Chelsea finished last season without a trophy and finished tenth in the Premier League, but their school teams won league and cup titles.
It highlights the level of talent available under the leadership of Shields and Van der Kraan, with pathways director Jack Francis providing continuity as he enters his 16th year at the club.
The Cobham academy was previously led by Neil Bath and Jim Fraser, who built a system that won five consecutive FA Youth Cups, including three in a row against City, to match the long-standing record set by Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ in the 1950s.
Chelsea also won the Uefa Youth League in 2015 and 2016 and remain the only English club to have won the competition.
However, Chelsea were banned from transferring in 2019 due to breaches of youth recruitment rules and are currently restricting the signing of academy players following historic cases dating back to the Abramovich era.
That initial transfer ban helped create opportunities for Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Andreas Christensen and Reece James to establish themselves in the first team under Frank Lampard.
Those were heady days at the Chelsea academy, but City were growing rapidly under their Abu Dhabi ownership and investing heavily in youth development, an area freed from spending restrictions.
The two academies had the power to make an informal agreement not to sign players from each other, helping to avoid rising wages and youth transfer fees. That arrangement is over.
Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal have also embarked on a new wave of investment in academies after Brexit made it harder to sign international under-18s.
In particular, Liverpool have now signed young Englishman Rio Ngumoha from Chelsea in 2024, making it difficult for youth scouts from many rival clubs to attend matches.
While Chelsea were under new ownership, Bath were developing a new strategy. However, after Fraser left the club following a disagreement with senior players, Bath also left and former City staff moved into senior academic positions.
Those changes have come as a surprise to many in academy football, where stories continue of fierce rivalries between the two clubs, heated arguments behind the scenes and heated celebrations after victories in the club’s lower ranks. A real rivalry emerged between the dominant school systems in the north and south over the past decade.
Asked about the 2025 rivalry, Delap said: “We hated each other in the games.
He added: “But it’s enough now that, outside the field, we are friends. I used to play with Levi. [Colwill] every year. It was a big fight. There are too many games to remember, but we [City] beat them in the Youth Cup final [in 2020].”
Since then there have been major changes in the coaching style at Chelsea. A number of new employees have arrived and those who remain at the club have had to adapt.
Liverpool Women’s manager Gareth Taylor spent nine years at City’s academy and remembers how former Barcelona coach Rodolfo Borrell helped develop a coaching philosophy inspired by Johan Cruyff and Guardiola.
He described Delap as playing with “real edge”, Rogers as “really good and really humble”, and Palmer as a player who “ran around the opposition” and “never panicked”.
Taylor said: “We’ve designed a really clear style of play. From the under-11s and under-12s to the under-23s, you could see a clear structure in the way we play, our identity and our style.”
The transformation represented by City has had an impact on both the senior and youth teams at Stamford Bridge.
Now Chelsea, with Alonso coming in, will be hoping this approach will bring more rewards.
