Reece James

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Goldschmidt
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Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 12:29 pm

Reece James

Post autor: Goldschmidt »

Obrazek

22-letni prawy obrońca/wahadłowy
Kontrakt z Chelsea do 2025 roku
Agentami są Brytyjczycy (po fuzji z niemiecką firmą International Sports Management) Unique Sports Group, reprezentujący m.in. Wan Bissakę, Phila Fodena i Hakana Calhanoglu

Urodził się w Redbridge (wschodni Londyn) i od 6 roku życia grał w szkółce Chelsea. Dorastał oglądając tryumfy Chelsea w Champions League 2012 i po dziś dzień ma koszulkę Terry'ego nad łóżkiem. Jego siostra Lauren (na zdjęciu) także gra w Chelsea w sekcji kobiecej, a tata prowadzi szkółkę w okolicy. W sekcji młodzieżowej Chelsea zaczynał na boku, przesuwany był wyżej na skrzydło, do pomocy aż skończył z powrotem na boku obrony gdzie udało mu się m.in. zatrzymać Jadona Sancho grając z City w młodzieżowym FA Cup 2017 (6:2 w dwumeczu). Po zgrupowaniach młodzieżowych reprezentacji Anglii od jakiegoś czasu przyjaźni się też z Bellinghamem. W reprezentacji jednak z powodu ogromnej konkurencji na swojej pozycji gra jednak stosunkowo rzadko. Niemal całą swoją karierę spędził w Londynie z wyjątkiem wypożyczenia 2018/19 do drugoligowego wówczas Wigan Athletic gdzie zebrał klubowe nagrody gracza sezonu pomimo bycia sprowadzonym jako młodzik do rotacji oraz słabego sezonu drużyny która głównie walczyła o utrzymanie w lidze (co im się udało). Po bardzo dobrej z indywidualnej strony jesieni w Wigan odrzucił propozycje transferu do klubów wyżej plasowanych w Championship oraz z Premier League skupiając się na kontynuowaniu wypożyczenia. W ostatnim meczu sezonu kończąc przygodę w klubie zagrał jako kapitan i otrzymał od kibiców owację na stojąco.
Mimo tego że na świecznik naprawdę trafił dopiero w tym oraz minionym sezonie gdy stał się jednym z czołowych zawodników Chelsea, podstawowym prawym obrońcą był już za czasu Lamparda w klubie u którego zadebiutował na jesieni 2019, gdy Frank rozpoczynał w drużynie młodzieżową rewolucję (Abraham, Tomori, Billy Gilmour, Hudson-Odoi). Od tego czasu był czynnym członkiem rotacji ze starzejącym się kapitanem Azpilicuetą który zaczynał grać bliżej stopera oraz kolegą z młodzieżowej kadry Hudsonem-Odoi, który otrzymał dużo konkurencji na swojej pozycji w ostatnich latach.

Zaliczył 7 występów od pierwszej minuty w fazie pucharowej Ligi Mistrzów - przegrany sromotnie (1:7) dwumecz z Bayernem sześciu pucharów w sezonie pandemii 19/20, w 20/21 u Tuchela gdzie pomimo ławki w dwumeczu z Realem zaczął od początku w finale z City, i w obecnym sezonie przeciwko Realowi.

Pomimo imponujących warunków fizycznych można też jednak podkreślić kontuzje - w lecie 2019 nabawił się urazu kostki przez co przegapił początek sezonu Chelsea. Sezon 21/22 też na razie nieszczególnie równy pod tym względem - w grudniu 2021 naderwał dwugłowy i przegapił dwa miesiące, po czym w marcu miał problem z dwugłowym w drugiej nodze, a po meczu rewanżowym na Santiago Bernabeu w LM znów miał problem z mięśniem i musiał pauzować na mecz z West Hamem w weekend, choć wrócił na United.

Wobec niestabilnej sytuacji w klubie po odejściu Abramowicza, wiele klubów węszy wokół talentów Chelsea a sami zawodnicy, m.in. Rudiger (oraz Christensen i Azpilicueta, choć kontrakt tego drugiego przedłużył klub) domagali/ją się wyjaśnienia sytuacji. Wedle doniesień The Athletic Real czujnie obserwuje Jamesa, a wiele klubów w Anglii i poza śledzi też sytuację Masona Mounta.

---------------------------

Cieszy że klub zainteresował się Reecem. Sam jestem wielkim fanem. Chłop to atleta pierwszej klasy i wydaje się mieć bardzo poukładaną głowę pod względem ambicji i piłkarskiej pokory. Rozegrał wiele spotkań w barwach Chelsea i kadry Anglii, które czynią go atrakcyjnym zawodnikiem. Jednak nie nastawiałbym się że te negocjacje będą proste.
Facet gra w klubie swojego dzieciństwa i może być trudno go skusić do przeprowadzki w nieznane i zwykle mało litościwe (tym bardziej dla Brytyjczyków) klimaty Realu. Myślę że zarówno ludzie w jego obecnym klubie jak i kibice uważają go za jednego z najważniejszych zawodników w kadrze i możliwe że ogromne pieniądze mogą być potrzebne by zamknąć jakiś transfer.



I na koniec cytat od ojca, Nigela Jamesa:
“100 games… you just sit there and think, ‘Wow’. To do that at 21… there are some people who play 300 in their career. But I’m not emotional. The part where I will be emotional is the day he becomes Chelsea captain. That’s his ambition and mine as well.
(...)
Didier Drogba was a legend and so was John Terry. But Reece has been at Chelsea since he was six. There isn’t a player who has been there that young and gone on to wear the armband. The goal is to be the man that, when you hear Chelsea, you think Reece James.”
Źródła
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 54596.html
Grudniowy artykuł na jego temat z The Athletic w spoilerze
It is the last minute of Chelsea’s Champions League group game against Juventus and Reece James hits a 40-yard pass with the outside of the boot to Hakim Ziyech, who crosses for Timo Werner to secure a 4-0 victory. The skill is greeted with appreciative “oohs” from the crowd.

Sitting in the stands as normal is Reece’s dad Nigel and he has a big smile on his face. This is not the first time he has seen his son hit a ball as sweetly as this. He saw it on a daily basis when Reece was just a small boy practising his craft on a pitch in Richmond, just a few minutes’ walk away from the house they lived in.

Back then, the prospect of playing one game for Chelsea was not even on his mind, let alone 100 — a milestone he reached on Saturday in the 3-2 defeat to West Ham United. A love of the game was his only motivation and a simple desire to get better at it.

Nigel can picture the scene like it was yesterday as we meet at the Budweiser Sports Ground (formerly known as Watneys Sports Ground) to talk about Reece’s remarkable achievement.

“This is where it all began,” he tells The Athletic with great pride in his voice. “For years, Reece and his brother Joshua would walk from the house with cones, poles and all sorts. More often than not they would mark out a box for each other, a fair distance apart. The aim of the game was to clip the ball into the other’s box without it hitting the ground. The recipient had to control the ball with any part of their body, get the ball down and clip it back to the other. They used to do this for hours. I would leave them here to do a few things, come back and they’d still be out there doing the same drill.

“As they developed and got older, that exercise became even more of a competition. It would have to land in the other’s box, the other player had to keep the ball up two or three times, then get it down and clip it back again. That technique was something they learned… we are talking about doing the same thing over and over again 10,000 times.

“When I saw the pass he made against Juventus, it took me back to this pitch and that period of his life. It was just another indication of how all the hard work he put in as a kid has paid off.”

Chelsea and England are certainly benefiting from it now, but it has been quite a journey to get to this point.

Reece James was only a couple of years old when the family moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Brixton to the more sedate surroundings of Richmond. With sister Lauren — who now plays for Chelsea Women — having just been born, space was getting harder to come by. The council block in which they lived also didn’t have a lift, so just getting to the front door was quite an effort.

Still, Nigel found Brixton a hard place to leave. “It was lively. Every day there was something going on. It is an area that never sleeps, for good and bad. I met a lot of great people there but you have to always keep your eyes open.

“When we had Lauren, I was coaching football but also working as a security guard at night. It was hard. I found one of my pay slips the other day, I’m going to put it in a frame and show the kids. The rate was £5 an hour and I was working four 12-hour shifts. After tax it worked out at £165 a week.

“We applied to the council to move and were very, very lucky that they moved us to Mortlake. For us, coming from Kennington and Brixton, this felt like moving to the countryside. The journey felt like forever. We nearly turned it down but my mother said, ‘If you do that, you will be in Brixton forever’.”

Having a grass surface for the kids to play football on nearby, rather than a metal cage in Brixton, was “the icing on the cake”. Reece’s first kickabout with Nigel came when he was three, Joshua was four and one-year-old Lauren was in a pushchair to the side trying to join in despite not being able to walk yet.

It was evident to all who saw Reece that he had a great work ethic from the outset.

“It was like homework,” Nigel continues. “It was compulsory that I had to arrange a kickabout before he did any school work. He continued doing things out here even when he was signed up to clubs, including the first years at Chelsea. You could count on one hand how many birthday parties he went to. It was just football, football.

“The kids would be out here ’til dark. I’d have to come and get them in sometimes. They used to come back and get a flask with some tomato soup. For our food shopping, they’d want us to buy 10-12 cans. They never ate it indoors, it was to put in a flask and bring over here. It meant there was no time wasted by having something to eat. They drove themselves.”

Inevitably, Reece wanted to play for junior teams to satisfy his craving for the sport.

Nigel takes another trip down memory lane by driving me to North Sheen Recreation Ground, which is within a mile of the house. This is where Kew Park Rangers, the first team Reece played for, stage their games.

He was just five when he tried to sign up. Initially, Reece was told he had to be in a group of boys the same age but Nigel could tell his talent belonged in an older class.

There was some hesitation at first but he was invited for a trial to show what he could do. “They set up a drill with two groups facing each other,” Nigel explains. “The aim was to pass it to someone on the other side who then had to run at you one-v-one and put the ball into a little goal. The kids were one year older than Reece, so those watching felt it was a big jump for him. There were a few dads stood there drinking their coffee who suddenly realised this kid stopped everyone and no one could stop him. The coach came over, an American called Patrick and he was like, ‘Oh my!'”

Reece would go on to represent an Epsom Eagles side that boasted several talented individuals who went on to become professionals in Conor Gallagher (Crystal Palace, on loan from Chelsea), Alfie Doughty (Stoke City), Ben Dempsey (Charlton Athletic) and Ian Poveda (Blackburn, on loan from Leeds United) — but it was at Kew Park Rangers that he got noticed by Chelsea.

All the best local under-7 teams in the West Surrey Youth League were invited to a tournament at the club’s training ground in Cobham. Reece was just six years old.

“There were loads of teams competing that day,” Nigel recalls. “They set up a number of small pitches. Chelsea had two or three scouts around each pitch so they couldn’t miss anyone.

“In the first game, Reece scored a screamer from a free kick. In the second, bang, he did it again. During the third game he beat a few players and put it in the top corner. In the last game he had another free kick and bent it straight in. By the time of the fourth or fifth game, basically every scout was around Reece’s pitch watching him. Kew Park Rangers won the competition and Reece won a trophy for being the best outfield player.”

Chelsea invited him to become part of their academy, but with him being so young, there was only one session a week. But he soon got to join in two sessions a week at neighbours Fulham, who had signed elder brother Joshua. They asked Reece to join in after seeing what he could with a ball on the sidelines and he didn’t look out of place despite the others being two years older.

When you consider he was combining this with what he was doing on the pitch near his house, at break times in school and the local football teams he represented, it is perhaps no wonder he progressed so quickly.

During his teenage years at Chelsea, the right-back increasingly stood out. He had successive FA Youth Cup and Under-18 Premier League doubles to show for his exploits. But by 2018, it was clear he needed to test himself in a first-team environment.

The role of Wigan Athletic in James’s development should never be underestimated. In the summer of 2018, the then-Championship club were looking at signing one of Chelsea’s talented youngsters on loan.

Dujon Sterling was considered. He was the more established of the two right-backs and was a year older. But he ended up joining the following season.

Wigan’s former head of football operations Chris Brass recalls: “I felt Reece showed his potential when playing for Chelsea in the FA Youth Cup team. You really could see this strong-willed, physically strong player emerging. There were still aspects he needed to develop and work on. But when I sold the idea to the club, we were all on the same page and the wheels were put in motion.

“The plan when we signed him was to be part of the squad and put a bit of pressure on our right-back Nathan Byrne. He wasn’t coming in to be a ‘front-liner’. He was to cover a number of positions really. He came in during pre-season and realised that he had to get the hard miles in, to understand what first-team football was all about. He’d obviously only been only used to youth football.

“Initially it was a shock to him, a baptism of fire, due to the intensity and what the manager expected. But after that initial burst onto the scene into the first-team environment, he quickly took it in his stride.”

As far as Kal Naismith — who joined Wigan that summer from Portsmouth — is concerned, Brass’s recollection of how quickly James adapted to his new surroundings is a bit of an understatement.

James had a bit of luck because Byrne picked up an injury early in the season, which allowed him to get an opportunity sooner than expected. But Naismith argues the Wigan squad knew almost from the outset that this teenager was destined to play at the highest level.

“He went about training in a quiet way,” Naismith says. “He wasn’t showing off or going out of his way to demonstrate how good he was. He just showed his power, strength and pace. We were thinking, ‘Oh, wow!’. It was tough when you went near him, he just took the ball off you.

“I remember at the end of training he’d always practise free kicks. But he would do just four or five. The boys would watch him and I’m not exaggerating, the four, five would all be struck clean into the top corner and then he’d just walk in. He wouldn’t brag.

“I was on the bench for a lot of games at the start of the season and any time a player got it down the left wing, the guys on our bench would say ‘no chance’. And you’d see Reece just go over and take the ball off them. You’d almost feel bad for the player up against him. He was just too strong, too quick and his positioning was too good.

“It got to the stage where after two, three months of the season, no-one would go near him in training. If he got the ball, he was always given five yards of space. No one would try to tackle him. It was like he was playing against kids and we had a lot of good players. But many would refuse to go near him.”

What was perhaps just as significant as James experiencing professional football for the first time, was learning to live away from home on his own. That is a daunting thing for any 18-year-old, but James was, and still is, renowned for his shyness.

As Wigan’s player liaison officer back then, Karen Armstrong effectively became like a second mother and their bond still remains to this day. Yet she had her concerns when James first made the move.

“We’d had quite a lot of loan players from big clubs over the years and they’d not really worked out,” Armstrong admits. “It always made a lot of work for me. The players didn’t really settle or perform on the pitch. So when this kid’s name was mentioned I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Here we go again. Another kid who is going to be a handful and it’s not really going to work’. But the opposite happened. He was an absolute joy in every way.

“I taught him how to cook, how to do his washing and things like that. He was very quiet and very, very shy. The first meeting he barely said a word. But he came out of himself. He was cheeky in a funny way, not a rude way. He just grew in confidence so much.

“He would send me pictures of meals he’d cooked and I’d tell him how proud I was. But after he left, I found out he was just going to a place around the corner to get the food and take a picture of that!

“Reece would talk to me about his ambitions. When he was with us, he was called up for the England Under-20s on one occasion and he was really annoyed because it wasn’t the Under-21s. I was like ‘Reece, you’ve still been called up for the Under-20s!’. But to him, that wasn’t good enough. It was a sign of what was driving him.”

Naismith became one of his closest friends and still is. He was a guest, Karen too, for Chelsea’s match against Manchester United on November 28, which was his 99th appearance for the club.

Seeing him playing a key role for the Champions League holders and increasingly for England is a far cry from when they used to hang out in the Wigan branch of Starbucks after training. But Naismith insists the fame hasn’t changed James one bit.

“Reece was never interested in flash cars, designer clothes and things,” he says. “He loves watches, he obviously has that kind of stuff but it isn’t something that drives him.

“At Wigan he was just a young lad that loved training and going for a coffee afterwards. He’s so tight! We went to Starbucks maybe 100 times and I reckon he paid for our coffees three times. He doesn’t splash his money, he is not extravagant. I reckon you could take all his money away tomorrow or give him £100 million and he’d be exactly the same. He doesn’t get overexcited.”

Another sign of his humility came when he ignored offers from clubs higher up in the Championship and the Premier League halfway through that season and instead stuck with Wigan. When the Latics went into administration last year, James donated £3,000 and went on social media to campaign on their behalf for more financial assistance.

Brass, who now works in a similar role for Nottingham Forest, has never forgotten James the man: “It said a lot about the character of Reece that he was loyal to us,” he says. “He felt like he’d come to help us, that we’d helped him and he wasn’t going to leave at that point. He made sure we stayed up. He wasn’t going glory hunting. He knew he had a job to do. He backed himself that his level of performance would take him to the next level anyway.

“Reece knew what he wanted to achieve. When you sat and spoke with him he knew what he had to get past at Chelsea, but also with the England team. That was special. He understood the calibre of players he had to get past, he respected the good players they all are and he had to work. He still is doing that.”

In some ways, the numbers alone did all the talking as far as how well the loan went. James played 46 times and won four of the club awards: Player of the Year, Players’ Player of the Year, Goal of the Season, and PFA Community champion. It was simply unheard of for any loanee to be lauded in this way.

Before that pass against Juventus, there was a game against Nottingham Forest. Of all the opponents he has played against since being given his Chelsea debut by Frank Lampard in 2019, it was an FA Cup third-round tie against Nottingham Forest which convinced his dad that he’d made the grade.

Chelsea won 2-0 and James was combining well with Callum Hudson-Odoi on the right flank from the outset. “I just looked at him and thought, ‘Yeah’,” Nigel recalls. “You had him at right-back and Callum in front. The two of them took over the game and destroyed them. That was a resemblance of the youth team and I thought, ‘This is the future’.

“He did this Cruyff turn in between two players. He came out of that and pinged it to the left-winger. It was like the park drill. I was thinking, ‘I’ve seen that since he was five’.”

For the first few years, Nigel would ring his son after a match to talk about his performance and provide advice on things he might want to work on. But those calls stopped six months ago following James’s display in Chelsea’s 1-0 triumph over Manchester City in the Champions League Final.

“After that success, I was telling him, ‘You’re there, you now have to think that you’re the man. The moment you stop thinking you’re the man there is a player who you will be up against that will sniff out that you’re acting. Once he does that he will exploit the weakness.’

“Right now, Reece is messing with opponents’ heads. He has the ability on the ball, they look at him and see he has improved his defending, that he’s quick, good in the air and he will smash them. It makes them think they have to do something really amazing and they know there is a chance he will do something amazing. That he could embarrass them. They would rather not do something which could make him angry. So I’ve backed off and it’s a case of, ‘Go on then’, which is exactly what he’s done.

“There is a balance as a dad and a coach. I don’t want to make him mentally still think he’s a boy. If I drag that boy bit down, you risk them stopping believing they’re the man and then going out there to perform as a boy. I drew a line at some point. When I talk to him about football it’s in a different way. Not ‘Reece, do this’ — it’s, ‘Can you do this?’. It’s a different tone. You tell a boy, you ask a man.”

In the summer, there was still concern over where exactly James stood in the pecking order. Chelsea made a move to sign Achraf Hakimi from Inter Milan only for the Moroccan to opt for Paris Saint-Germain. It suggested Tuchel still had doubts over whether James could be the long-term option at right wing-back.

“Reece has spoken a couple of times about the possibility of someone else coming in,” Nigel confirms. “He looked at it and said, ‘What are they looking to sign them for?’. Until this day I tell him these people can one day say you’re wonderful and tomorrow they sign someone in your position.

“It’s a motivation for him. I tell him, ‘The more you keep performing like this, the more you’re making someone else like you.’

“How we got to where we are today, Reece had to perform really well at the youth stage for the outside clubs to like him and for Chelsea to then like him. It’s like in business, you have to be valued by others for your employer to really value you. You become an asset.

“The way for him to keep being an asset is to keep delivering on the pitch. Now every Premier League manager knows what he’s like, same too for coaches across Europe because he is doing it in the Champions League, plus for England. All the top clubs know who Reece James is.”

If you think Nigel or Reece are content with the 100-game barrier being reached, then think again. The mood is obviously upbeat, but very much that it is just the start.

Nigel concludes: “100 games… you just sit there and think, ‘Wow’. To do that at 21… there are some people who play 300 in their career. But I’m not emotional. The part where I will be emotional is the day he becomes Chelsea captain. That’s his ambition and mine as well.

“Didier Drogba was a legend and so was John Terry. But Reece has been at Chelsea since he was six. There isn’t a player who has been there that young and gone on to wear the armband. The goal is to be the man that, when you hear Chelsea, you think Reece James.”

And to think it all began with all those days, hours and minutes spent on a simple pitch in Richmond.

https://theathletic.com/2990786/2021/12 ... ece-james/
Awatar użytkownika
TWL64
Posty: 321
Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 9:29 pm

Re: Reece James

Post autor: TWL64 »

Goldschmidt pisze: ndz maja 01, 2022 5:44 pm piłkarskiej pokory
Wolałbym jednak ambitnego i inteligentnego grajka, niż "pokornego" przygłupa - sorki za wyjęcie z kontekstu, ale pokornie to można iść do spowiedzi, donieść na samego siebie, jak ktoś lubi.
Pokora w sporcie to porażka, wolę szacunek dla rywala ;)
A triunfar en buena lid, defendiento tu color!
Awatar użytkownika
Goldschmidt
Posty: 1702
Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 12:29 pm

Re: Reece James

Post autor: Goldschmidt »

Niezbyt rozumiem.
Reece jest tak pokorny jak Fede czy kolega z zespołu Ngolo. W sensie że sumiennie pracuje, nie wydaje się być łasy na kasę i nie wpierdala się przed reflektory czy kamery na Insta z byle powodu, a najgorszy objaw próżności to kupowanie drogich zegarków. Ambicji ma na tyle że był wkurwiony gdy dostał powołanie do U20 zamiast U21 i zniesmaczony że klub chciał sprowadzić Achrafa w zeszłe lato więc raczej mu jej nie brakuje.
Awatar użytkownika
Goldschmidt
Posty: 1702
Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 12:29 pm

Re: Reece James

Post autor: Goldschmidt »



:piesel1:
Awatar użytkownika
labeleq
Posty: 501
Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 12:40 pm

Re: Reece James

Post autor: labeleq »

Ja tam nie widzę w tej wysokości przesadnego optymizmu i powodu do wyciągania wniosków ;-)
minusek
Posty: 1334
Rejestracja: ndz maja 30, 2021 9:32 pm

Re: Reece James

Post autor: minusek »

To chyba najlepiej przygotowany temat na forum (tym i poprzednim). Niestety nic z tego transferu nie będzie, a przynajmniej nie jako bezpośrednie przejęcie pałeczki po Carvajalu - podpisał na 6 lat, przy zarobkach 8,4 mln netto. Dani dostaje z 5. :)
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