{"id":713960,"date":"2026-07-27T17:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713960\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T17:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:48:12","slug":"can-chelseas-academy-stars-break-through-under-xabi-alonso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713960\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Chelsea’s academy stars break through under Xabi Alonso?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to several observers, the 18-year-old son of former Chelsea<\/a> technical director Michael Emenalo has been the breakout star so far.<\/p>\n

Emenalo is said to have played more minutes than any other player in the first two matches, operating at left-back, although he previously played primarily in midfield. He has effectively filled the void left by Marc Cucurella following his move to Real Madrid.<\/p>\n

Emenalo first trained with Chelsea<\/a>‘s first team under Mauricio Pochettino in 2023 and is now working under his fourth permanent manager.<\/p>\n

He has carried out extensive video analysis of Alonso’s methods in a bid to impress and, like many other footballers, took part in a post-season training camp organised by his agency.<\/p>\n

In a video for the camp, he said: “I hope I can make my mark on the first team and leave a good impression. Then, for the season in general, I think I need to be playing in a professional environment because I think I have played enough youth football for a lifetime.”<\/p>\n

Emenalo is arguably the most first-team-ready academy player at Cobham yet to make his Chelsea<\/a> debut and has a strong chance of featuring in front of crowds in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to several observers, the 18-year-old son of former Chelsea technical director Michael Emenalo has been the breakout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-713960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}