Chelsea youngster Tammy Abraham delivers his pitch over grassroots development

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Pitch perfect: Tammy Abraham has risen through the ranks of junior football to play at international level
Bongarts/Getty Images
James Olley29 May 2018

Tammy Abraham picks the ball up out wide and sets off at speed in pursuit of goal. Nobody can catch him, except there is just one problem.

“I just kept running and didn’t stop,” he said, laughing with a hint of lingering embarrassment. “I was off the pitch. I didn’t know. We were playing away at a park in London and couldn’t even see the lines. That was probably my first experience of a bad pitch.”

Abraham was just six and playing for south London side Bruin FC but what he describes is an experience that thousands of children can identify with.

Data collected by the FA for the 2017/18 season and revealed on Tuesday shows that only one in three grass pitches across the country are of “adequate quality”. In excess of 147,000 grassroots matches were postponed due to pitch problems across 1,100 leagues in England.

Only 13 per cent of the 90,000 grassroots participants surveyed were satisfied with the state of the surface they regularly play on, while just 17 of the 50 County FA’s have their own 3G pitch to help combat those issues.

This malaise is central to the FA’s exploration of Shahid Khan’s proposal to buy Wembley for a fee in excess of £500million, a process which continues on Tuesday with an FA Council meeting at which the proposal will be discussed.

Since 2000, the FA, Premier League and government have ploughed £615m into grassroots football, which has helped to build 700 new and improved 3G pitches, but financial constraints resulting from the stadium debt and maintenance costs at Wembley have restricted further investment. The FA believe selling Wembley will enable them to build 1,500 pitches over the next 10 years, revolutionising the facilities available to young players and helping to avoid the experiences Abraham recalls.

“It is fantastic [the FA are investing more money],” said Abraham. “As a young player, growing up in London, there were not a lot of opportunities, so things like that really help.

“I never really had the opportunity of playing in a lot of places in London. Now there seems to be more of a focus on that kind of area, providing nice 3G pitches for the kids to go and play on.

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AP Photo/Don Wright

“When I was growing up, it was more about pace and power. That’s what a lot of the young boys had. Now it is more about technique. When you play on a good field, it is much easier.”

Abraham defied those obstacles to sign for Chelsea aged seven, beginning his exposure to better surfaces and the development of a career that has seen him rise through the ranks to represent England at senior level.

“We played a couple of times on astro but usually we trained on an open field in Greenwich. When I drive past it now, I look back and smile, seeing little kids playing on it.”

Abraham, now 20, is currently at the Toulon Tournament, where he gave England Under-21s a winning start against China last week.

They continue their campaign this evening against Mexico.

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And he is looking to continue the success of England’s youth teams, who won the Toulon even last year and three major trophies at U-17, U-19 and U-20 level to suggest the process of developing young players is improving as pitches slowly get better.

“The achievements of last year are fantastic,” he said. “We just have to keep pushing, keep working hard and we will get to the top.”

Abraham’s personal battle will resume at Chelsea this summer after successive seasons out on loan. He added: “Now it is about going back to Chelsea, knocking on the door and trying to claim my position. Hopefully I can get my spot.”

He needs to be told where he stands. Some things don’t change.

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