“You can’t win anything with kids,” famously said former Liverpool defender turned Match of the Day pundit Alan Hansen, in reference to Manchester United’s squad in 1995/96 that was steeped in youngsters from the fabled Class of ’92.
Hansen was excruciatingly wrong, as United went on to land the Premier League and FA Cup double, with the likes of David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville leading the way.
You can get Hansen’s point, in a way, as older players tend to bring with them experience, nous and leadership: crucial components, you would think, to success out on the pitch.
Enzo Maresca is another hoping to prove Hansen’s theory wrong. His Chelsea side broke the record for the youngest Premier League squad in more than three decades of the competition in 2024/25 – remarkably, the average age of Maresca’s troops is set to be even lower in 2025/26 too.
Can you win anything with kids? After the Europa Conference League and Club World Cup triumphs of 2024/25, the answer is a resounding yes. But wouldn’t a Premier League title or a Champions League trophy be welcome, too…
Young Man’s Game
It was confirmed at the end of the 2024/25 campaign that Chelsea’s squad was the youngest in Premier League history, with an average age of just 24 years, 36 days.
Having qualified for the Champions League and won the two trophies mentioned, it would be fair to say that the kids delivered, alright.
“I’m very proud of the players,’ Maresca said at the end of the season.
“They are good boys, they work hard, they try to help each other. Most of the time they had to deal with noise from outside saying they were not good enough, they were too young, we didn’t have leaders, this kind of thing.
“But at the end it all comes from results.”
With the likes of Christopher Nkunku, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Joao Felix and Djordje Petrovic – all aged 25 or older – leaving Stamford Bridge in the summer, to be replaced by Estevao, Jorrel Hato, Liam Delap, Joao Pedro, Jamie Gittens and Alejandro Garnacho, each of whom is 23 or younger, that age profile comes down yet further.
Chelsea Football Club has agreed a deal to sign teenage forward Estevao Willian from Palmeiras, with the Brazilian to officially join Chelsea next summer. 🤝 pic.twitter.com/SHLVRaD4gi
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) June 22, 2024
And so, the average age of Chelsea’s squad in the Premier League so far – seven gameweeks, at the time of writing – has fallen yet further to 23.9.
Assuming that Maresca and the recruitment team don’t completely change their modus operandi in the winter transfer market and sign a bunch of more experienced players, this crop of Chelsea youngsters will break their own record as the most youthful in EPL history.
According to Transfer Markt, Chelsea rank eighth amongst the teams of Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues for minutes given to players aged 21 or younger so far this term. And the leader in that category is Strasbourg, the BlueCo owned sister club to the Blues that currently has Chelsea youngsters Mamadou Sarr, Mike Penders and Kendry Paez on loan.
Ancelotti’s Dads Army
Mind you, there’s plenty to be said for the wisdom of old age in football… just ask Carlo Ancelotti’s Chelsea side of 2009/10.
By our reckoning, not only was this Chelsea’s oldest squad since the dawn of the new millennium – with an average age of 29.2, it was also the most elderly squad to win the Premier League title in the competition’s history.
Ashley Cole, Ricardo Carvalho, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack, Paulo Ferreira, Nicolas Anelka and Deco were just some of the players on the wrong side of 30 to feature for Chelsea in 2009/10, with Lampard and Drogba delivering arguably the finest seasons of their careers despite their advancing years.
Chelsea also won the FA Cup and Community Shield in a campaign of real triumph for Ancelotti and his dads army in blue.
We’ve scoured the archives to find an older Chelsea squad in the modern era, and by our math the 1999/00 season saw an average age of player of 29.5 pull on the blue shirt – a shade more vintage that that title-winning side of 2009/10.
In Chelsea’s four other Premier League winning seasons, the average age of the trophy hoisting squad has been 27.7, 27.3, 26.3 and 25.7; that youngest side, in 2004/05, coinciding with Jose Mourinho’s first campaign as head coach at Stamford Bridge.
That was the youngest squad to ever win the Premier League too, with John Terry (23), Petr Cech (22), Joe Cole (22), Arjen Robben (20) and Glen Johnson (19) all helping to bring the average age of the Special One’s special team down.