Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

By
EUGENE
54
1947

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

Mason Mount was adamant. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. He was 15 years old and everything he’d spent the past nine years working towards had been offered to him – a scholarship contract with Chelsea, with the promise of a professional deal as soon as he turned 17.

Those closest to him had their reservations, though, and a family meeting was called at the Mounts’ detached, four-bedroom home on the outskirts of Portsmouth. Parents, grandfather, aunts and uncles were gathered in the kitchen as Mount’s father, Tony, expressed his concerns.

A football man with decades’ experience playing and managing at non-league level, Tony Mount appreciated the stellar footballing education his son had received at Chelsea’s prolific, world-renowned youth academy. But, understandably, he feared there was no pathway to the senior side for the youngest of his four children. “No-one at Chelsea’s academy has got into the first team since John Terry,” he pleaded.

“I’m staying at Chelsea,” the teenage Mount asserted, giving no consideration to his father’s suggestion that he should, perhaps, take advantage of the interest several other top clubs were showing in him. “I’ve been here since I was six; it’s my club.

“I will play first-team football here.”

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“If he hadn’t learned to kick a ball,” Tony Mount tells BBC Sport. “I think he might have wanted to box, although I’m glad he never did.”

Mason Mount’s keen interest in boxing was inspired by his maternal grandfather, Bill, a retired tarmacer who was a standout amateur boxer in his youth. The now-86-year-old father of three daughters doted on Mount as though he were the son he never had. He rarely missed one of his grandson’s training sessions or matches as Mount’s talent for football blossomed. Such gifted feet meant Mount was kept from stepping between the ropes and raising his hands, but his close relationship with grandad Bill ensured he was instilled with a boxer’s resilience and work ethic.

Regular visits to Fratton Park to watch his beloved Portsmouth with dad began at the age of four, and the aspiring midfielder would pay particularly close attention to the technique and decision making of Gary O’Neil and Argentine playmaker Andres D’Alessandro – a signed shirt from the latter hangs in his house to this day.

But he was also exposed to an altogether grittier version of the game from an equally early age, present while his father, during spells in charge of Havant Town and Newport Isle of Wight, would kick over tea cups and issue expletive-laden dressing-room dressing downs. “I remember it kicking off and you dragging players, substituting them and having rows with referees,” he recently told his dad.

“We used to watch Pompey, but we’d also go and watch non-league games,” Tony Mount says. “When he was about 10 or 11, he turned to me and said: ‘Why doesn’t anyone pass the ball?’ I laughed and said: ‘Welcome to real football. Look at the tackling – tremendous.'”

Although he now stands an athletic 5ft 10in, Mount was undersized for his age until a belated growth spurt at 15. But he was never perturbed by competing against bigger boys. He was just five years old when his dad first took him along to a training session for children aged six and above at Soccer City in Fareham. “Yeah, he’s just a really little six,” replied the father when asked whether Mount met the age requirement. After a couple of sessions running rings around the six-year-olds, Mount was moved up to play in the under-eights category.

Mount was invited to join Boarhunt FC by the parent of another child at Soccer City. And it was as a six-year-old in his first seven-a-side tournament playing for Boarhunt – which was also his first time playing a competitive match on grass – that he was spotted by Chelsea scout Rob Winzar.

“The thing that stood out to me every time I watched Mason was his aggression,” Winzar tells BBC Sport.

“His determination is second to none. Fantastic attitude. He’s the best I’ve seen in all the years I’ve done it,” adds Winzar, now in his 15th year scouting youth football in the south-east for Chelsea. “I’ve seen lots and lots of good players and Mason is the best.”

When Winzar, who knew Tony Mount from the local non-league scene, approached the youngster’s father, however, he was met with caution.

“The number seven who played in that team, is he your son?” Winzar enquired, after making small talk with Mount Sr. “I’d like to take him to Chelsea to the development centre.”

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

“Nah, he’s loving football,” Tony Mount said, “just let him enjoy it. I don’t want to get him involved in all that.”

Accepting that he wasn’t going to change Mount’s father’s mind, Winzar employed a wily trick of the youth-scouting trade and invited the entire Boarhunt team to Chelsea’s Cobham academy for a tournament three weeks later. With Mount as their star player, the Portsmouth-based side won the competition, and the young midfielder was left in no doubt about where he wanted to play.

“Once we’ve got them in at Cobham, it opens their eyes up,” Winzar says. “That was what did it.”

It wasn’t long before the fiery competitiveness that drives the otherwise unassuming young midfielder was again on full display. In one early session with Chelsea, Mount’s group were partnered up to play one-v-one games in what the players called “the cage”, a compact, all-weather pitch surrounded by fencing and with a small goal at either end. Beaten by his bigger opponent, Mount left the cage, his eyes red and tear-filled, so frustrated was he by the loss. He walked straight over to the coach leading the session and asked to be put back in against the same boy.

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

“Very small but bags of character and desire,” Martin Taylor, who was a senior youth scout at Chelsea for 15 years, observed of Mount. “He’s got a bit of grit about him. As he grew, he was still a tiny little dot in midfield, but he could take a tackle, he could give a tackle and he could play.”

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

Between the ages of six and eight, Mount also trained at Portsmouth’s development centre. When the time came to choose which club to commit to for the beginning of the under-nines season, the eight-year-old Mount and his parents discussed his options. “Dad, it’s so tough at Chelsea,” Mount said, putting his Portsmouth fandom to one side. “The boys are so good. The training is so good. I want to sign for them.”

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Separated from the English Channel by the Havant Bypass, the Farlington Playing Fields are a bustling hub of Portsmouth’s local amateur and youth football at weekends, comprising 10 full-size pitches, cricket wickets in summer and a pavilion to the north-east corner. It was here that Tony Mount, at the request of the boy’s parents, would conduct one-on-one training sessions with future Southampton midfielder James Ward-Prowse.

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

From the age of 10 to 14, Ward-Prowse would meet regularly with Tony to work through a series of drills designed to soften his touch and refine his technique. Mount, four years Ward-Prowse’s junior, would watch on from the side of the pitch and, afterwards, ask his dad to run him through the same routine, and would later often join in with the older

player’s sessions.

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“He always turned up really early to sessions,” remembers Michael Beale, who worked closely with Mount while Chelsea’s youth development officer. “When coaches were turning up 30 or 40 minutes before a session to set up, he’d already be there with a ball, playing and really enjoying himself.”

Among his group of 1999-born peers at Chelsea – which included Declan Rice, Reece James, Rhian Brewster and Eddie Nketiah – Mount’s skill stood out, but his maturity truly set him apart. As such, he often played in older age groups. At 17, he began to feature regularly for Chelsea’s under-23s, and it was in one under-23 game, against Southampton at Cobham in November 2016, that he demonstrated his first-team credentials to those within the club whom it most concerned.

Mason Mount How Midfielder Ended Chelsea’s Long Wait For Homegrown Star

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