Chelsea’s first-team squad under new manager Xabi Alonso could contain twice as many Manchester City academy graduates as players developed at Cobham.
The latest addition is club record signing Morgan Rogers, who cost £117m and scored against Chelsea’s Under-18s in the 2020 FA Youth Cup final.
Cole Palmer, another City academy product, was also on target that night in City’s 3-2 victory, while Liam Delap led the line for the opposition.
Romeo Lavia, Jamie Gittens and Tosin Adarabioyo all also came through City’s youth system and now find themselves part of Alonso’s plans at Stamford Bridge.
Together with Rogers, Palmer and Delap, those six players account for almost £300m in transfer fees paid by Chelsea since 2023.
By contrast, Alonso looks set to have just three permanent senior squad members who came through Chelsea’s own Cobham academy: Levi Colwill, captain Reece James and defender Josh Acheampong.
One former insider told BBC Sport that anyone who comes from City “knows what good looks like,” helping to explain the pattern of recruitment that has emerged over recent years.
A key figure behind the trend is Joe Shields, who worked in City’s academy recruitment department and is now involved in both youth and senior recruitment at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea also employ first-team coach Calum McFarlane and recently promoted academy director Glenn van der Kraan, both of whom have backgrounds at Manchester City.
The football relationship between the two clubs stretches further, with former Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca and several members of his coaching staff previously working at the Etihad before his return to City.
Former City manager Pep Guardiola previously acknowledged the difficulty of giving academy graduates opportunities in a team that consistently competed for major honours.
While players like Rogers were deemed not ready for first-team football at City, others including Palmer and Jadon Sancho were offered contracts but chose to continue their development elsewhere.
Clubs are also incentivised to sell academy-developed players because fees can be recorded as pure profit under Premier League and UEFA spending rules, making such exits financially attractive.
Chelsea’s own academy history is formidable, having won five consecutive FA Youth Cups to match the record set by Manchester United’s Busby Babes in the 1950s, along with back-to-back UEFA Youth League titles in 2015 and 2016.
However, Chelsea were handed a transfer ban in 2019 over breaches relating to youth recruitment and are currently serving further restrictions on registering academy players following historical offences from the Abramovich era.
The fierce on-pitch rivalry between the two academy systems has been well documented, with Delap recalling the intensity of those encounters openly and honestly.
Delap said: “We hated each other in games,” before adding: “But everyone’s man enough now that, off the pitch, we can be friends. I used to play against Levi [Colwill] every year. It was a great battle.”
Liverpool women’s manager Gareth Taylor, who spent nine years in City’s academy, described Delap as playing with a “real edge” and Palmer as someone who “used to run rings around opponents” and would “never get nervous.”
Taylor said: “We designed a really clear playing style. From under-11s and under-12s all the way up to the under-23s, you could see really clear alignment in the way we played, our identity and our style.”
Chelsea finished tenth in the Premier League last season, but with Alonso now at the helm and a squad heavily shaped by City’s renowned development philosophy, the club will hope that blueprint finally delivers senior silverware.
