It has been some two months for Tyrique George in his fledgling professional career.
Let’s quickly recap.
The 19-year-old winger has seen a transfer to Fulham break down in the final minutes on deadline day, helped save Chelsea from going 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 England Under-21s.
Quite a ride, eh?
That is a wide range of emotions to deal with for any young player, but speaking to two of the people closest to him, you soon understand why he is able to cope with it all so well.
“We live by a motto I came up with, which is ‘Humble and grateful’,” George’s father, Bola, tells The Athletic. “You can play him anywhere, he is not going to moan. You just have to embrace the setbacks. When you get to where these guys are you need to be still, you have to be a rock.”
Like many parents with a child in the game, Bola has taken an active role. George joined Chelsea’s academy as an Under-8, so he was privy to one of the best football educations there is to offer. However, Bola worked a lot on extras with him after hours, too. And he asked personal coach David ‘Guru’ Sobers for extra tuition from the age of 10.
Sobers is still in contact with George all these years later, and while those sessions together are much rarer, they did one recently to help fine-tune some of the skills required to play as a striker.
He says: “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 somewhere else. Seeing him starting in the Champions League… it is definitely a big ‘Congratulations’ moment, but it is not something that I did not expect.”
George in Champions League action against Benfica last month (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Talking to Bola, you quickly see where George gets his determination from. Despite earning more than enough to have his own home, George still lives with his father and stepmother. Bola attends home and away games regularly, and was with him when that Fulham move collapsed.
“I am from a Nigerian background,” Bola reveals. “My parents and I very much take this way of living on — if you are going to do something, then do it properly. Do not do it half-hearted.
“That sentence runs through Tyrique’s time in the academy. I used to say to him, ‘If you purely want to have fun, just go play with your mates in the park’. He always knew that I was driving 90 minutes to get him to Cobham and that when he got there, he needed to be focused. Of course, he was not a robot, so he is not always going to apply that, but he has always known that.
“Tyrique loves living with us; he is family-oriented. He does not need to go out loads. He only passed his driving test in January. He was the last person from his whole age group (at Chelsea’s academy) to pass it.
“The reason for that is I would not let him drive when he was at the under-18 stage. Why? I thought, at that crucial time (you can start taking lessons at 17 in the UK), he did not need to be driving. With a licence, suddenly you can get to places. You want to be with your friends, you are out more. It is a bit of a distraction. I said to him, ‘Trust me, park the driving’. So he took the train from where we used to live in South Croydon to the training ground instead. I like to think that stance paid off.
“I just want all the hard work he has put in not to be in vain. It is all about having the right attitude. I remember there was a (senior) Chelsea game where he was not in the squad, and I could see his demeanour was not too happy. My reaction is: ‘If you are not happy about something, do more. It means you do not have the manager’s attention’. It is very much a mentality of: ‘The buck stops with you, we do not blame others’. We had the same attitude in the academy. Some coaches were focused more on running… ‘Well, you’d better run then!’”
George celebrates scoring for Chelsea against Aston Villa at under-18s level in 2022 (Clive Howes/Getty Images)
Sobers started out doing one-to-one coaching but expanded to create a team of footballers aged 18 to 21, who played against other sides in the London area. Bola asked Sobers if George could join to help his son’s progression. George trained and played matches with them, in addition to his duties at Chelsea. The initial request was made when he was just 13.
Sobers recalls with a chuckle: “When Tyrique’s dad raised it, I was like: ‘The other players are a bit big!’ But Tyrique kept up with the technical exercises, the passing exercises. He demanded the ball.
“If you are young, looking up at someone and they have got muscles, it can be intimidating. But eventually you get over that fear, and you understand that their size might change, but the ball does not change. So he learned to win the ball off them, play and get success. This builds so much confidence in your ability when you are able to do things against people older than you, bigger than you. After that, he did not turn back.”
Many fans associate George with being a left-winger, but he actually started out as a right-back. In Chelsea’s academy, he played the majority of games as a No 6, No 8 and as a No 10. Bola believes that is now helping whenever first-team head coach Enzo Maresca uses him up front.
It is not a new tactical decision just to compensate for Liam Delap’s absence with a hamstring injury sustained in late August. Maresca employed him there in the second half away to Legia Warsaw in April — the youngster scored his first senior goal in that Conference League quarter-final first leg. Ten days later, George replaced Nicolas Jackson late on with Chelsea trailing at Fulham in the Premier League. It was his fine strike which levelled the scores, and Chelsea went on to secure an important 2-1 win.
George celebrates scoring in the Conference League 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 says. “He is very comfortable playing as a No.10, so being central comes naturally to him. If you look at the three goals he has scored from outside of the box, they have all been central — Fulham, ES Tunis (at the Club World Cup) and Lincoln. He is comfortable shooting from there, always has been.
“He is not a hardened striker; he is not like Marc Guiu, a press monster. But if it drops, there is a good chance he will hit the target. I did not think he would take the shot at Lincoln to equalise with that great strike (Chelsea were losing 1-0 in the Carabao Cup third round at the time). We spoke about it afterwards. Maresca had had a few strong words to say to everyone at half-time, and Tyrique came out with fire. He just knew that whenever the ball was going to come to him, he was going to shoot. He felt he had to make an impact. Fulham (that league match in April) was similar.”
So how has Sobers, a former striker himself, honed George’s skills for the role? Exercises were put on to develop his ability with both feet from an early age. But what about currently?
“We will have conversations about how he is playing, how he is getting on, what we need to work on,” Sobers says. “And every now and then, we will do a session, maybe once every five months. To develop being a striker, I bring a goalkeeper and two centre-backs in. We work on movements, pinning a defender and turning. We work on different finishes with a goalkeeper, which is what we have done not too long ago.”
George made an impressive 26 appearances for Chelsea’s senior side last season, scoring three times and recording five assists. It looked like he had played his final match for the club against Fulham on August 30, though. Within 48 hours of facing Marco Silva’s side, George was undergoing a medical to join them. A fee of £22million plus a sell-on clause was agreed between the two west London clubs.
It was George’s decision to leave. As strong as the bond with Chelsea is, he saw an opportunity for more regular appearances and a chance to develop quicker at Fulham. However, 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 at 7pm, but a deal sheet was in, so there was a two-hour window to complete the move. At 8.45pm, for whatever reason, Fulham changed their minds. Tyrique was upset. We got in a taxi and, by 10pm, we were home again. An hour later, we got a call from a senior member of Chelsea’s leadership team. They were incredibly supportive, saying: ‘Come back. Fight for your place. No problems’.
“He was meant to report for England Under-21s the next day, but I did not think he was in the right headspace. Lee Carsley (the England Under-21s head coach) was amazing.”
Despite being named in the initial squad, George was left out of the matchday 20 to face Kazakhstan Under-21s on September 8.
Bola continues: “Tyrique resumed Chelsea training on the Thursday and everyone is bantering him: ‘Ah, you’re back! You’re back!’. By Friday, you would never have known Monday’s events even happened.
“This again is where the humbleness kicks in. There are suddenly a lot of people asking: ‘What went wrong with Fulham?’ Maybe there is a bit of embarrassment over it, too. But there is nothing wrong with a bit of embarrassment sometimes. It is not what happens to us, it is how we deal with it. And you can use any setback as fuel.”
George gave another example of that earlier this month. After having to miss Chelsea’s win against Liverpool with the flu, he then earned his first two under-21 caps, scoring the only goal in a defeat of Andorra.
The news that Delap is close to a return to training means George’s centre-forward duties could soon be a rarity. But there are quite a lot of fixtures before then to fill the void, beginning with the visit of Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday night.
“He is always ready for however Chelsea need him,” Bola concludes. “It is not about the financial rewards with Tyrique, it is the achievement of playing for them more than anything. It is a pride we all carry as a family. Whatever he goes on to do, we are grateful.”
