Premier League side Chelsea have long been an attractive destination for footballers from Africa, and adding to that, the club's reputation for running one of the finest youth systems in Europe has helped churn out a healthy stream of African talent from Cobham over the years.
Among these have been several of Nigerian descent (not all of whom have gone in to represent the West African nation, it must be added). While there have been some success stories in there, a good number of those prospects have failed to live up to the hype — in Chelsea colours, at least.
Here, we run through some of these players.
Failed hopefuls & the ones that got away
In 2004, two 17-year-old Nigerians joined Norwegian outfit Lyn Oslo, before both moving to Chelsea a couple of years later.
One was Mikel John Obi, whose transfer to the English capital made the headlines — albeit for all the wrong reasons — but the other, Emmanuel Sarki, had a more low-key yet straightforward switch.
While Mikel walked straight into the Chelsea first team and went on to have a hugely successful career at Stamford Bridge, Sarki was promptly sent out on loan to Westerlo in Belgium and never made it as far as playing for the Blues, despite being on the club's books for four years.
A similar story — of being a Chelsea player in name only — proved true of Kenneth Omeruo, who went on a series of loans across a seven-year period that started in 2012, just before he conquered his home continent with the Super Eagles at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Southwark-born Ola Aina, relatively, had a more memorable time at Chelsea. However, his best years came when he played with the juniors, winning the UEFA Youth League and the FA Youth Cup (both twice) as well as an U-21 Premier League title.
For the seniors, Aina was only involved in six games, mainly away on loan before finally settling at Serie A side Torino in 2019.
Emerging from the youth system just about the same time as Aina were Tammy Abraham (also from Southwark) and Fikayo Tomori.
Both played far more games for Chelsea than Aina did — a combined 109 between them — though, yet eventually ended up just where Aina found a home: Italy.
It may not be exactly fair to describe Abraham as a failure at Chelsea, however, given he was part of the 2020/21 UEFA Champions League-winning team. But the lingering sense among the Chelsea faithful by the time he left for Roma later that year was one of barely fulfilled potential.
And that was almost the same feeling they had when Dominic Solanke departed their club's ranks in 2017, 13 years after he first arrived only old enough to play for the under-eights.
It wasn't just the fact that they effectively got nothing in transfer fees from Liverpool, the acquiring club; it was also that Solanke looked every bit like a player on the cusp of something big.
Indeed, Solanke went on to win the FIFA U-20 World Cup and earn a senior England cap before the year was over. But judging by the fact that he — behind Diego Costa and Michy Batshuayi in the pecking order of Chelsea strikers under Antonio Conte — only exited because he couldn't smell opportunities at the club, his time there couldn't exactly be deemed a success.
Crushed dreams & an uncertain future
Ike Ugbo — another member of Chelsea's zero-game club — was part of the double UEFA Youth League-winning squads mentioned earlier, alongside Aina and Tomori. His transition to the senior squad was far less successful, instead going on loan moves that took him from England's lower leagues, through the Netherlands, to Belgium, where Ugbo — now a full Canada international — briefly settled.
Then there was Tariq Uwakwe, still only 24, who also had high hopes of making it at Chelsea, but now finds himself at a third League Two side Swindon Town, having previously been at Accrington Stanley (loan) and Crewe Alexandra. He has spent every year since he was eight with the two-time European champions, until he said his farewells permanently in 2022.
Even sadder, however, is the case of Tom Taiwo. He joined Chelsea from rivals Leeds United — in a highly controversial deal that cost the former much more than they'd expected to part with, despite Taiwo's ceiling — with “the dream of playing in front of 45,000 people each week and competing for trophies”.
Just two underwhelming years later, Chelsea decided to cut their losses and banished him to lower-tier Carlisle United, forcing Taiwo — who retired in June 2019, aged only 29 — into an admission that “I wasn't as good as I hoped I'd be.”
There is, perhaps, a glimmer of hope for Tino Anjorin, with the talented midfielder still owned by Chelsea. But after three successive loan moves — the latest of which has him at League One side Portsmouth — he may have reason to entertain genuine fears that things won't work out much better for him than they did for those discussed above.
