Asane Fotball are 12th out of the 16 teams in the Norwegian second tier with only four games to go and that makes Eirik Bakke a busy man on the afternoon of our call, in the thick of plotting how best to beat their next opponents Ranheim to escape relegation.
But the Leeds United cult hero knows Asane’s run-in is not the purpose of this phone conversation. It is to talk about his old club, and more specifically, 1999-2000, the season he was named their Young Player of the Year in the youngest side in Premier League history.
Managed by David O’Leary, who was also kind enough to pick up the phone to discuss that campaign with Mail Sport, the average age of Leeds’ line-up was 24 years and 162 days. Their record has remained safe ever since.
Until this season, that is. Currently, Chelsea are averaging 23 years and 220 days under Enzo Maresca, who has not named a single outfielder over the age of 27 in a Premier League squad. The youngest has been Marc Guiu at 18 years and 227 days.
There is only one 30-something within the entire club and that is third-choice goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli, who hasn’t played since January 2022. We will get to why shortly because, according to those behind the Blues’ strategy, there is a plan for domination at play here.
Chelsea are on course to have the youngest ever team in Premier League history this season
The Blues would take the record from Leeds' youthful side from the 1999-2000 season
Mail Sport spoke to Eirik Bakke, Leeds' young player of the year that campaign, who is in a prime position to advise Chelsea on what it takes to succeed with such a young side
But first, Bakke is in a prime position to advise Chelsea on what it takes to succeed with such a young side and explain why now, as manager of Asane in Norway, he still prefers to recruit what he calls ‘raw material’.
‘David O’Leary was very clear that he wanted to build a young team who would fight for trophies,’ Bakke says. ‘They were going to sign Frank Lampard but he thought I was a better player than him. Probably he was lying to me! But you believe in it, you know?
‘We were kept on our toes, pushed hard, a very fit team. We could run all day, high tempo, high intensity. That was the Leeds identity. Into their faces, “Dirty Leeds”, hard to play against. I don’t think any team liked playing us. You need that.
‘It was one of our strengths, the young hungriness we had. We didn’t know what was ahead of us. We thought we would beat anyone. It didn’t matter if we played Arsenal or Manchester United. We only played our game, on our terms, all the time.
‘They got us to believe we were the best players in England. That’s why as a manager now I like working with younger groups because you get something. You don’t know what you get, but you get something.’
Sprinkled with the odd older gent, such as David Batty and Alfie Haaland, that fearlessness among the fledglings helped Leeds finish third in the Premier League while they also reached the UEFA Cup semi-finals, including an ill-fated trip to Istanbul that ended in tragedy which we will discuss later.
‘Belief’ becomes a buzzword as O’Leary says: ‘It reminded me of myself, how I’d gotten into the Arsenal team at 17 and loved the occasion. We had a group that flourished under pressure. They didn’t freeze. Maybe in a way the naivety helped because they didn’t know what they were doing.
‘It got to be an even bigger turn on going to places in the Champions League where you had everybody saying: “They’ve got no chance. They’re young, they’re inexperienced, this, that, the other.” That made them want to prove people wrong. We ended up in the semi-finals.
‘Honestly, I remember a couple of my team talks. We were getting top teams. Did you need to be talking about certain players? Not particularly, because you were so aware of them. But my theme in some places like Rome or Madrid was, “Look, we’re making up the numbers here. Everybody expects us to get beat.” I could see that irritated them. I could see it on their faces, that they were thinking, “We’ll show everybody.” They were top young players.’
Leeds were managed by David O'Leary, who was keen to give young players an opportunity
Chelsea's ownership believe that targeting youth is the best way to set up sustained success
Mauricio Pochettino tested the patience of Chelsea’s owners during his single season in charge, not least when using his press conferences to question the youthfulness of the squad built on his behalf.
Statements such as ‘I don’t want to be the coach that picks the youngest team in England’ and ‘maybe this team is not mature enough’ did not go unnoticed in the Blues boardroom. The Argentinian avoided going full Alan Hansen, but the messaging contradicted the club’s masterplan enough that a separation became inevitable at the end of last season.
There have been no such complaints from Maresca. Relatively young himself at 44, the Italian is fully invested in the idea that targeting youth is the best way to set up sustained success.
It has been highlighted how Chelsea became the youngest team to ever win the Premier League in 2004-05, and that John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Ricardo Carvalho and more were still at the club in 2009-10 when they were then crowned the competition’s oldest champions.
The hope is when Chelsea finally secure that first trophy under their current ownership, they can do so over and over again in the seasons that follow with their young core group. ‘It’s about long-term success,’ one source summarised, adding all decisions are made with the future in mind.
That is partly why those in charge never want one of their players entering into the final year of his contract, with Conor Gallagher sold to Atletico Madrid in the summer, and why they have taken to handing such extraordinarily lengthy deals to new signings.
There is a risk to it all, with Mykhailo Mudryk hardly living up the hype that convinced Chelsea to sign him until 2031 in a deal worth up to £89million from Shakhtar Donetsk. As one scout says anonymously: ‘I saw him play in a few places, including in a 1-1 draw at Celtic when he scored a super goal. He’s one who I thought would be getting talked about, like how we’re all talking about Cole Palmer now.’
Palmer is tied down until 2033. He is 22 now, and will be 31 then. Insiders believe his best years are still ahead, even bigging him up as possibly the first Englishman to win the Ballon d’Or since Michael Owen for Liverpool in 2001. They hope Palmer can become the poster boy of a prosperous period once the floodgates are opened by that first sliver of silverware, and he will soon be joined by yet more starlets.
While Manchester City and Co are ageing, Chelsea are getting younger, with two wunderkinds in Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian set to walk into the first-team changing room next summer. Paez and Willian will join from Independiente del Valle and Palmeiras for £17m and £29m respectively once they turn 18, potentially reducing the average age even further.
Former Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino never seemed to be fully on board with the strategy
But Italian coach Enzo Maresca, only 44 himself, is much more amenable to the plan
Speak to Chelsea’s newbies on why they made their choice and, without fail, they will mention ‘the project’ that was pitched to them.
Bakke was 21 when he moved from Sogndal for £1.75m at the start of the 1999-2000 season and like those who have arrived at Stamford Bridge, Leeds’ youthfulness appealed to him.
‘That’s one of the reasons I came,’ he says of what was sold to him. ‘Harry Kewell was younger than me and he was named Player of the Year, probably the biggest talent in England. As a midfield, when we got the ball, we knew we were going to give it to Harry.’
That may sound familiar to Chelsea fans who got used to seeing the ball played to Palmer last season whenever they were out of ideas. Maresca is trying to make it less of a one-man show but worryingly for the Blues, Bakke says what particularly helped the unity at Leeds was how the core of their young group had been together for some time.
Kewell, Alan Smith, Jonathan Woodgate and Stephen McPhail were among those who won the FA Youth Cup in 1997. They had all worked with O’Leary’s assistant Eddie Gray in Leeds’ academy, and Bakke remembers a session in his first pre-season which involved ‘running around the park for two hours’. At the front of the group, leading by example in the exhausting jog, was the legendary Gray.
Bakke insists youngsters need strong leadership and to Maresca’s credit, he is a tracksuit type not averse to getting stuck into training sessions himself at Cobham. Yet Chelsea’s latest head coach will need to rely on the owners showing greater patience with him than his predecessors in order for his young team to grow together under his guidance.
Several quality young players have their futures tied down, like Cole Palmer until 2033
Marc Guiu is the youngest player to feature in a Premier League squad at 18 years and 227 days
Leeds did not shy from picking up a caution or two, occasionally in their eagerness to show why they should not be underestimated. But Chelsea have taken this to a whole new level.
The Blues have already been forced to pay two fines to the Football Association this campaign – one of £25,000 and the next £50,000 – for being shown six or more cards in two league matches. They have received 30 yellows in eight fixtures, leaving them on course to finish with a total of 120 which would smash their own unwanted record of 105 set last season.
Rather than criticise, Maresca has celebrated this characteristic, encouraging them to carry on giving as good as they get in games, never wanting his young side to be seen as a soft touch.
O’Leary recalls one fixture in which their inexperience was evident, however. It was in the semi-final first leg of the UEFA Cup, a game against Galatasaray when two Leeds supporters, Kevin Speight and Chris Loftus, were fatally stabbed the previous night. Even as the team arrived at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium – accompanied by a security escort that was more intimidating than inviting – there were Turkish supporters performing slit-throat gestures.
Maresca is hands on as a coach and is regularly involved with players on the training pitch
O’Leary did recall one fixture in which he felt that Leeds' inexperience was evident
‘I could feel it going into the game,’ O’Leary remembers. ‘You could feel the tension. In the dressing room beforehand, the feel wasn’t the same as what I had been getting all the way through. That was when our inexperienced kicked in. I didn’t think we were in the right frame at all.’
There is no blaming that young Leeds team for the 2-0 loss that followed which essentially ended their European run. We can only hope Chelsea’s youngsters are never tested by such a traumatic experience.
O’Leary is looking forward to seeing how Maresca’s fledglings get on, even if they do smash the record set by his Leeds side in 1999-2000 which he did not know existed until told by Mail Sport.
‘I’ve seen young players who have burst onto the scene but not kicked on to the next level,’ he summarises on Chelsea. ‘Yes, we’ve all heard of the ridiculous amount of players they’ve got, but I still think come the crunch, they’re going to get it right eventually.’