A positive relationship between club academies and England development squads is pivotal to their progress, according to Chelsea youth boss Neil Bath.
The last time England’s development teams convened, in November 2014, there were 15 Chelsea players represented among the six squads from U16 to Under-21 levels.
It is a statistic that was replicated across England youth squads throughout the season, and it is something Chelsea’s head of youth development says their academy is proud of.
Neil Bath (R) celebrates Chelsea's FA Youth Cup success with assistant Jim Fraser (L) and Michael Emenalo (C)
"As an academy we’re delighted to see boys being selected for international duty for whatever country they come from, but of course particularly if they’re English boys,” Bath told TheFA.com.
“Some of them have been with us a long time and for them to go and represent their country is fantastic. We’re definitely an academy that supports it.”
Bath heads up an academy that oversees the development over 180 young players, from U9s through to their Under-21 squad.
Of those, 56 are based at the academy full-time - from the U15s upwards – and on a near one-to-one basis the club employs 50 full-time staff to support the players on a daily basis.
And while Bath says it is always beneficial for a young player to join their countries, forging a working relationship with each association is vital.
“We’ve got to work together. It can’t be an ‘us and them’ world,” he added.
“We’ve got to work together. It can’t be an ‘us and them’ world.”
Neil Bath Chelsea head of youth development
“That’s not being critical of any individual. We try and get better in everything we do year after year.
“We realise now how many players we’ve got playing for England and we need to make sure – and England need to make sure – that we communicate properly.
“That’s just common sense. We need to get round the table for the benefit of the player, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s a win win.”
And Bath revealed that with the help of The FA and Chelsea’s technical directors, there is now an active working relationship in place.
“We’re in a position now where the England development coaches such as Aidy [Boothroyd] and Sean [O’Driscoll] come in and they’ll sit with me and the other youth coaches here.
“We’ll discuss players and we’ll all feedback and exchange thoughts.
“We’ve been working closely with [FA technical director] Dan Ashworth and [Chelsea technical director] Michael Emenalo.
England's national coaches including U20s boss Aidy Boothroyd have a close relationship with the academy
“With Jose [Mourinho]’s input, we’ve had the national coaches come and observe one of his training sessions – then in the afternoon the national coaches put on a session and the academy coaches watched. And we worked out how we best work together."
Where Bath and Chelsea will have daily contact with each of the young players, the situation is very different for the national coaches – who in a regular season would gather fewer than ten times.
And Bath says the positive relationship means the differences in coaching techniques the players will experience do not upset their development.
“The challenges for The FA staff is that they get a group of players that they get very little time with,” he added.
“But they come from an environment where their session are free-flowing and they know what they’re doing, so there can be a natural inclination – for any international setup – to come off the pace a little bit and then to go again.
“As long as we communicate, so the national coaches know what we’ve done with them prior, and we know what they’ve done with them after, we can look at each other’s content of work and we’re both open enough to share, then that helps eliminate any fears of practice.”
