General Chelsea Stuff

[Vesper 29,017]

Rati Aleksidze: ‘I was in a bad situation. I turned to drugs. I lost myself…’

https://theathletic.com/2163190/2020/10/27/rati-aleksidze-chelsea-interview/

Rati Aleksidze was just 25 when he hit rock bottom. A career that promised so much when he was signed by Chelsea four years earlier was now in freefall. Full of grief and anger, he told Ivan Savvidis, the president of Russian side FC Rostov exactly what he thought of him.

“I said ‘fuck your football, fuck Rostov and fuck you!’ and left,” he tells The Athletic. “I had three and a half years left on my contract. They wanted me to come back, but I just ended up quitting the game.” 

This was a young man who, upon joining Chelsea in 1999, had revelled in learning from manager Gianluca Vialli and being in a dressing room with star players like Gianfranco Zola and Marcel Desailly. He loved sharing a drink with Jody Morris and spoke with John Terry about the dream of playing together on a regular basis in the first team. Now all he wanted was to forget.

Aleksidze’s time in west London wasn’t perfect by any means. As he talks candidly for over an hour about his life, the former Georgia international striker admits that a downward spiral into depression began in the English capital. But nothing hit him harder than learning of the death of his father while playing for Rostov in 2004.

“I went to the club and said I must go home to bury my dad,” he explains. “I made it clear that I would come back in one week. They were really rude. The president said he was not going to let me go. He was in a bad mood. 

“I walked out to arrange the funeral anyway. What happened to my father killed me. Even if I wanted to carry on playing at that point, I couldn’t. FC Rostov wouldn’t release me from my contract. After 18 months I was still not playing. To be honest, I didn’t want to play again anyway.

“I went into a different world. I was in a bad situation. Did I turn to drugs? Yes. I turned to everything, my friend, every bad thing we have in the world. I lost myself.

“When you have everything, there are no problems. You have power, you have money, you play football, it’s a nice life. When my father died, I felt I lost everything. I didn’t think about money, business, football. I just died inside. I was weak.

“I should have been stronger. For example, Frank Lampard lost his mother (in 2008). He continued to play very well for Chelsea, scoring goals. I was happy to see that. He was the strong guy in the same situation. Where I went down, he went up.”

---

Aleksidze woke up to see his bedsheets covered in blood. His initial reaction was a mixture of horror and utter confusion. There was also a pounding in his head. He had never suffered a hangover as bad as this before.

Then he saw what had caused the wound. There was a new tattoo, spelling out “lion” in Chinese. The memories of what happened the night before soon came flooding back.

Going out for a beer with some of his Chelsea team-mates on a day off was a fairly regular occurrence while he was at Stamford Bridge. Despite being a junior member of the squad, he made a number of friends, from big-money signing Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to rising stars like Terry.

One of his closest pals was Morris, now assistant to Frank Lampard. The midfielder was a regular in the first team back then after coming through the academy but didn’t fulfil his potential, partly due to the perception that he occasionally enjoyed himself a little too much away from the pitch.

Aleksidze was with Morris the night the Georgian drunkenly decided to get “lion” (“because I am a lion”) inked on his arm. “I just remember the next morning I woke up and the bed was red because I’d been bleeding.” he recalls. “I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?!’ My hand was bleeding because of the tattoo. It was a proper hangover. I was young, I was a child. We just drank beer, beer and more beer. Then I don’t know what else. I was so out of it. I don’t really remember.”

Aleksidze had to be very patient to secure a move to Chelsea. He initially came to their attention after a number of good displays for Dinamo Tbilisi, as well as Georgia’s under-21 side. In 1997, he was invited for a two-week trial during Ruud Gullit’s spell in charge.

However, there were rules regarding the signing of foreign players which stated that a player had to feature in 75 per cent of their international team’s fixtures over the previous two years. Aleksidze didn’t comply at first and he returned to Dinamo, helping them win three successive titles between 1997-99.

Ken Bates, Chelsea’s chairman at the time, came to see him play in one game. “I scored something like three goals,” Aleksidze recalls. “He came into the dressing room and said, ‘Well done, we are depending on you. We are watching you’. Eventually I played enough games for Georgia so I could move there in 1999.”

Aleksidze initially chose to move into a big house in the west London suburb of Acton, but soon switched to a fancy Kensington apartment so he could really experience the buzz of the city.

Life was certainly exciting at the start. He counted pop star Mark Morrison, who had recently enjoyed global success with his No 1 hit Return of the Mack, as a neighbour.

“We were friends,” he says. “I liked his music before I’d met him. He loved Chelsea also. I gave him tickets to watch Chelsea, he gave me tapes of his music, old and new songs.

“One time a friend of mine was staying with me and an associate of Mark’s went to my flat by mistake. Our flats looked exactly the same and he went to the wrong one.

“I wasn’t at home and the door was unlocked. Mark’s friend walked in calling, ‘Mark, Mark, where are you?!’ My friend was asleep in his pants. He was feeling bad, hungover. He wakes up to see this stranger in the flat. On the table I kept a Georgian souvenir in the apartment, it was a big knife. My friend grabs it and shouts very threateningly. This guy ran out very quickly. When I found out I was dying with laughter, Mark too.”

It is clear Aleksidze enjoys reflecting on this period of his life. He talks of Desailly helping him and fellow Georgia internationals Georgi Kinkladze and Temuri Ketsbaia (who played for Manchester City and Newcastle respectively) get into an exclusive club that Jennifer Lopez had just walked into. They were turned away by security until Desailly intervened because, as he recalls: “We were unshaven and dressed all in black. We looked strange to them.”

He even reflects fondly about a fight he had with former Netherlands defender Winston Bogarde at Chelsea’s training ground. It all started after the latter took exception to Aleksidze celebrating a win over his side during an in-house tournament.

After being separated by players and coaching staff on the pitch, the confrontation resumed in the changing room and threatened to get out of control in the gym.

Aleksidze continues: “Bogarde picked up a big weight. I was going so mad. I thought he wanted to hit me with it, but maybe he was just trying to scare me.

“Jesper Gronkjaer was injured at the time and was in there working out with this metal bar. I took the bar Gronkjaer was holding and went at Bogarde. I punched Bogarde in the neck. It was fucked up. Everyone was watching me. After that, nobody kicked me. Everything was also fine between me and Winston. He’s a good guy.”

Suddenly the mirth in his voice disappears. The tone becomes more serious, one of regret. “To make it at Chelsea you have to be good physically, mentally, psychologically,” he says. “It was really hard for me. I was a child. The players were really good, Zola, Hasselbaink, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Gustavo Poyet and Tore Andre Flo. It was hard to play. 

“It was 100 per cent my fault I didn’t make it at Chelsea. I should have done more, be more professional. It wasn’t so hard that you couldn’t do anything. I could have played more but it didn’t happen.  

“Maybe it was the beer, maybe it’s about the girls. At that age my friend, English girls, it was unbelievable. When they found out who you played for, then you had some fun. It was perfect.

“In general I was not getting enough sleep. I know in my mind I didn’t do things properly. But it is not easy for a boy coming from another country and being alone. Mentally, I died. I had personal problems, it wasn’t just about football. Maybe it was about love. I liked somebody and maybe…” he trails off and loses track for a moment.

After regathering himself, he carries on: “I was in good shape and was in good form. And then something happened in my personal life, my head was a mess. I couldn’t pass, go on the attack, stay in a good position, my first touch was shit. One day I woke up and my head was really bad. I couldn’t concentrate. It was a little bit of depression, a little bit about missing someone. Everything together. It felt like I got weak. I should have been stronger.”

The records show Aleksidze made just three appearances for the club, totalling only 63 minutes. It was Vialli’s successor, Claudio Ranieri, who gave him these opportunities after taking charge in September 2000.

His debut came in Ranieri’s second fixture as a second-half substitute away to St Gallen in the old UEFA Cup. Far from something to celebrate, it was completely overshadowed. This was the contest in which midfielder Roberto Di Matteo broke his leg in two places — an injury that ultimately ended the Italian’s playing career. Chelsea also suffered the humiliation of losing to the Swiss outfit 2-0 on the night to go out of the competition, but would have gone through on away goals had Aleksidze’s shot gone in rather than struck the crossbar.

Brief cameos in defeats by Derby and Middlesbrough followed, and then he was completely out of the reckoning. By September the following year, Aleksidze was released and it was all a bit of a mystery to supporters.

An attempt to join Sheffield Wednesday on loan in order to get more regular football fell through because of the aforementioned foreigners rule, but a more significant setback than that ended his stay in England.

“I picked up a back injury at Chelsea and aggravated it playing for Georgia,” he says. “The club wanted to operate, but then they decided against it because the feeling was it could maybe make it worse. They were saying I might not play football again. I didn’t want the operation.

“They took me to experts in England, Germany and Italy. It was fucked up. It was scary. My back was so bad I couldn’t train for three months. Then I told them I’d had enough and I was going to go home. They were very nice about it when they let me go. I still had time left on my contract and they made sure I got all my salary.”

A return to Dinamo Tbilisi helped him get things back on track, only for that transfer to Rostov, where “it’s too fucking cold”, to send him deeper into the abyss.

---

Aleksidze is 42 now and is very content with where his life is at. He works for the Georgian Football Federation and also has some other business ventures to keep money rolling in.

More importantly, his state of mind couldn’t be better. After a four-year break, Aleksidze did resume playing again with Lokomotive Tbilisi, Hungarian club Gyori ETO, and finally FC Dila Gori.

Those reading this may dismiss the standard he ended up at after reaching the dizzy heights of Chelsea, but managing to spend six seasons as a professional again was an achievement in itself considering the despair he felt at one point.

How did he recover? “My second wife, Lika Mkheidze,” he explains. “I have known her since I was a child, when we were at school together. I loved her. Then our ways split when I went to London and she stayed in Georgia. Then somehow we came together. When we met again, my heart was beating so fast, 250 beats per minute! That was it for me. I am so happy now I have my wife and four children (they have had two boys together, plus a child each from prior relationships).

“She helped me come back from the dark times. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know where I’d be today. She is not just my wife, she is my best friend. Understanding each other is the most important thing between a wife and husband.”

COVID-19 means travel is a bit difficult for everyone right now, but Aleksidze is already making plans for a trip when the virus is more under control. “I will come to London with my family and watch a Chelsea game again. I look back and after everything, I still regard it as one of the best periods of my life.”

Aleksidze has certainly been on quite a journey.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,898]

Anyone getting excited for the 2020 FA Youth Cup Final tonight? For the fourth time in 6 seasons it will be Chelsea vs Man City. Having won the previous three I really don't want to loose this one.

Good luck to the lads.

[Fulham Broadway 16,920]

7 hours ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

Anyone getting excited for the 2020 FA Youth Cup Final tonight? For the fourth time in 6 seasons it will be Chelsea vs Man City. Having won the previous three I really don't want to loose this one.

Good luck to the lads.

Our boys working really hard and its paying off so far  - 1-0 up

[NikkiCFC 8,048]

Why is Anjorin on the bench? 

[Fulham Broadway 16,920]

Harvey Vale coming on

2-2 now

Amazing to think most of these kids will be multi millionaires in a couple of years....

[Fulham Broadway 16,920]

Bollox 3-2 to Citeh

Chelsea played well though

[OhForAGreavsie 5,898]

5 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Why is Anjorin on the bench? 

Making his way back from an injury lay off.

4 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Bollox 3-2 to Citeh

Chelsea played well though

Lads did their best but the better side won. City have more quality in their current crop of U18s than we do.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,898]

On 23/10/2020 at 1:07 PM, Vesper said:

Ruben Sammut – from Chelsea, to Sunderland, to LinkedIn, to Dulwich

https://theathletic.com/2145189/2020/10/22/ruben-sammut-interview-chelsea-sunderland-dulwich/

For Ruben Sammut, the challenge has changed but, in many ways, the imperative remains the same. He needs to stand out from the crowd, he needs to be noticed.

Sammut always wanted to make an impression, whether it be an FA Youth Cup final victory in front of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich or as an 18-year-old walking onto the first-team training pitch under Jose Mourinho.

Sammut recalls: “We were told Roman would be watching the final against Manchester City (in 2015). A lot of first-team players came to the big FA Youth Cup games and Mourinho came along too. You think, ‘This is my chance to make Roman or Jose remember me, to do something in the game’. The whole thing with Jose was his aura. He could put on a session similar to one that other coaches may do but nobody would be mucking around. You didn’t want to annoy Jose. He always called a youth boy ‘The Kid’. You wondered: ‘Does he actually know my name or will I always just be ‘The Kid’?’ You try and do something to make sure your name stood out, so Jose would ask, ‘What is his name?’ and so I could say, ‘I am Ruben!’ Some players thought ‘Ohhh, he doesn’t care about us’ but others thought ‘I want to make sure he knows my name’.

Now aged 23, Sammut no longer seeks to entice Abramovich or Mourinho. During 13 years at Chelsea, Sammut rose through the academy. He won two FA Youth Cups and two UEFA Youth League trophies, forming a prominent part of sides featuring Andreas Christensen, Fikayo Tomori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Mason Mount, Dominic Solanke and Tammy Abraham. He was coached by Frank Lampard’s current first-team assistants Jody Morris and Joe Edwards at youth-team level, with Edwards in charge for the 2018 run to the semi-finals of the EFL Trophy, where Sammut — the heartbeat of Chelsea’s youthful midfield — captained a team featuring Reece James, Ethan Ampadu and Callum Hudson-Odoi.

Two and a half years later, however, and Sammut’s life has changed markedly. In the summer of 2019, Chelsea and Sammut cut the cord. He joined League One Sunderland but did not make a first-team appearance amid the club’s upheaval and a change in manager shortly after he signed. In May, as the country locked down, Sunderland informed Sammut he would be released after a campaign mostly spent in their Under-23 team.

 

Sammut leads out Sunderland U23s against Liverpool in February (Photo: Nick Taylor/Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

After the relative comfort of academy life, this past summer has proved a sobering reminder that even an elite education provides few guarantees in a brutally competitive sport. Sammut was one of several hundred free agents in a cluttered window, where Football League clubs came to terms with a hard salary cap and reduced budgets, which left many unwilling to take risks on unproven young talent.

Sammut was proactive. He adapted his Twitter bio, simply writing “free agent” and inputted his CV and clips onto LinkedIn. He freely provided contact details for his agent. The details of Chelsea’s academy manager Neil Bath and his former coach Edwards were also provided, both of whom had made themselves available for references.

Sammut wrote: “Clubs looking for a CDM/CM, or if anyone knows clubs that are in need of this position. I have arguably the best football education in the world at Chelsea FC Academy. Now looking for a manager to take a chance on a player stepping up into senior football.”

And yet, it was hard. Some clubs refused to take triallists at all this summer, citing the prohibitive cost of COVID-19 testing and therefore plumped for experienced heads when assembling their squad. Sammut went for a trial at League Two Salford City, where he was part of a triallist team that defeated Manchester United’s Under-23s, but he received a polite call to say he would not be needed.

He knew, having failed to star in League One, it may need to be League Two, or the National League. He trained with Dover, Woking and Bromley in the National League to keep fit and, as the window closed and squad space closed up, Sammut dropped into the sixth tier of English football. He is now playing for Dulwich Hamlet of the National League South, defeating teams such as Corinthian Casuals and Christchurch in the qualification rounds of the FA Cup. Last weekend, however, yielded a 2-0 home defeat by Chippenham Town in the league.

Now, meeting in a coffee shop near his family home in Maidstone, Sammut is reflective. There is no hint of self-pity. He is delighted for his friends Mount, Abraham, Tomori and Hudson-Odoi. He is 23 years old but Sammut is not a tale of too-much-too-soon or off-pitch excess. He has invested money wisely, owning properties in London and the northeast. He holds a GCSE in Mandarin and he spent his lockdown completing a Football Association course in Talent Identification, which may provide a pathway towards scouting or coaching. He is, in short, a talented player struggling to catch a break.

His analysis is smart and illuminating, particularly when discussing the flaws and occasional parental touchline rivalry in academy football, or detailing the coaching sessions he experienced under Mourinho, the “regimented” Maurizio Sarri and “the most intense” Antonio Conte. His insight into his former coaches Sarri and Edwards, breaking down the precise drills they use to perfect their pressing, is absorbing.

First, however, to Sammut himself and the most challenging summer of his young career.

---

“Footballers have an ego thing going on,” Sammut admits. “I had to drop my ego this summer and be realistic. I know players released by Chelsea who had not gone anywhere and were just training at home. I wanted to be proactive. I knew by going on LinkedIn and messaging managers, assistant managers, technical directors, and, yes, making myself vulnerable, it could put me in a shop window.

“I effectively had a season out of first-team football at Sunderland. I played for the under-23s but my eyes have been opened during the last couple of years. I went to Woking and the manager made jokes, saying he went to an under-23s game and there wasn’t even a tackle. At Chelsea, we got to the semi-final of the EFL Trophy and proved we can play at that level but under-23 teams playing against each other is not quite the same. I have spoken to managers who said we need to play men’s football for scouts to take you seriously. I got caught under the blanket of playing under-23s football for too long and should have gone into men’s football a year earlier.”

It must be a difficult mental transition, though, to go from representing Chelsea in youth tournaments, wiping the floor with opponents, to take a punt on a loan move to the fifth or sixth tier of English football.

Sammut nods. “It is a shock to the system. If you drop to that level, you feel like you have failed yourself. Now I am that little bit older, I accept I need to play at that level to progress. I had players either side of me at Chelsea who have first-team careers and you can start to think, ‘Man, I have had to drop down to this level.’ At Sunderland last season, the hardest day was Saturday. I went to games and felt I could offer something in the team. A lot of players I played with in youth teams are playing on Saturday. If they are playing and you are sat at home or in the stands, you can feel like (a spare part). I am honest enough to admit there have been times where I started thinking about opponents I played against in rival teams over the years. You start to think, ‘I wish I got that move he has had, we used to beat them 4-0 or 5-0, they used to never get near me and now they are having a great career in League One, how has he got that?’ But I cannot fall into that trap.

“I know some players fall out of the game and would rather not play at that lower level. Some just quit. Football is a weird world. You ask, ‘I wonder what happened to so-and-so’ and find out he is not in the game anymore and they are doing a ‘normal’ job. When I was 19, I could have dropped my ego. I was trying to go to League One teams on loan but nothing was really coming up because they went for more experienced players. I should have gone to a National League team for half a season.

“Premier League academy players have the dream of being a Premier League player. You are thinking ‘I am a lot better than the fifth or sixth tier’ but the reality is you have not proven yourself to be that. If you are resilient and strong-minded, you can come back up. N’Golo Kante was in the ninth division of French football five years before winning the title at Leicester and now he has won the World Cup. Five England players in the last squad came through non-league. It can be done. I just need to be playing football. Dulwich’s coach Gavin Rose is a friend of Jody Morris, a really good coach and wants to play through the thirds. He doesn’t want to play route one. He sees Dulwich as a good place to develop players and sell on to higher leagues. It is up to me to show my quality.”

---

Reared in the Chelsea academy, Sammut impressed coaches with his application and his skill. As a six-year-old, he first trained at Arsenal’s Hale End facilities alongside Crystal Palace’s Ebere Eze, QPR’s Chris Willock and Reading’s Ovie Ejaria. Then a dad on the touchline tipped off Sammut’s own father about a Chelsea trial day.

“Chelsea had won the league with Mourinho,” Sammut recalls. “They asked if I wanted to keep going and I just loved it. Jim Fraser is now the assistant academy manager and he took a shine to me. Dad wanted me to listen to coaches and one of the things he really taught me was to give eye contact when people are talking to you, as a lot of kids get distracted. I listened to everything and did what I was told. My attitude got me through the academy more than my ability —  there were more talented players with a worse attitude who did not go as far as me. I became the under-23s captain because I led by example.”

Sammut notes how the dynamics of academy football change through the age groups. What begins as fun becomes more competitive as the teenage years creep up. He explains: “Another dimension becomes apparent as players get sponsorship deals and may be called up for England. Now it becomes serious and there is serious money involved. It becomes tough for parents. Mum and Dad would say this to you. There is even competition, like ‘your kid has a Nike deal’ and things start to change and there is a new dynamic. I didn’t have an agent until I was 16, when the academy manager Neil Bath came to me and explained I would sign a contract when I was 17. Neil said it would be wise to get an agent. I had never thought about getting one, to be honest, before that. Agents came to games and a few would approach your parents. I wanted someone I could trust and had my best interests at heart. It is hard for parents to know what is the best thing to do for their child. You are so naïve at the time because you have never experienced it.”

As competition intensified off-the-field, Sammut continued his education on the training pitch and in junior tournaments. Coached by Lampard’s current assistant Edwards, he featured in the Chelsea team that won the 2015 and 2016 FA Youth Cup final. He jokes how it started to be seen as “the Chelsea FC Cup” as Chelsea lifted the trophy five years on the spin between 2014 and 2018.

Edwards’ work on the training ground, often working with Morris and sometimes accompanied by Lampard, captured Sammut’s imagination and developed James, Tomori, Mount, Hudson-Odoi and Abraham.

Sammut describes Edwards as “the most impactful coach of my academy years.”

He explains: “He could put his arm around you and be more of a friend. But both Joe and Jody have good cop bad cop within themselves. Joe could give a bollocking if he needed to but knew the right time and knew who needed handling differently. His man-management — you could not ask for better. His coaching points were clear. He never did the same thing; always different, always interesting, always fun. He went to America to learn from the San Antonio Spurs and NBA coaches about how they work. He was really hot on analysis and he explained how NFL teams would have guys in at 5am and in all day studying clips. He wanted us to have a good culture, where we wanted to do extra. He developed our mentality so that when a session ended we wanted to practise corners or longer passing. He said that it creeps for people to settle but he wanted us staying in the building as long as possible.”

Edwards, Morris and Lampard have sought to introduce a high-pressing game to the Chelsea first-team. It has, at times, worked impressively although concerns linger over the team’s defensive lapses.

Sammut continues: “Joe and Jody wanted us to press hard and high with energy, just like Chelsea are starting to do now. I watch Chelsea now and I see signs of how we used to play. We played Arsenal once and Thierry Henry was the assistant for Arsenal under-18s at the time. I remember after the game, Joe and Jody told us how Henry could not believe how well we pressed as a group. When we were on our game, all in sync and pressing, no team could beat us. This is why Mount looks so comfortable pressing. He led the press. There may be other players less used to it, which helps Mason stand out a bit more.”

How did Edwards actually coach the pressing philosophy? Sammut says: “We did possession drills where if you lost the ball but won it back within three passes, it was a goal for your team. The onus was on creating a reaction to losing the ball. We studied how an opponent would play out [from the back] and knew exactly where our lines should be to press and where to go. We’d do 20-30 minute sessions on that. It instilled it into our brains. Equally, if a team got ten passes consecutively in a training drill, it would be a goal to them. So you are trying to stop them getting to the tenth pass, working together as a unit to win the ball back. The intensity of training got our fitness levels up and we could press harder for longer periods of games whereas you would only be able to do it for 20 minutes before tailing off. We could do it for 40-minute periods.

“It never became boring with Joe. With some coaches and managers, you know it is a warm-up, a passing drill, maybe a shooting drill and then you go into a game. But Joe just kept our minds active. We might be working one week on switching play, so he would do possession game where there would be a gate on either wing and to score you had to get it through there. You went into training excited, active, and thinking ‘I wonder what we will be doing today’ rather than ‘Ugh, we are doing that today’.”

---

As Sammut’s stock rose in the youth age groups, opportunities came to train with the first-team. He recalls sessions with Mourinho, Sarri and Conte.

“The speed of the game was the main change,” he begins, “One-touch, two-touch, you turn, you think you have time and there’s a player in your face. You need to be a pass or two ahead, that was the eye-opener. You watch Premier League football and think they have so much time but when you are in training with them, you realise you have no time at all.”

He shifts forward in his seat. “The detail!” he grins. “You get moaned at for not passing it to their back foot so a player can turn out. John Terry was captain and completely drove the sessions. If the standard dropped, you knew about it because John would have a go at you. John made us feel welcome and got other players to say hello. It is scary when you first go there, definitely. The academy and first-team buildings are separate. I came in in the morning and Jody or Joe would say ‘You are training with the first team today’. From that point, you are thinking ‘I better be ready’.”

“You would not know the night before. I nervously jogged over, across the pitch and shook the coaches’ hands. You made sure you were early and then you are there, just on the pitch, waiting, as these first-team stars emerge from the building. It used to be quite daunting but once the warm up is done, you relax a little. They don’t go easy on you. There was a loose ball and I was going in against Terry. In that split second, I am thinking ‘There is no way I am winning this but I have to go in there’. He has absolutely taken the ball, me and a mannequin out. He said ‘That’s what it is like, get used to it’. That was a wake-up call. You need that as a kid because you are in your own bubble, everything is comfortable in the academy — it is an awakening.’

Do all the superstars apply Terry’s level of intensity to training? “Remember they play a lot of games. Eden Hazard, for example, could go through the motions in training. He was still top quality, but not running around crazily. You are thinking ‘How is he then producing what he does on Saturday?’ But he had to look after himself. There was never a point anybody trained badly. The standard had to be high. Cesc Fabregas was amazing. He was one of the players who, if you did a bad pass, he would be on to you. Not in a bad way but more ‘Come on, this is how we do it’. I’d make sure I raised my standards because I didn’t want Cesc on me, especially if I was playing midfield with him in a training game — you don’t want to be letting him down. I was amazed by Jorginho. At the end of Sarri’s training, the game was always one-touch, or two-touch, and I have never seen anybody as good at that as Jorginho. It was like his head was on a swivel and he could touch anything around the corner. Nobody could get near him.”

At Chelsea, Mourinho, Sarri and Conte all faced challenges as the curtain came down on their periods at the club. Sammut’s experience with each was limited but he offers a portal into each manager’s approach. He was, for example, around the group when Mourinho’s second reign fell apart.

He explains: “Jose is quite an emotional guy and whatever mood Jose is in around the place affected everyone. Once that transition came for him knowing he was going to lose his job, it did put a cloud over the place a little bit. That’s the reality of the job but as players, you should not let that affect you. You can tell from the Tottenham Amazon documentary how a lot of players felt like they had let Mauricio Pochettino down because they should have been playing better under him and that’s the reason he lost his job. With Sarri, the training was very similar every day. He was very much regimented in that he would do a lot of shape work and then a one or two-touch game at the end. I always thought if you had Hazard in your team, that was not his game. He wanted to be running at people. A few players found it quite frustrating but others enjoyed it.

“Conte was really involved in sessions and had a load of coaching points to outline. It was almost to the point that he had it done it so much that everyone knew the movements they had to make on the pitch and the exact passing patterns. The season he won the league, he brought a new formation and everybody needed to know exactly where to go and where the ball was going. The detail he goes into is unlike any manager I have experienced. I only trained with him a handful of times. He was the most intense, even in team meetings — he would go into detail breaking it all down and you almost thought ‘How can you go into that much detail as the game is going so quickly?’

“I am a player who learns a lot from analysis but a lot do not take it in as well. Some think ‘You come to the game, you react to what is going around you’ rather than thinking ‘I should be there’. What was hard was that there was a divide between players taking it on board and other players who thought ‘Just play the game of football’. Some players come from that playground football background, where they think ‘football is a game of skill and who wants it more’ and they find that aspect of tactical detail harder to take on board. It is so hard for a manager to strike the balance. Conte has had unbelievable success with his methods in every job.”

---

For Sammut, contact remains at Chelsea, both with the coaches he left behind and some of the young starlets of Lampard’s team. At his family home, he still keeps training kit from the Chelsea under-13 age group, his UEFA Youth League jerseys, a club-provided picture frame of FA Youth Cup celebrations and the shirts he wore along the EFL Trophy run.

Now, however, he is taking steps backwards in order to move forwards. He concludes: “By the time I left, I needed to play men’s football. I was sad to leave people: Maggie the chef, the kit man, all those people who treated me so kindly. This summer, after leaving Sunderland, dad said there will be hundreds or thousands of players in the same position as me. I asked any football connection in my phone for help. I asked staff at Chelsea for numbers of managers or contacts to just say, ‘Here is my CV and I am available to come in and train’. If anything has come from this, it is the amount of managers I now have in my phone. A lot of them were very helpful, even if they didn’t need me. They wished me all the best and said they would keep tabs. It was quite an uplifting experience. Now I have to play some games for Dulwich and really kick on.”

Sad truth is Ruben was always destined for Dulwich. I could never see genuine quality there.

[killer1257 3,282]

Lads did their best but the better side won. City have more quality in their current crop of U18s than we do.

Anjorin played the last couple of matches thougj

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk

[OhForAGreavsie 5,898]

1 hour ago, killer1257 said:

Anjorin played the last couple of matches thougj

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk
 

He did and he made a difference when he came on last night but not enough this time.

 

[killer1257 3,282]

He did and he made a difference when he came on last night but not enough this time. [emoji20]
 

I did not watch the match becausd 5th app did not show it sadly.

But still amazing result for our boys

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk

[OhForAGreavsie 5,898]

2 hours ago, killer1257 said:

I did not watch the match becausd 5th app did not show it sadly.

But still amazing result for our boys

Gesendet von meinem VOG-L29 mit Tapatalk
 

City have a very good group of U18s this year. It's no disgrace to suffer a narrow defeat to them.

[Vesper 29,017]

Matt Law's Chelsea briefing

Chelsea manager and his players dig deep for charity By Matt Law, Football News Correspondent Frank Lampard and some of his players have been putting their hands in their pockets over the past week to support causes close to their hearts. Lampard and Mason Mount have shown their appreciation for the part Derby County played in their development by pledging support for a bust to be made of Derby legend Reg Harrison. And Chelsea right-back Reece James is trying to help some of the London families hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic by attempting to raise £100,000 for The Felix Project. James kicked off his fundraising effort by making a £10,000 personal donation to the project, which collects surplus food in London and delivers it, free of charge, direct to local charities and schools serving people in need. James has not only made a financial contribution, but has also shared pictures of himself helping with collections and deliveries of food with the promise that every £10 donated will provide 61 meals. By that reckoning, James himself has donated enough money to provide a staggering 61,000 meals, with his overall goal of £100,000 totalling 610,000 meals. Since setting up his fundraising site and making his personal donation last Thursday, James had, at the time of writing, already raised over £14,000. On social media, the England international said: “All the stuff on the news about kids going hungry is breaking my heart. I’ve set up this page to help raise money for @felixprojectuk so they can get more food to hungry children & people who are struggling.” This week, Lampard donated £2,000 to the project set up by the Rams Heritage Trust, who are trying to raise £8,000 for a permanent remembrance in honour of Harrison, who played for Derby County between 1944 and 1955, and was last year awarded the freedom of the city. Lampard met Harrison — who died in September aged 97 — in February last year, when Harrison, the last surviving member of Derby’s 1946 FA Cup winning team, was presented with the freedom of the city. Derby fans have praised the contribution of Lampard, who managed Derby for one season, taking the club to the play-off final where they lost to Aston Villa, before he returned to Chelsea. The Rams Heritage Trust posted a picture on Twitter of Lampard alongside Harrison with the message: “Wow - humbled by the support we've received for our #RememberingReg campaign from Frank Lampard." "Frank met Reg when he received the Freedom of the City of Derby and obviously had a tremendous effect on him. Once a Ram…” Midfielder Mount, who spent a year on loan at Derby under Lampard, has also supported the cause by donating £250. The Rams Heritage Trust tweeted a message that read: “What a fantastic gesture from @masonmount_10 to contribute to our fund for Reg Harrison, a class act from a class player, remembering the importance of grass-roots football where everybody’s dream starts, not many make it but Mason certainly has ! Thank you Mason, once a Ram…” At the time of writing, the campaign, with the help of Lampard and Mount, was well on the way to achieving its goal, having raised almost £5,000. The bust, which will be sculpted by Andy Edwards, will be displayed beside the entrance to Field Lane Football Club, one of the clubs founded by Harrison in 1982 and close to his family home in Alvaston.

[Jase 43,479]

 

 

[NikkiCFC 8,048]

I assume tickets will be much more expensive.

[Jase 43,479]

We'll face Arsenal (a) and Aston Villa (h) in 3 days during the Boxing Day period...

[Jase 43,479]

7 minutes ago, Jason said:

We'll face Arsenal (a) and Aston Villa (h) in 3 days during the Boxing Day period...

[Tomo 21,733]

2 minutes ago, Jason said:

Bring it on, this is exactly why we've assembled such a big squad!