It’s been about two months for Tyrique George in his fledgling professional career.
Let’s quickly recap.
The 19-year-old winger saw a move to Fulham fall through in the final minutes on deadline day, helped prevent Chelsea from crashing out of the Carabao Cup against League One side Lincoln City, made his first Champions League start as a centre-forward and scored his first goal for the England Under-21s.
Quite an adventure, huh?
It’s a wide range of emotions for any young player to deal with, but speaking to two people close to him, you’ll quickly understand why he’s able to handle it all so well.
“We live by the motto that I came up with, which is ‘Humble and grateful,’” says Bola, George’s father. Athletics. “You can play him anywhere, he’s not going to moan. You just have to accept the setbacks. When you get to where these guys are, you have to be still, you have to be a rock.”
Like many parents with a child in the game, Bola took an active role. George joined Chelsea’s academy as an under-8 player, so he was able to benefit from one of the best football educations available. However, Bola also worked a lot on extras with him after work hours. And he asked his personal trainer David “Guru” Sobers for additional lessons starting at age 10.
Sobers is still in contact with George all these years later, and although these sessions together are much rarer, they did one recently to help hone some of the skills required to play as a striker.
He said: “Tyrique has shown his resilience by stepping up on these big platforms. I had no doubt he was going to do it, at Chelsea or elsewhere. To see him start in the Champions League… it’s certainly a big ‘Congratulations’ moment, but it’s not something I didn’t expect.”
George in the Champions League against Benfica last month (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Talking to Bola, you quickly see where George gets his determination from. Even though he earns enough to have his own house, George still lives with his father and stepmother. Bola regularly attends home and away games and was with him when the Fulham transfer collapsed.
“I am of Nigerian origin,” Bola reveals. “My parents and I are very attached to this way of life: if you have to do something, do it right. Don’t do it half-heartedly.
“That phrase runs through Tyrique’s whole time at the academy. I used to say to him, ‘If you just want to have fun, go play with your friends in the park’. He always knew I was driving 90 minutes to get him to Cobham and when he got there he had to be focused. Of course, he wasn’t a robot, so he’s not always going to apply that, but he always knew it.
“Tyrique loves living with us; he’s family oriented. He doesn’t need to go out much. He only took his driving test in January. He was the last person in his entire age group (at Chelsea’s academy) to pass it.
“The reason is that I wouldn’t let him drive when he was under 18. Why? I thought at that crucial moment (you can start taking lessons at 17 in the UK) he didn’t need to drive. With a license, all of a sudden you can go places. You want to be with your friends, you go out more. It’s a bit of a distraction. I told him, ‘Trust me, park.’ So he took the train from where we lived in the South. Croydon at the training ground instead. I like to think that this stance has paid off.
“I just want all the hard work he’s put in not to go to waste. It’s all about having the right attitude. I remember a (senior) Chelsea game where he wasn’t in the team, and I could see his attitude wasn’t very happy. My reaction is: ‘If you’re not happy with something, do more of it.’ It means you don’t have the manager’s attention.” It’s really a mentality of, ‘The buck stops with you, we don’t blame others.’ We had the same attitude at the academy. Some coaches focused more on running… ‘Well, you better run then!’
George celebrates Chelsea’s goal against Aston Villa at under-18 level in 2022 (Clive Howes/Getty Images)
Sobers started out doing one-on-one coaching, but expanded to create a team of footballers aged 18 to 21, who played against other teams in the London area. Bola asked Sobers if George could join the group to help his son progress. George trained and played matches with them, in addition to his duties at Chelsea. The first request was made when he was only 13 years old.
Sobers recalls with a laugh: “When Tyrique’s dad brought him up, I was like, ‘The other players are a little big!’ But Tyrique continued the technical exercises, the passing exercises. He demanded the ball.
“If you’re young, look at someone and they have muscles, it can be intimidating. But eventually you get over that fear and you understand that his size can change, but the ball doesn’t change. So he learned how to get the ball and play and succeed. It creates a lot of confidence in your abilities when you’re able to do things against people older than you, bigger than you. After that, he didn’t look back.”
Many fans associate George with being a left winger, but he actually started as a right back. In Chelsea’s academy, he played the majority of matches as a No.6, No.8 and No.10. Bola believes it now helps whenever first-team head coach Enzo Maresca uses him up front.
This is not a new tactical decision intended to compensate for the absence of Liam Delap, who injured his hamstring at the end of August. Maresca used him there in the second half at Legia Warsaw in April – the youngster scored his first senior goal in that Conference League quarter-final first leg. Ten days later, George came on as a late replacement for Nicolas Jackson, with Chelsea trailing Fulham in the Premier League. It was his fine strike that leveled the scores, and Chelsea went on to claim an important 2-1 victory.
George celebrates his Conference League goal against Legia Warsaw (Chris Lee/Getty Images)
“Tyrique likes to score, and playing as a striker is an opportunity to get on the pitch,” Bola explains. “He’s very comfortable as a No.10, so being central comes naturally to him. If you look at the three goals he’s scored from outside the box, they’ve all been central: Fulham, ES Tunis (at the Club World Cup) and Lincoln. He’s comfortable shooting from there, he always has been.
“He’s not a seasoned striker, he’s not like Marc Guiu, a press monster. But if he goes down, there’s a good chance he’ll hit the goal. I didn’t think he’d shoot Lincoln to equalize with that great goal (Chelsea were losing 1-0 in the third round of the Carabao Cup at the time). We talked about it afterwards. Maresca had a few strong words to say to everyone at half-time, and Tyrique came out with fire. He just knew that every time the ball came to him, he would shoot. He felt he had to make an impact. Fulham (that league game in April) was similar.
So how did Sobers, a former striker himself, hone George’s skills for this role? Exercises were offered to develop skills with both feet from an early age. But what is the situation now?
“We’ll have conversations about how he’s playing, how he’s doing, what we need to work on,” Sobers said. “And every now and then we’ll do a session, maybe once every five months. To develop my status as an attacker, I bring in a goalkeeper and two central defenders. We work on movements, blocking a defender and turnovers. We work on different finishing with a goalkeeper, which we did not so long ago.”
George made an impressive 26 appearances for Chelsea’s senior team last season, scoring three times and registering five assists. It appeared, however, that he had played his last match for the club against Fulham on 30 August. Less than 48 hours after facing Marco Silva, George underwent a medical exam to join them. A fee of £22million plus a sell-on clause has been agreed between the two west London clubs.
It was George’s decision to leave. As strong as the link with Chelsea was, he saw an opportunity for more regular appearances and a chance to develop more quickly at Fulham. But it broke down at the last moment.
George in action against Fulham just days before almost joining them (Adam Davy/Getty Images)
Bola recalls: “The deadline was 7 p.m., but a contract sheet was available, so there was a two-hour window to complete the move. At 8:45 p.m., for some reason, Fulham changed their mind. Tyrique was upset. We got in a taxi and, by 10 p.m., we were back home. An hour later we received a call from a senior member of the management team at Chelsea. They were incredibly supportive, saying, “Come back. Fight for your place. No problems.”
“He was supposed to turn out for the England Under-21s the next day, but I didn’t think he was in the right headspace. Lee Carsley (the England Under-21s head coach) was incredible.”
Despite being named in the initial squad, George was left out of Matchday 20 to face the Kazakhstan Under-21s on 8 September.
Bola continued: “Tyrique returned to Chelsea training on Thursday and everyone is joking him: ‘Ah, you’re back! You’re back!’. On Friday, you would never have known that the events of Monday happened.
“That’s again where humility comes in. Suddenly a lot of people are asking, ‘What went wrong with Fulham?’ There may also be a bit of embarrassment about it. But it’s okay to be embarrassed sometimes. What matters is not what happens to us, but how we deal with it. And you can use any setback as fuel.
George gave another example earlier this month. After missing Chelsea’s win over Liverpool due to flu, he went on to win his first two caps for the under-21s, scoring the only goal in the victory against Andorra.
The news that Delap is set to return to training means George’s centre-forward duties could soon become scarce. But there are quite a few games between now and then to fill the void, starting with the visit of Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday evening.
“He is always ready, but Chelsea need him,” concludes Bola. “It’s not about financial rewards with Tyrique, it’s about the accomplishment of playing for them more than anything. It’s a pride we all carry as a family. Whatever he does, we are grateful.”
