Dominic Solanke: Chelsea behind-closed-doors meeting revealed as remarkable claim made
Bournemouth star Dominic Solanke was remarkably named “one of the best number nines in Europe” by a Chelsea chief when he was at their academy.
Speaking on the latest edition of Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, Saul Isaksson-Hurst, a long-standing former Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal coach of 18 years and who now runs his own business coaching Premier League stars, revealed that the Blues had high expectations of the striker while he was at Cobham.
Solanke, 26, joined the club aged eight in 2004 before bagging 35 goals across 45 games with the under-18s, under-19s and under-21s.
While he only made one senior appearance for Chelsea and scored just one goal in 27 outings after his move to Liverpool in 2017, he has become one of the Premier League’s top goal-scorers this season at Bournemouth.
Chelsea chiefs wowed by young Dominic Solanke at Cobham
Isaksson-Hurst, who was at Chelsea between 2012 and 2016, claimed that Solanke was one of the club’s “flagship” academy stars and that “everyone was talking about” him.
“Dom is interesting because he shows how the player pathway can go up and down,” he told the Inside Track podcast.
“I remember when I started at Chelsea, everyone was talking about Dom.
“He was very much their benchmark and flagship player – him and Ruben Loftus Cheek, who’s gone to AC Milan.
“They had very high hopes for him.
“I remember [former Chelsea youth coach] Joe Edwards in one of the meetings saying he was one of the best number nines in Europe, so a really high calibre player for the academy.
“Obviously, if you look at the likes of Tammy Abraham, he probably overtook Dom for a bit.
“You always have the talent and the potential, but [for Solanke] maybe it’s taken a bit of time or luck.
“Now he’s really pushing on and really fulfilling that potential that everyone saw from a young age.”
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