He’s not particularly known for taking age into consideration. It’s always been, “If you’re good enough, you’re in.”
You can’t deny that it has worked for him.
21 trophies later, you would’ve thought he’d stick with the same recipe for winning. But it seems that the manager that has won everything domestically, across 4 countries, has reconsidered his stance on youth, and is now aiming to make youngsters a big part of our future plans, and in doing so, aiming to prove to the world that he is capable of winning with a younger team.
The argument can be made that Mourinho took a 19 year old Raphael Varane into the Real Madrid 1st team, to replace an under-achieving Pepe, a decision which annoyed most at first, but proved to be extremely effective during the course of their campaign.
We’ve grown accustomed to seeing Mourinho working with large squads with a lot of quality. Strength in depth is a huge key in Mourinho’s title winning sides, again, regardless of age. Purchasing a 26 year old Drogba, a 30 year old Samuel Eto’o and a 33 year old Ricardo Carvalho, this philosophy attached to Mourinho suggests that he does aim to find the best possible solution for the team, regardless of a player’s age.
Turning our attention to Chelsea for a moment, we’ve seen the evolution of this philosophy, ironically created by Mourinho and ended by Roman Abramovich himself. We are now seeing the positives in keeping a young squad, whether it’s to remain sustainable on the field for the longer term, or to narrow down our loss margin, and widen up our profit margin, all we know is that Abramovich is working with Sporting Director, Michael Emenalo, to recruit the best young talent in the world.
Our youth “Revolution” started with Lucas Piazon being signed on a pre-contract during Carlo Ancelotti’s era in charge. Although the sum of £7m seemed to raise a few eyebrows (no pun intended Carlo!), we’ve seen the quality Piazon possesses in recent times. His silky dribbling skills earned him a loan move to Manuel Pellegrini’s Malaga side, who were known for their extremely attractive style of football, which could only be seen as a compliment to young Piazon.
The new philosophy continued with the purchase of Islam Feruz from Celtic, a centre-forward who has had rave reviews from regular youth game spectators. Nathan Ake, another import, broke into the first team last term for Rafa Benitez, and looked of the same sort, adjusting himself in midfield, which was a change from his more familiar centre-back position.

More recently, we have “splashed” out on the Belgian trio of £12m Romelu Lukaku, £8m on Kevin De Bruyne and £7.5m on Thibaut Courtois. Among them, Victor Moses, Andre Schurrle, Juan Mata, Cesar Azpilicueta, Oscar, Eden Hazard, Marco van Ginkel and Ryan Bertrand are now among the 17 in a 30 man first team that are aged 25 or under, a number which was unheard of until 2-3 years ago.
The only “old but gold” players we have left are Frank Lampard, John Terry and Petr Cech.
This transition from old to new may come at the cost of a few points we may miss out on due to lack of experience at times, however, having younger players has worked for several teams across Europe, and under Mourinho’s guidance, who’s to say what’s achievable. It’s really all up in the air at the moment, we’ll only know what we’ve got when we see them in matches.
As it stands, here’s our old bench and new bench:
Out with the Old:
Turnbull, Ferreira, Mikel, Moses, Marin, Benayoun, Ba.
In with the New:
Schwarzer, Ivanovic, Bertrand, van Ginkel, De Bruyne, Schurrle, Lukaku.
It was confusing as to why Mourinho would take on such a project, but his personal preferences outweigh any consequences we may feel are possible to take place. And he’s taken on the challenge gracefully. Here are a few of his thoughts regarding our new buys:
He says he has 3 groups of players in the squad:
‘I have in the same group the guys that were with me before, I have the players from the first team that came here after 2007 and I am working with them for the first time, and I am having a third group which is a very special one,’
Mourinho goes on to talk about our new acquisitions:
‘Andre Schurrle is still so young but he already has great record because he plays in his national team, he has played Champions League and he played three complete seasons for Leverkusen,’ he says about the 22-year-old.
‘So he is a player who is absolutely ready and he gives us more than one position in attack and adds quality. He will be important for us.

‘Marco van Ginkel is one of the best prospects. He is close to being a finished product. Of course he needs to play and he will, because he is a player with great potential and physically he is more than ready. He is a natural athlete. By the technical and the tactical point of view of course he is a kid, he has to learn, but I think he is very open-minded and we analysed him for quite a long time.’
Mourinho goes on to confirm that Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Tomas Kalas feature strongly in his plans for the upcoming season.
‘After the development of the players on loan it is the right moment for them to be back. They are very young with space to develop, they will be better year after year and I can imagine in five years they are much better than today – but what they have today is more than enough to belong to this squad.
‘So we are a very young squad. We have an average age of 26.3 and that includes Schwarzer who is 40 years old and JT, Cech and Lampard in their 30s, so if we don’t involve these players we drop to almost an Under-21 team.
‘The reality is the best period of this team has yet to arrive because they are very young and in five, six, seven years’ time is when this team will be in the best moment of their careers.’
It seems as though Mourinho has taken very well to our new philosophy.
However, the season ahead will reveal a newly-humble Mourinho’s true colours, a true personality and his true ability to guide a young squad towards success.
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