Chelsea coach, Frank Lampard has come out to say that Callum Hudson-Odoi can be the best in the game if he can emulate Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and his work ethic.
The teenager has been in fine form since the season started and many have tipped him to be the next best thing for England.
Reacting to this recently, Lampard has said Sterling should be his role model.
His words, “I know Callum’s talent and he has got huge talent.”
“But there’s a lot of work for Callum to do. Lots of work. I think you can look around and look at fantastic examples and not even at this club.
“I don’t like to talk about other club’s players but Raheem Sterling is an incredible example of a player with great talent whose work ethic added to that talent and [showed] improvement in a short period of time through absolute dedication [to become] a complete player that we are all wowed by.
“[Sterling] is exactly the great model for Callum, because he has those talents.
“I want him to be the best, the absolute best, because he has the potential to do that and a lot of that or some of that is some hard truths and I saw some hard truths in the game the other day and ways that he can improve and he needs to listen to them and he will.
“And then he can be that player for us, which is great news for everybody.”
On how he is working with the youngsters at Chelsea, “To be honest, that’s the really interesting part of my job and I love that side of it,”
“If you just isolate the young players for a moment because we’re talking about them, to judge the moments where you think maybe they are a little bit tired, maybe that game was a lot, maybe did they understand the information I gave them in training? Or in the game? Or in the reviewing of a game, things they did in a game?
“They’ve all got different personalities. Some need cajoling, some definitely need some tough words at times to help them improve and that’s where my job is really interesting because I love seeing improvement and progression and with these players.
“No matter what their personalities, they all want to be the best player they can be for Chelsea, which I love. And it’s not just me. It’s also (assistants) Jody (Morris) and Joe Edwards because they know them so well as well.
“Within our team, we can easily split up the work and pay attention to all those moments because some of them are emotional things as well. It’s not always the technical on-pitch stuff.
“Some of it is them growing up and signing a new contract or what’s going on around them or getting a load of exposure after a good performance and what will that do to them? I think that is constant work but in a good way.”
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