Chelsea were blessed to have one of the greatest Africans to ever grace the Premier League in Didier Drogba, an Ivorian who was signed from Marseille in France for £24million.
Their striker now is Nicolas Jackson, a Senegalese arrived via Villarreal in Spain at a cost of £32m.
But really, Chelsea would rather cut out that costly middleman by recruiting straight from the source.
In the summer, they hired Seyi Olofinjana, the former Wolves midfielder who won 48 caps for Nigeria, to oversee their African scouting operation. Achirou Gaoh was also brought in to work alongside him as they aim to spy the potential of starlets before anyone else in Europe.
Mail Sport can reveal all of Chelsea’s first-team recruiters met up in Surrey earlier this month. They convened from their various corners of the globe with the purpose of this scouting summit being to ensure everyone is aligned on the club’s vision.
Head coach Enzo Maresca popped in, posing for a group picture with the 30 or so employees. It is said those in the room left enthused, energised and as motivated as ever to go find the greatest gems making their way into the game.
Chelsea will continue to invest in producing their own players at Cobham – more on that later – but want to combine that conveyor belt with knowing which youngsters are excelling elsewhere in the world. Not least in Africa, a continent of 1.5billion people so colossal in size that China, India, Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United States could easily fit within its footprint collectively.
Those talented enough to be snapped up do not have to go directly into Chelsea’s first-team dressing room, or even their development squad. They can also join their sister club Strasbourg in France, as has been the case with an 18-year-old Senegal international called Pape Daouda Diong.
Diong was invited to train with Chelsea in February. The midfielder represented Academie Foot Darou Salam at the time, based in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
Their president Galass Mbacke had the red carpet rolled out for him as he accompanied his player on the visit to London. The trip included an introduction with Jackson, a shirt with ‘Darou Salam’ print-pressed on the back and tickets to watch Chelsea’s FA Cup home win over Leeds.
Yet Diong did not join Chelsea upon turning 18 in the summer. Instead, he signed a five-year deal with Strasbourg, the other team owned by the BlueCo consortium.
This is one of the biggest benefits of the multi-club model. It provides a pathway away from the Stamford Bridge mothership, where first-team minutes are at such a premium that not even £46m Joao Felix and £52m Christopher Nkunku can get near the Premier League starting lineup.
BlueCo bought Chelsea in May 2022, and Strasbourg in June 2023, but have not yet added any other clubs to their portfolio. One reason is they do not want to own any old team. They want ones where competitive football is available.
Strasbourg, managed by the well-regarded former Hull City boss Liam Rosenior, are in France’s Ligue 1 where the standard is reasonably high. Diong’s first goal, scored last month, was against Paris Saint-Germain.
By comparison, some of City Football Group’s clubs include Lommel, Montevideo City Torque and Palermo, currently competing in the second tiers of Belgium, Uruguay and Italy respectively.
Chelsea’s African heritage
We will need to wait to see what becomes of Diong, but Chelsea are proud of their African heritage. They had Michael Essien, the Ghanaian who won two Premier League titles, one Champions League and just this month completed his UEFA coaching badges as he looks to move into managing. He was signed from Lyon in France for £24.4m in 2005.
They had John Obi Mikel, the Nigerian with a permanent banner at Stamford Bridge which reads ‘Taking the Mikel’. We will resist the urge to up this word count by listing his vast trophy haul. He joined from Lyn in Norway for £16m, much to the chagrin of Manchester United.
In the Premier League this season, eight per cent of Chelsea’s minutes have come from Africa, Jackson accountable for all of them. That ranks them 13th out of the 20 clubs.
As well as co-owning Chelsea, Todd Boehly also co-owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and it is understood they were the first Major League Baseball team to plant their flag in African soil with an affiliated academy.
Walk down one particular rutted dirt road in Mpigi, Uganda and you will find the interlocking ‘LA’ lettering advertised on a big blue archway. Ben Serunkuma and Umar Male later became the first Ugandan-born players to pen contracts with an MLB club.
Much like the Dodgers, Chelsea spy a market worth trying to corner for themselves, step by step. Boehly’s co-owner, Behdad Eghbali, who predominantly calls the shots at Stamford Bridge as the face of Clearlake Capital, has openly described Africa as being ‘untapped’.
Chelsea are already tying down talent from other continents at the earliest opportunity. Next summer, two South American wunderkinds in Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian will arrive from Independiente del Valle in Ecuador and Palmeiras in Brazil for £17m and £29m respectively after turning 18.
There is considerable excitement surrounding those two. Particularly Estevao, the right winger breaking Neymar’s records back home, recently becoming the first Under 18 player in the history of the Brazilian top flight to register 20 goals and assists in a single season.
Mike Penders, the 19-year-old Belgian goalkeeper, is also due to arrive from Genk for £17m.
The search for the next super-starlet never stops and currently, Chelsea have a highly-rated 16-year-old called Emile Witbooi of Cape Town City on a month-long trial at Cobham. Manchester United have also been linked with the talented teenager who has been capped by his country up to Under 20 level.
Cape Town City’s general manager of football development and head of recruitment is a very nice chap called Grant Veitch who travelled with Witbooi to London.
The opportunity was arranged by Joe Shields, Chelsea’s co-director of recruitment and talent who is believed to have previously crossed paths with the South African club when City Football Group were considering an affiliation.
Mail Sport spoke with Veitch amid his visit and he told us on the topic of African talent: ‘The stumbling block has been the pure lack of understanding of the whole continent. Literally, it hasn’t been tapped into at all, except for probably West Africa to a large extent. It’s the unknown.
‘Someone needs to be the first mover in trying to cover the whole continent and whoever does that will have a big advantage.
‘It’s a big continent, difficult to get around. If I have to get to, say, Congo, I’d have to take two connecting flights from South Africa. It’s not easy to travel within, but it’s more about knowledge sharing, about having the right people that can cover the region.’
Witbooi’s trial with Chelsea has been mutually beneficial with Veitch also able to share his expertise with the club, which he did in a meeting that included Shields and Sam Jewell, their director of global recruitment.
‘I presented on where African recruitment is going in my mind, especially looking at it from a southern point looking up,’ Veitch explained. ‘There are other clubs like Brighton, Wolves, even City Football Group, that are looking more into it.
‘The development structure in South Africa and the coaching has improved, especially at our club. With Emile, even if Chelsea doesn’t materialise, it’s the experience.
‘He’s the big fish in South African youth football at the moment, so it’s good that he can break out of that. He will get a report and one of the key purposes of this trip is to get feedback on where he can improve.
‘He’s 16, remember. Physically, he’s one of the smaller boys, born August 2008. But he can follow complex drills, which is a good start. It’s about showing that outstanding quality which I know he’s got.
‘Sometimes the players can say, ‘I’d rather stay in South Africa’, which is not the best development for them because, as you know, you’re maybe not going to move when you’re 25.
‘The aim is to try to get as many to Europe at 18. It’s really refreshing (that English clubs are now showing a greater interest in his region). It’s like people are willing to also be humble to Africa, which is great.’
Steven Pienaar and Benni McCarthy were two future Premier League footballers found in Cape Town, moving to Europe at the ages of 18 and 19 respectively by signing for Ajax in the Netherlands.
No desire to neglect current talent
This does not mean Chelsea are disregarding their own academy. The club’s scouting department is kept connected to Cobham via the sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, and Shields. They know which English starlets are coming through and internally, optimism is high with Tyrique George, Samuel Rak-Sakyi, Shim Mheuka, Kiano Dyer and Harrison McMahon – all 18 years old or younger – having had first-team involvement this season.
The England XI that faced the Republic of Ireland included four players produced by Chelsea in Conor Gallagher, Marc Guehi, Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento. Dominic Solanke became the fifth as a substitute. Though none now spend their Saturdays wearing all blue – unlike Reece James and Levi Colwill – Cobham is having an unprecedented influence on football as a whole.
Chelsea will continue to develop their thriving talent inside while exploring who is where outside.
Back to Olofinjana, who is also the executive director of Imperial Football Club in Lagos, Nigeria and was involved in the discovery of Taiwo Awoniyi, who signed for Liverpool at 18 and is now with Nottingham Forest at 27
Olofinjana completed his Uefa coaching badges after retiring as a player but not with moving into management in mind. He did them because, among other benefits, it helped him to better understand what a coach specifically wants in a signing. He also completed a sports directorship degree ahead of taking on the responsibility of recruiting for Chelsea.
Scouting today is much more modernised for those in Olofinjana’s line of work with companies committed to helping find those needles hiding in the haystack. One is called Eyeball who, in return for a subscription, enable sides such as Chelsea to log on to their vast video database to study thousands of worldwide talents without ever having to go through security at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Their platform includes footage of youth football in 13 African nations from Morocco to Mali to Burkina Faso to the Ivory Coast, compromising of more than 25,000 prospects.
Eyeball’s co-founder Benjamin Balkin told Mail Sport: ‘We’ve been a pioneer in bringing data into youth football across the African continent. In fact, we are the best source of talent identification for clubs to date and remain the world’s largest video database for elite African youth talent.
‘We’re also partnered with over 120 African clubs, perhaps most notably Generation Foot (Senegal), whose academy graduates include the likes of Sadio Mane, Pape Matar Sarr, and Ismaila Sarr.
‘Diambars (Senegal), whose academy graduates include the likes of Idrissa Gueye and Bamba Dieng. ASEC Mimosas (Ivory Coast), whose academy graduates include the likes of Yaya and Kolo Toure, Salomon Kalou, and Gervinho.
‘Leaders Foot (Ivory Coast), where Manchester United’s Amad Diallo was originally discovered. We believe Africa to be an incredibly undervalued market with a huge amount of untapped talent, waiting to be discovered.’
Another scouting company is called Afriskaut, who say their current coverage of 8,500 players is due to nearly double in 2025 as they expand in Ghana and Cameroon.
One of their founders, Josh Osazuwa, told Mail Sport: ‘Our AI algorithm – Afriskaut rating – has proven that with data, you can identify the best football players.’ He added they have a five-year partnership with Nationwide League One, the Nigerian third division which has been described as the ‘largest grassroots league in the world’.
Osazuwa continued: ‘Amongst others that gives us access to over 200 academy teams, 1,000 match videos in Nigeria.’ Victor Orakpo was one teenager from the region whose talents they touted, with the 18-year-old now playing for Nice in France’s Ligue 1.
Every Premier League club surveys the African Cup of Nations, of course they do. But that is barely scratching the surface.
Africa is a continent full of Chelsea fans because of their history with Drogba and company. A continent in which youngsters dream of fame and fortune, forever hungry to do better for themselves and their families.
There is a pool full of potential for those willing to take the time to look and, to quote one of Chelsea’s new scouts in Gaoh, their goal is to ‘make Africa blue’.
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