Samuel Iling-Junior interview: There is no bad blood at Chelsea – I just had to move on

Samuel Iling-Junior describes his decision to leave Chelsea and join Juventus in 2020, when he was still just 16, and during Covid, as “black and white”. It is a neat – if inadvertent – way of discussing playing for the Old Lady of Italian football, given the colours of their famous stripes.

But it was a far from simple choice. Not least because Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain also made it clear they wanted to sign the exciting winger once he had reached his decision to leave Chelsea and leave the Premier League.

“It was all on the table and I just felt like the conversations I had with everyone at Juventus it offered me the best opportunity,” Iling-Junior explains, sitting inside the club’s futuristic training centre near the Allianz Stadium.

“They were very honest with me and I really appreciated that. It was like ‘you do well and we will push you’ and that is what has happened. It’s what I wanted. I heard what I wanted to hear.

“I sat down with my family and we talked about it: do I stay at Chelsea? Or do I take a different path? We decided to take that different path and it has all worked out unbelievably well.”

Even so, it was a big moment. Not just to quit Chelsea – where he had been since eight – but England as well.

“It was to learn a different way to play the game. I was young. It was just in my head,” Iling-Junior, who is in England Under-21s squad for the European Championship qualifiers this month against Azerbaijan and Luxembourg, explains. “I felt I could learn so many different things if I went to a different country. It also shows your independence.

“It’s important to be fearless in everything you do. And especially on the pitch. When you go abroad it might be just that one dribble that you do that is the difference in a game, or the one pass you make. It might be the one thing that is different in your development from everyone else in that country. It’s important to have that fearlessness.”

It helps that he is a naturally curious person – “I always want to figure things out” – and one who was willing to throw himself into Italian life and culture as well as the football. He has a world view with his parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo and an affinity with France and it shows.

“Oh, I have given it my all,” he says and he prides himself in how quickly he learnt the language, being a “good cook” and, with a laugh, becoming “maybe 25 per cent Italian now”.

Iling-Junior talks wistfully, and with pride, about the routine he and his parents went through once he was scouted by Chelsea – and had to make the journey across London. “I am a Highbury boy,” he says and it involved a dash with his mother, who met him outside primary school, to get the 393 bus to Highbury and Islington station in north London, then down to Vauxhall and then the train to Cobham and Stoke d’Abernon. He had to be in training by 5.15pm, until 8pm, and sometimes it took far longer to get home because there were fewer trains at night. He hoped to be in bed by 11.30pm.

“I did that Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays,” he says. On Saturday his dad would drive him. He worked nightshifts so would sleep in the car while Iling-Junior trained. At 14 he went into ‘digs’ near Chelsea’s training ground which helped prepare him for his move abroad.

“My mum [a nurse] and dad [a computer engineer] put everything on the line to get me into training, back home and ready for school the next day and that constant repetition made me realise I had to give 100 per cent,” Iling-Junior says.

“My dad is my biggest motivator. He still is now. He says ‘it’s not done, there is still a lot to do. Don’t stop. Believe in yourself’. He constantly reminds me. My mother is the other side ‘you have done really well, don’t be down’. It’s a good balance.”

He reels off the names of those he played with at Chelsea – and who remain friends. “Jamal Musiala, Tino Livramento, Levi Colwill,” he says. “And in my age group was Harvey Vale, Charlie Webster, Jude Soonsup-Bell, Lewis Bate. He’s very, very good. A baller. I am always in touch with everyone. Miles Peart-Harris. Charlie Wiggett, Bashir Humphreys – he’s with me in the England set-up and is at Swansea on loan. I am just going through the whole team. Dion Rankine, he’s on loan from Chelsea now [at Exeter City] and Silko Thomas, he’s at Leicester. Xavi Simons – he’s at Hull City on loan. Ben Elliott, baller. At Reading. It was him and Jamal when we were coming up. Good memories. We won so many trophies. I am in touch with all of them, just checking how they are doing.”

There is always at a debate about whether young players had been given a chance at big Premier League clubs – and especially at Chelsea over the years.

“I feel there is always a pathway everywhere,” Iling-Junior argues. “But sometimes players look at it and think ‘maybe this isn’t the right place for me’. It’s more how we feel. I was always loved at Chelsea. There was never any bad blood at Chelsea… maybe it was time to move on. I could have stayed and it could have went well.”

Musiala left the year before him, joining Bayern Munich of course, and Iling-Junior is also close to Jude Bellingham who joined Borussia Dortmund in the same summer he moved to Turin. Back then it felt unusual for English players to go overseas. Now there are 43 in European leagues and Iling-Junior, who won the Under-19 Euros with England in 2022, says there has been a positive response from the Football Association.

“If anything I think they encourage it,” he says. “They want you to play at a high-level and get minutes and they will not hold you back. For me, the target is to push with the Under-21s and then try and get into the seniors. That’s the next step.”

At Juventus, he first joined the Under-23s – known as Juventus Next Generation – which entered Serie C after a rule change in Italy to try and encourage the development of young players following the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Since December 2022, Iling-Junior has been with the first-team.

“It opens your eyes even more,” he says. “Every game you bleed for the badge, you give your all for the badge. Every game. Maybe it’s against a bigger team or a smaller team but every team is coming at you 100 per cent and you learn that as you go on.

“You never want to be at a place where you are getting looked down upon. At Juventus everyone is looking up at you. It gives you a sense of pride every time you wear the badge.

“That has given me a different mentality on how to approach things. When I first came here it was like ‘oh, yeah, if I did this trick I played well and if I scored my goal I played well’. Now I understand that I can score, I can play well, I can assist a team-mate and still make a fan jump out of their seat while winning.

“My goals are high. I want to be a top-class player, winning trophies, being an important part, making people remember, always making people happy. When they see my name I want them to have a smile on their face.”

Why is that so important?

“Because that’s just the way I have always been,” Iling-Junior says. “When I was younger and people would compliment me and say ‘you played well today; you made me happy’ it made me feel good. It’s about winning but it’s also about that as well. I want to win games: I want to win trophies; I want to be a serial winner and being at this club has helped me as well. It’s made me understand the importance of winning.”

Even so, he admits it has not been easy. Having made his Champions League debut in October 2022 – when he provided an assist – and later becoming only the third Englishman, after Johnny Jordan and David Platt, to score for Juventus in Serie A, Iling-Junior has not played as often as he would have liked which has led to speculation he may return to the Premier League.

“I feel like it’s been difficult, I’ll be honest. It’s not how I saw the trajectory going,” he says. “But if I look at it in hindsight it’s also helped me realise and take a step back. ‘OK, where can I go with this?’ It can go two ways. I can be upset or I can stay positive and continue training at a level and take my level to another level to try and see myself get more minutes.

“I feel like right now I am just focused on being here and giving it my all. In the summer we will see how it goes and we will see what’s best for me and the club because obviously I need to be playing. The club trusts me and I trust the club.”