A team from the academy are travelling down to Cobham to take on a Chelsea FC academy side in a friendly, building on the link-up established a year ago when the Spireites took on the London giants in the FA Cup.
Justin Tellus, the academy’s head of recruitment and development, gave an update on what the day will entail.
He said: “Last year we had the fantastic experience of taking our whole academy – over 200 players – down to Cobham. We had a fantastic day before the FA Cup third round game at Stamford Bridge.
“It was a great day for all our players; they got a great experience, training and playing. The coaches also got a great experience, and we also got the experience at the ground.
“We were contacted just recently, and they mentioned that the anniversary had just come up. They said they want to keep working together and for us to go down and play a friendly.
“We are taking a 16s and 17s mixed side down to play them at Cobham. The facilities are fantastic and hopefully we can continue the good relationship we’ve had over the last year.”
The link-up with one of the world’s best academies is a vital one to Chesterfield due to the help and advice they can receive and implement into the players’ development.
Tellus said: “From an academy perspective, they are probably one of the top academies not just in the UK, but in Europe. They’ve got the pick of the bunch not just from this country but from around the world.
“It gives our players a really good chance to be exposed to the best. Most of the players will be internationals at their level.
“Also, from a coaching perspective, we get to see them work and all the sports science and psychology behind how they set-up at Chelsea.
“They’ve been very nice to us in regard to letting us see things, and hopefully we can bring things to the football club and use in our own academy. We learnt a lot last year and hopefully we can learn a lot this year to bring to our academy and make us more successful.”
The academy has become an important part of the Chesterfield FC family, providing players for the future.
Tellus spoke about how the experience can help the players in their development, saying: “I think it benefits from who’s in it. If you look at some of the players that went down last year to Cobham, six have appeared for the first team and we’ve had two that have moved on to big clubs in this country and abroad.
“I think that experience was invaluable to them. It’s fantastic from the academy’s perspective. We’ve got a lot of lads playing in non-league as well.
“This experience really helps them to develop and get an understanding of the professional levels they need to get to.”
