Cesare Casadei hits perfect hat-trick in 6-3 friendly win for Chelsea U21 over Dulwich Hamlet

Cesare Casadei keeps making headlines with his performances for Chelsea’s youth teams, even when no official games are scheduled, like this weekend when the under-21s instead played a friendly against Dulwich Hamlet.

The Hamlet may be in the sixth tier of English football, but they are still a side of senior (semi-)professionals, posing a very different challenge from the usual youth football fare — even if the friendly spirit allowed a couple substituted players to come back on later in the game.

Those caveats aside, Chelsea’s 6-3 win was notable for the two goals scored by Mason Burstow and the (perfect) hat-trick scored by that kid again, Cesare Casadei. Silko Thomas completed the scoring.

We don’t have full highlights, but Chelsea were “in command” with a 2-0 lead at half-time, and while the home side stormed back after the break to take a 3-2 lead halfway though the second half, Chelsea then turned it back on and scored four times in the last 15 minutes (!) to set the final score.

Thanks to enterprising Twitter user Will Barbs, we even have highlights for two of Casadei’s three goals (and one of Burstow’s), including the one that earned him the hat-trick, a sweet curling left-footed finish.

Good work, all!

In less positive youth news, the under-18s were beaten soundly by Fulham in U18 Premier League action, 7-1, with Donnell McNeilly getting the consolation goal in added-on time. Chelsea had won back-to-back games coming in, but ran into a buzzsaw.

The defeat leaves Chelsea fourth in the U18 PL South table, a point behind Fulham in second and with a game-in-hand, though everyone in the southern section are chasing a perfect West Ham United side, who are 8-for-8 and thus a whopping 11 points ahead of us already. It would appear it’s their year!

This game was going to be available on streaming, until it wasn’t, though it’s unlikely to warrant too many highlights. Onwards and upwards!