{"id":788506,"date":"2026-07-28T03:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T03:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788506\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T03:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T03:06:17","slug":"can-chelseas-academy-stars-break-through-under-xabi-alonso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/788506\/","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":788507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-788506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}