Are Chelsea right or wrong to sell so many of their homegrown players? (2024)

This first summer of Chelsea’s bold new era is shaping up to be one that raises a familiar question: what is the academy actually for?

As new owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital attempt to reinforce a first-team squad that requires varying degrees of surgery in most areas, Thomas Tuchel’s pre-season thoughts are lingering on three Cobham graduates who look particularly well equipped to make the senior jump: Conor Gallagher, Armando Broja and Levi Colwill.

Gallagher returned to Chelsea this summer a full England international with more than 100 professional league appearances to his name and two full seasons of Premier League experience. Broja and Colwill may not have quite the same experience, but both are at the stage where another season on loan holds significantly less appeal than a first-team role at Chelsea — or a permanent move to one of several Premier League suitors.

It doesn’t take much imagination to picture all three getting decent minutes at Chelsea this season: Gallagher could ease the central midfield load on the creaking bodies of N’Golo Kante and Jorginho, Broja could help fill the striker void created by Romelu Lukaku’s loan return to Inter Milan and Colwill could provide dynamic cover and competition for whichever left-sided centre-back is signed in this transfer window.

It’s also easy to see Broja and Colwill offering the path of least resistance to raising significant funds through player sales, enabling Boehly and Clearlake to offset what looks destined to be a significant net transfer spend in their first few months of ownership. Tuchel has publicly insisted Chelsea have no interest in selling Broja, but that reassurance conveniently doubles as the negotiating stance most likely to maximise any fee. The Athletic reported earlier this week that Colwill will look to leave Stamford Bridge if more defenders are signed this summer.

Seeing either or both depart will spark dismay in a section of the Chelsea fanbase, many of whom are still tormented by the summer of 2021. Tuchel’s threadbare defensive ranks would look much stronger if they included Fikayo Tomori and Marc Guehi, sold to AC Milan and Crystal Palace respectively, while at Roma last season Tammy Abraham comprehensively outperformed Lukaku — the disastrous marquee signing those sales played a large part in financing.

Youth development has become a polarising issue among Chelsea supporters. Not everyone feels a greater sense of identification with Cobham graduates, and some fans simply want a team full of elite players capable of consistently winning trophies, regardless of where they come from or how they were assembled. Yet part of the argument in favour of widening the academy pathway is also a pragmatic one: Boehly and Clearlake want greater financial efficiency, and filling more first-team spots with homegrown products allows transfer money to be pooled.

The growth of Mason Mount and Reece James into arguably the two most valuable players at the club indicates it is possible to satisfy everyone. Beyond those two Cobham pillars of Tuchel’s squad, the presence of Trevoh Chalobah, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi help maintain a stronger academy flavour in the first team than Chelsea could boast for much of the Roman Abramovich era.

In fact, the homegrown presence in Chelsea’s first team compares very favourably with other leading European clubs. The graphic below includes the top 11 clubs of this year’s Deloitte Money League — and therefore the clubs with the least financial need to play academy prospects (with the unique exception of debt-laden Barcelona) — and all of the Premier League’s traditional Big Six.

All player minute totals across all competitions are taken from FBref.com, and The Athletic has classified ‘academy players’ using UEFA’s definition of club-trained homegrown players for Champions League registration purposes: those who, regardless of their nationality, have been trained by their club for at least three years between the age of 15 and 21…

As you can see, only the two La Liga giants bettered Chelsea when it comes to the number of first-team minutes afforded to academy players last season. Barcelona, however, would rank below Chelsea if their two biggest academy contributors, veterans Sergio Busquets (aged 34) and Gerard Pique (35) were omitted. Real Madrid’s total is also inflated by the inclusion of Dani Carvajal (30), Nacho (32) and Lucas Vazquez (31), as well as Brazilian wingers Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo who, while not Madrid academy products, were signed young enough to meet UEFA’s definition of club-trained homegrown players.

Chelsea and Madrid were the only two of Europe’s leading clubs to boast five different academy graduates who clocked up 2,000 or more first-team minutes across all competitions (although it must be noted that Tuchel’s team also played more matches than any of their elite rivals, owing to their participation in the Club World Cup and runs to the FA Cup and Carabao Cup finals). Of the Chelsea five, only Andreas Christensen has left Stamford Bridge, and both Hudson-Odoi and Gallagher could pass the 2,000-minute mark this season if they stay fit.

The broader picture painted by the numbers is that Chelsea are far from alone in being a highly unforgiving environment for academy prospects to break through.

Phil Foden was the only homegrown product to play more than 1,500 first-team minutes for Manchester City last season, while only Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones managed it for Liverpool. Tottenham (Harry Kane, Oliver Skipp and Harry Winks) Arsenal (Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe) and Manchester United (Scott McTominay, Mason Greenwood and Marcus Rashford) had three each, but all of those teams performed at a lower level in the Premier League and cup competitions.

It’s easy to see, then, why those advising some of Chelsea’s brightest academy prospects in recent years have begun to favour permanent rather than loan moves away from Stamford Bridge. Tariq Lamptey and Tino Livramento have both played more Premier League football than they likely would have done behind James and club captain Cesar Azpilicueta in Tuchel’s squad, while Guehi captained Palace and played for England within a year of being sold.

All three now stand as powerful examples to Broja and Colwill of how much faster progress can be made away from Stamford Bridge. It is the easier path, and in a sport of brief, fragile careers there is no shame in taking it; get it right and you could even put yourself in position to attract transfer interest from Chelsea or another elite European club within a year or two, and retuning with the status of a big-money signing affords more opportunity to succeed than what is generally offered to academy prospects.

But is selling homegrown talents such a disastrous outcome? At the high end, Abraham, Tomori and Guehi are still unequivocal Cobham development success stories, and so too are those sold for more modest initial fees such as Ike Ugbo, Lamptey, Kasey Palmer and Jeremie Boga. They are all making professional careers at a high level, and they all add up to cement Chelsea’s academy as one of the most profitable of all of Europe’s leading clubs over the past five years.

All transfer figures used for the graphic below are initial fees taken from Transfermarkt, and only sales worth at least £1million ($1.2m) were included:

Chelsea’s total of £163.5million raised consists almost entirely of selling players who spent the bulk of their academy journeys at Cobham. That stands in contrast to Arsenal, whose tally is inflated by the lucrative sales of Southampton products Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott. Real Madrid’s gargantuan £284.6m total also includes the deals that took Raphael Varane to United and Martin Odegaard to Arsenal, since both were brought to the Spanish capital early enough to meet UEFA’s classification of club-trained homegrown players.

Should an elite European club’s academy be a conveyor belt of talent for the first-team squad, or a valuable source of revenue generation through player sales? The answer is that ideally it should be both, and the numbers suggest Chelsea are already garnering significantly more value from the excellent work of Neil Bath and Jim Fraser at Cobham than many of their elite rivals.

The key for Boehly, Clearlake and Tuchel going forward is to find the best possible balance. Totally maximising every asset is impossible; there will always be academy graduates who, either through unfavourable circ*mstances, their own choices or a combination of the two, end up fulfilling their potential and ballooning in value away from Chelsea. But with coherent, strategic, long-term thinking, mistakes can be limited, specific pathways can be credibly offered and money generated from sales can fund smart recruitment, rather than fixes for avoidable problems.

Broja and Colwill this summer are the first big tests for the new regime, but they won’t be the last.

(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)

Liam is a Staff Writer for The Athletic, covering Chelsea. He previously worked for Goal covering the Premier League before becoming the Chelsea correspondent for ESPN in 2015, witnessing the unravelling of Jose Mourinho, the rise and fall of Antonio Conte, the brilliance of Eden Hazard and the madness of Diego Costa. He has also contributed to The Independent and ITV Sport. Follow Liam on Twitter @liam_twomey