him to do, in my opinion, was to go to another club. It’s worked out at Chelsea.”
The aim at City is to produce for their own first team. In order to do this there is a stylistic and tactical structure which mirrors Guardiola’s side to make the transition as seamless as possible. Keeping the ball and dominating matches is also part of Chelsea’s mantra, so when they are looking for exciting talents, a degree from a high-quality football university is advantageous.
“I would try and copy Bernardo Silva, McAtee would try and copy David Silva,” Knight says. “I don’t know who Cole was watching, but you try and be like them. The hardest thing is they’re £100m players and you’re trying to take their position and that is really hard. It’s almost next to impossible.”
Palmer was close to being released by City as a small 16-year-old, with some in the club thinking he did not have the attributes to make it at the top. “He had like a mad growth spurt,” says Knight. “I played with him for England when we were both tiny and he sort of struggled a little bit. And then Covid happened and he went with the first team and it was like: ‘Oh my God, how good is he now? He’s just ridiculous.’”
Being a City graduate brings a level of cachet, and the quality that comes out of the club is impressive. Smart recruitment and coaching help to keep City ahead and make them the envy of others. An eagerness to invest gives the club an advantage; Lavia, Delap and Gittens were all brought in from elsewhere as teenagers.
“First year Liam was good, but I never really looked at him and thought he was going to do what he’s done,” says Knight. “After that year, he suddenly just became ridiculous. When you’ve played with players that are now doing what they’re doing, you can look back to those times and think of the moment you realised: ‘Wow, he’s going to be a very, very good player.’”
All had the chance to work with Guardiola and learn what is required to be a top Premier League player. Maresca was a disciple and would return to City as Guardiola’s assistant after managing Parma. Knowing the calibre Maresca has worked with was an attraction for Chelsea and he left a world beater.
Within academies there are a lot of voices on how best to develop young players but Maresca was his own man. “When Enzo came in, he said: ‘No, I’m choosing the team,’” Knight says. “Enzo had his own way of doing it, and he was the one in charge.” Traits learned at City continue to influence Chelsea from near and far.
