Levi Colwill a symbol of Chelsea season as key role in Champions League return helps shift narrative | OneFootball

Colwill one of few academy stars not to be sold in recent seasons and he has justified the club’s faith

Until now, this post-Roman Abramovich era has been defined by a billion-pound spending spree, one which would not have been permissible without moving so many of Cobham’s own on in profit-boosting sales.

Thanks to Levi Colwill, though, a Chelsea boy through and through, the Blues are back in the Champions League and the narrative might just be ready to move on.

“As a club, that’s where Chelsea should be,” said Colwill, and he would know, having been brought up through the academy in an age of European success.

The defender joined Chelsea’s youth set-up at under-nine level in 2012, the same year the club won their first Champions League. By the second, nine years later, he had signed professional forms and had designs on breaking into the first-team.

Team-mates and contemporaries with the same ambition have since been steered towards the door, some after making that breakthrough and others before they had chance. Since the Todd Boehly-Clearlake takeover, Conor Gallagher, Mason Mount, Ian Maatsen, Lewis Hall, Tino Livramento, Billy Gilmour, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Omari Hutchinson and Callum Hudson-Odo have all been sold, the latter coming on for Forest to no avail here.

Levi Colwill has started 35 Premier League matches this season

John Walton/PA Wire

Colwill, though, has been kept off-limits. Brighton failed with their advances over a permanent move in the summer of 2023, after the Englishman had excelled on loan on the south coast, and Chelsea are known to have rejected a significant offer from a major club last summer as well.

He is by no means the sole surviving link between this Chelsea first-team and Cobham; Reece James is the club captain and Trevoh Chalobah was unlucky not to start here in a back-four that would have been three-quarters homegrown. Tyrique Geogre and Josh Acheampong have made the step up this season, too.

But James spent most of the first half of the season injured and Chalobah only returned from his loan at Crystal Palace in January. Colwill has been a fixture, starting 35 of the 38 Premier League matches and playing 90 minutes in each of those. Only Bournemouth’s Milos Kerkez has played more minutes among players aged under 23 and job security has clearly helped Colwill’s development.

“I’ve matured a lot,” he said on Sunday. “I’m playing for the team much more now. If you get clean sheets and get the win, that’s 10 out of 10.”

The 22-year-old’s season has mirrored that of Chelsea’s at large. It began with huge promise, a well-balanced partnership with Wesley Fofana - right-foot, left-foot; one aggressive, one athletic - sitting at the base of a team that rose as high as second in the league.

Then there was the disruption that followed the first of two Fofana injuries, when the cast of deputies revolved almost week-to-week.

There have been a few outright errors - that against West Ham in February sticks out - and other moments that have made clear he is not quite the finished product yet, particularly against the most physical of forwards.

But in the last few weeks, Colwill has been immense, emerging as something as a totem for a team that has defied an awkward-looking run-in to win five games out of their final six.

If and when Chelsea go shopping for a centre-back this summer, expect it to be for a partner, rather than an upgrade.