Chelsea's aggressive youth recruitment means days of signing players at peak are over (2024)

When Chelsea reached an agreement to sign 17-year-old winger Estevao Willian from Palmeiras, it was significant for a couple of reasons.

First is that the fee — £28.7million (€34m, $36.5m) up front, potentially rising to £48.1million with performance-based incentives — took Chelsea’s guaranteed transfer fee commitments on teenagers under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly above £150million.

Second is that it provided the clearest signal yet of where Chelsea’s recruitment strategy is heading: not back towards the established international signings that powered much of the success under Roman Abramovich, but doubling down on an aggressive, coordinated attempt to assemble the best young talent.

It is likely that the level of investment in Estevao will remain something of an outlier; Chelsea regard him as a better prospect than his former team-mate Endrick, who they courted extensively before his decision to agree to sign for Real Madrid in December 2022. When he officially moves to Stamford Bridge after his 18th birthday next year, it will be with a view to taking an immediate first-team role.

On Thursday, they moved for another promising young player, opening talks with Boca Juniors over the signing of defender Aaron Anselmino.

It is increasingly evident Chelsea want to position themselves to recruit every teenage footballer they identify as having elite potential. Clearlake and Boehly are spending six times more than the previous owner on youth recruitment, and intend to scale it up.

That money is not solely going into transfer fees on promising teenagers. Chelsea are continuing to build their global scouting and data analytics teams beyond the headline hire of Sam Jewell from Brighton & Hove Albion as director of global recruitment in May, seeking to complement modern digital methods of performance analysis at Cobham with more high-level scouts and recruiters on the ground.

As highlighted by the signings of Andrey Santos, Angelo Gabriel, Deivid Washington, Kendry Paez and Estevao, South America is a key area of focus.

Chelsea are far from the first club to hone in on this hotbed of talent, but they are dedicating significant resources to building a comprehensive scouting and recruitment network there, led locally by individuals who can use their contacts with agents, academy staff and club owners.

One example is Alysson Marins, the former Corinthians chief scout who publicly announced he was joining Chelsea in July 2023. Co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley had dealt productively with Marins at their previous clubs and held him in high regard for his recruitment expertise.

Chelsea’s vastly increased spending on youth recruitment is most accurately characterised as a redirection of investment. The first-team wage bill, which ballooned to an unwieldy £404million in the 2022-23 accounts, has been drastically reduced to a level significantly lower than in the final years of the Abramovich era.

That is unlikely to delight supporters used to seeing Chelsea spend close to every available penny in search of an immediate challenge for major trophies, but Clearlake and Boehly do not believe it is realistic or sustainable to target the world’s best established players at the peak value. They would rather try to sign the potential superstars of tomorrow at a lower cost, develop them in the right way and then retain them.

Persuading these teenagers to sign long-term contracts at Chelsea is only the beginning of the challenge. Ensuring continued development is no easy task with first-team minutes at Stamford Bridge relatively limited, though the 2024-25 season could stretch to 75 or 80 matches across all competitions once next summer’s expanded Club World Cup is factored in.

One area for potential improvement next season is the use of loans, and Chelsea will have considerably more flexibility under FIFA’s limits if they succeed in offloading Romelu Lukaku and Kepa Arrizabalaga. More developing players are likely to follow the path walked by Gabriel and Santos last season to BlueCo sister club Strasbourg.

Agreeing major deals such as the ones for Paez and Estevao raises other developmental considerations. Chelsea have too much invested in them to simply leave them to their own devices at Independiente del Valle and Palmeiras until they are old enough to move to England. Constant communication, support and mentorship is required — without violating FIFA rules — to ensure they continue to grow as players and people.

Chelsea insist they always recruit with developmental pathways in mind, rather than out of a desire to stockpile elite talent. That becomes harder to compute when you realise that Estevao is the seventh left-footed attacking midfielder or right-winger under the age of 23 that Clearlake and Boehly have signed in two years, but it is not in the owners interests for these players to stagnate.

Laurence and Winstanley have been empowered to implement succession planning with forward-focused recruitment in every position. Estevao and Paez may operate in many of the same areas of the pitch as Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke or (hypothetically) Michael Olise, but they are five years younger. Chelsea aspire to never be left short of the quality they require regardless of who might leave, as the squad evolves.

It is fair to ask where the Cobham academy, one of the most prolific producers of top-level footballers, fits into this. Chelsea’s aggressive recruitment under Abramovich too often blocked any realistic route for home-grown talents to break through, and Clearlake and Boehly are keen to ensure the standard to play for the first team remains every bit as high.

But part of Laurence and Winstanley’s remit is to more closely integrate the academy, creating and maintaining pathways for the best products to transition to the first team, ideally without the need for loan spells elsewhere. One reason Sport Recife defender Pedro Lima is choosing between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Strasbourg rather than Wolves and Chelsea this summer is because Josh Acheampong, who made his Premier League debut against Tottenham Hotspur in May, is viewed internally as being in front of him.

Chelsea expect to go into next season with as many as 10 homegrown players in their first-team squad, headlined by club captain Reece James and Levi Colwill. But the best Cobham graduates will be challenged to compete with elite young signings for minutes, and those not regarded as being of that level will be sold.

The prevailing philosophy can be summarised as ‘steel sharpens steel’: that the best Chelsea’s academy produces will be elevated to greater heights by young signings, and vice versa. Estevao and Paez will add their considerable talents to that mix next year. More will follow.

(Top photo: Nelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images)