'Ten minutes says a lot': Jose Mourinho tells young players to take chances

Jose Mourinho has dismissed the notion that promising young English players need a run in the Chelsea team to prove themselves, pointing out that the 20-year-old French defender Kurt Zouma required just 10 minutes to show he was ready for the Premier League.

Speaking ahead of his team’s friendly game against Fiorentina, the Chelsea manager said that he would make no special allowances for English players trying to make the step between the club’s successful junior teams and the first team.

As things stand, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Nathaniel Chalobah and goalkeeper Jamal Blackman are the academy-produced players still at the club thus far who have a chance of first-team football.

Mourinho was heavily critical of Loftus-Cheek for his performance against Sydney FC in a friendly in Australia at the end of last season, claiming the 19-year-old had neglected duties that a senior player would take for granted as being part of his role.

“It depends on him [Loftus-Cheek], not on me,” Mourinho said. “If you have the chance, ask him. People normally ask about chances and chances and chances and maybe that’s a good excuse for the young players to be where they are. I think maybe for the good of English football, you should go the other way. Are you ready to get the chance?

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“The other day I had this internal discussion. Must the manager give confidence to a player? Or must the player give confidence to a manager? And I had this nice internal discussion with my people. At the end of the day we reached a conclusion that players pick themselves. That’s the responsibility that they must have.”

Mourinho said it was the prerogative of the Football Association if it wished to push for higher quotas of homegrown players within Premier League squads, currently set at eight. But he added that it was up to the players themselves to grasp their opportunity when it was presented to them.

“I think that the players must give confidence for me to say, ‘Let’s go’. Not the other way. The players and the agents [say]: ‘Oh, I need five matches in a row to prove myself’. ‘Oh, you need five matches in a row? Oh, fantastic. You don’t need five matches in a row. You need 10 minutes. In 10 minutes you can show me if you are ready or not.’ Zouma didn’t have five matches in a row.

“In 10 minutes it’s difficult to score a Maradona goal – to dribble past 10 guys and score – but that’s not what you’re expecting from a player. In 10 minutes you can show a lot. You can show you are ready, you are mentally ready, you are physically ready, you are ready to cope with the pressure, you are not the kind of guy who trains and plays against kids his own age but not ready to play at the high level. Ten minutes can say a lot.”

Chelsea’s low profile in the transfer market this summer has demonstrated the difficulty of signing players of the requisite quality to break into the team. As for the big-name sales over the past two years under Mourinho, he said that the departures of Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne, André Schürrle and Mohamed Salah were because they did not want “to have some big players with them fighting for a place”.

He said: “I promise nothing [to new players] and the last thing I promise is, ‘You come here and you play’. I always tell players the reality of things.”

Mourinho said Diego Costa would not be fit for the game against Fiorentina after a recurrence of his hamstring problems. Assessing the season ahead at the Premier League official media launch at Southfields Academy in south-west London, where the League’s Football Foundation charity has paid for a new 3G pitch, he said that so many clubs were now capable of signing top players.

“It’s difficult because they [the rest of the League] have players who could play in our team – Yohan Cabaye [now of Crystal Palace] could play for Chelsea, what’s the doubt? [Georginio] Wijnaldum [Newcastle] could play for Chelsea, [Max] Gradel [Bournemouth] could play for Chelsea, what’s the doubt?”