MASON MOUNT’S determination to become an England and Chelsea star is shown through a tale that brings a smile to his father's face.
It was 2014 and Mount, one of the most sought after 15-year-olds in the country, had to choose between a scholarship with the Blues and a raft of tempting offers to leave.
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Uncles, aunts and grandparents offered advice to the talented teenager after dad Tony called a family meeting at their Portsmouth home.
“I told Mason I thought he needed to move on to get the best opportunity,” Tony told SunSport.
“I said, ‘No one at Chelsea’s academy has got into the first-team since John Terry — what chance have you got?’
“Mason shot back, ‘I’ll be the next one.’ He said, ‘I’m not leaving Chelsea, it’s my club. I’ve been here since the age of six and I’m going all the way.’”
Six years on and Mason — so named by his mum as it means ‘man of stone’ — has fulfilled that promise, having made himself a regular for the Blues, winning the Champions League for his club and starring for England at the Euros.
Sat in the garden of his Waterlooville home, Tony flicks through photographs on his iPhone which highlight his son’s rise.
The snaps show him signing for Chelsea aged eight, bonding with best mate Declan Rice, representing England Under-21s and winning the 2018 player of the year at Vitesse Arnhem in Holland while on loan.
But a photograph of a two-year-old Mason in the arms of his dad, who was a non-League manager in 2001, shows where his footballing education began.
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Tony, then boss of Havant Town, said: “I’m old-school and Mason has sat in dressing rooms with me kicking cups and doors while we’re 3-0 down at Kettering, and the language has been blue.”
In 2004, Tony took a five-year old Mason to a club in Farnham for his first experience of playing on grass.
“They started age six and Mason was five,” the father-of-four said. “I took him over there and they said, ‘He’s a bit small. Is he six?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’
“Within two sessions he was playing with the Under-8s and dribbling round all of them.”
Chelsea quickly spotted his talent. Mason was training with the Blues as well as the club his family raised him to support, Portsmouth.
So when a friend invited them to rivals Southampton, so coaches could assess their trialists against a Chelsea player, the future starlet was hesitant.
Tony said: “We were driving there and Mase said, ‘I won’t have to wear that shirt will I?!’ It’s embedded in him. I said he’d just have a bib on.
“They split the boys into four teams and took them away to get changed. The first team came out wearing black, another in blue and then another in yellow.
“I’m looking for Mason and thinking, ‘Please don’t come out in red and white! PLEASE don’t come out in red and white!’ And he’s come out in this red and white kit with a face like thunder.
“He’s going ‘Dad! Dad!’ and pointing at the shirt. He played like a man possessed that night because he was so unhappy about this kit. He scored 14 goals.”
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