The London Evening Standard's Chelsea coverage has improved significantly in the past year or so, and now they've snagged Kurt Zouma for an interview. As it turns out, the young defender's favourite player growing up was ... our current captain:
My favourite footballers as a kid were John Terry and Mamadou Sakho, now of Liverpool. Terry is a great leader and the perfect example to young players. It is very exciting for me. I’ve always looked up to him and I just want to learn as much as possible from him. I speak to him and he’s a very nice man.
-Source: Standard.
Ok, so we'll ignore the Mamadou Sakho bit (although I think he gets a bad rap because of who's patrolling the midfield right in front of him) and focus on how interesting it is that this new generation of players has been growing up with Chelsea as a genuine footballing superpower. It's been more than a decade since Jose Mourinho first came to Stamford Bridge, and while long-term fans will remember the likes of the 1997 FA Cup as a major trophy, the sort of prospects we're looking to attract will have the Blues' back-to-back Premier League victories as childhood memories.
That can only be good news for the club. We're now, despite jibes from our opponents, firmly entrenched in the fabric of the game, and an enticing option for youngsters based on name alone (the money, admittedly, helps too).