Chelsea academy star played with Cobham’s best and is now on inspiring weight loss journey

Chelsea academy star Jordan Buck will recognise the irony in that the main issue hampering his weight loss journey is a literal Achilles heel.

Yet, inspiringly, the ex-Blues youth ace still boasts tales of strength rather than any weakness despite undergoing multiple surgeries.

Buck’s whirlwind journey into football started with his local Sunday league team from under-nines, and within three seasons, he had signed for Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur‘s Development Centres.

And it wasn’t long before the pair’s London rivals, Chelsea, had sent scouts to watch the emerging left-back at Spurs.

“It was a really big thing,” Buck told talkSPORT.com during our exclusive interview at talkSPORT Towers.

“Chelsea sent scouts to watch me at Tottenham’s Development Centre. That’s where I got scouted. So a bit of cheekiness there from Chelsea.

“Moving to Chelsea, I could just feel, just based on the reactions from mum, dad, family – People in school didn’t believe me.”

In modern academy football, Arsenal’s Max Dowman was being fast-tracked as a 14-year-old into the first team, while Liverpool fans already knew what to expect when the club poached Rio Ngumoha from Chelsea.

However, in Buck’s era two decades earlier, the lights from the outside world were a lot dimmer, which came with its own challenges.

“I’d say I’m on trial at Chelsea, ‘No, you’re not’, I just signed for Chelsea, ‘No, you didn’t.’ And there’s no way for me to actually prove it back then as well, apart from actually being good.

“Saying that you’re at Chelsea is a big thing. It’s one of the biggest academies in the country, especially at that time, arguably one of the top two, them and Arsenal. It was major news.

“Back then, it was almost impossible [to find footage or photos]. I remember when, specifically when they started to record games.

“Parents weren’t allowed to bring cameras, take pictures, camera phones, none of that stuff on the sidelines.

“So finding footage from people back then, big ask, because it didn’t exist. Whereas now, all the games are recorded.

“I think clubs actually make a conscious effort to give feedback and actually clip up parts of games, send that back to the parents at all age groups to provide that feedback and develop the players even further.”

Buck was part of the Golden Generation of the Cobham production line that produced over £250m worth of sales in three years.

That doesn’t even factor in the talent lost by the Chelsea academy, from Jamal Musiala to Arsenal’s £100m Declan Rice.

“It’s nuts,” Buck added to talkSPORT. “I look back at a picture of our 09-10 entire academy – It’s almost like a school photo, and I always find a new player who’s gone on to… See, oh, who is it that I found? [Michael] Olise, right at the bottom, about three rows down from me, sat at the bottom, legs crossed. Must have been seven.

“What he’s gone on to achieve is just nuts. He’s just getting better as well, every season. Frightening.”

Olise, who was released by Chelsea, became a star in the Championship and is now one of the world’s best at Bayern Munich.

And ironically, that’s a trajectory Buck envisaged for two of his Cobham teammates now playing in the EFL’s second division.

The most talented of which was Lewis Baker, now of Stoke City, who Jose Mourinho once tipped as a future England international.

“Lewis Baker, Izzy Brown and Dominic Solanke. [Mourinho] said, ‘If those three don’t make it as England or Chelsea stars, blame me.'”

None of that trio holds the title for the best academy player Buck played with; that’s a title belonging to Nathaniel Chalobah.

Getty

Getty

The 31-year-old has made 10 Championship appearances for relegated Sheffield Wednesday this season.

His younger brother Trevoh is currently a Chelsea regular, hoping to make Thomas Tuchel‘s World Cup five years after making his senior Blues debut under the now-England boss.

Buck summised: “Timing and personnel are two of the biggest factors, I would say, in terms of how far a player can go.”

It was timing that played its part in Buck’s Chelsea exit, saying: “I think I was aware, and it wasn’t a big shock with me.”

“13s, the trajectory was good. 14s, again, improvement was good.
Started to play up a year as well in the 15s. That’s always a telltale sign. If you get opportunities to play up a year, then the club’s kind of pushing you.

“So that was happening quite a lot as an under-14. And then it was under 15s where the injury struck…”

Buck sustained a stress fracture in both his glutes during his growing pains, similar to Osgood-Schlatter disease, which shaped players like Marcus Rashford and Wayne Rooney.

“My hamstrings were growing at a rate way faster than the bone was, and it was pulling at something, and they actually chipped off two small bits of bone,” he revealed.

“So I had an MRI scan back then, and there were just two kinds of floating bits in my glutes that were bone that had chipped off.”

It was Buck’s dad who, having spotted a lack of gametime, had left his son behind the curve, proactively approached Chelsea about an early release so that a new club could be found.

His father, again, was responsible for helping him find his way back into football when Buck stopped playing altogether aged 19, following a spell at QPR.

The now-Account Director at Crayon, who has spent the past 12 years working in IT, set up his hugely popular Instagram and TikTok pages last Autumn to share stories from his academy career while charting his weight loss to 85kg.

“When I stopped playing, my interest in football went to literally zero.
I didn’t associate myself with football for about five years,” Buck said.

“Didn’t watch any games. I didn’t play five-a-side, Sunday league. I was just, I was so done with it.

“After I stopped playing, the calories were flying, and year after year, I could just slowly see myself getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

“It was Dad’s idea about two years ago. He said, ‘Why don’t you start a page,’ because you’ve got a bit of a profile in the industry from the clubs that you play for, tell some old football stories and go on a weight loss journey publicly, because then you’d have a few eyes on you and you’d be forced to post your results and get it done.

“He’d seen his son be an athlete, quick, strong, lean, for my entire life. And then at 19, he’s a stone heavier, he’s another stone heavier, he’s another stone heavier.

“So we’d speak about it as the years went on, and then it got to a point where it was like, right, I just, I want to see my son again.

“I want you to be as healthy as you can possibly be. I want you to live for as long as you can, and things were going really well.

“It’s inspired a lot of people” – And thankfully so, with the new football community Buck has built, then coming to his aid last month.

Buck devastatingly re-ruptured his Achilles just seven weeks after undergoing surgery to repair the same injury suffered in January.

“It was a lot, a double rupture, I was just thinking, man, it’s going to be so hard to build strength back up in my leg again, in my calf.

“It’s going to be a year before I can do explosive stuff like jumping, sprinting. So how am I going to get this done?

“The fact that I’ve built a bit of following now, and there are people that are supporting me, leaving lots of positive comments, ‘You’ve got this, you can do this, don’t worry about it, bump in the road’ sort of thing. It’s definitely helped, for sure.”