Chelsea’s ‘Marginal Seven’ gunslingers looking to fire reminder of their quality on international duty

Juan Cuadrado, Christian Atsu, Baba Rahman, Kenneth Omeruo, Tomas Kalas, Bertrand Traore and Victorien Angban will be looking to shine for Colombia, Ghana, Nigeria, Czech Republic, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast respectively in their 2018 World Cup qualifiers and remind their parent club of their talents. Ian Hawkey reports.

Colombia's Juan Cuadrado controls the ball during their 2018 World Cup qualifying match against Venezuela at the Roberto Melendez Stadium in Barranquilla, Colombia on September 1, 2016. Luis Robayo / AFPShow less

Between them, they have almost 200 caps for their countries. That number will rise over the next week. They are seven footballers who can genuinely aspire to playing at the next World Cup.

Let us not call them "The Magnificent Seven", fine prospects though they have as internationals. Rather, the "Marginal Seven". Because that is what they have been for quite a while at the club, Chelsea, who own them.

Among them, there is Juan Cuadrado, holder of a Serie A title and key man for the Colombia currently on course for World Cup qualification.

There is Christian Atsu, the dainty Ghana winger. There is Atsu’s colleague with the Black Stars, Baba Rahman. There is Kenneth Omeruo, an Africa Cup of Nations winner with Nigeria four years ago, when he was in the first 12 months of his first Chelsea contract. There is Omeruo’s fellow 23-year-old central defender Tomas Kalas, the Czech Republic international.

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Then there is Bertrand Traore, a prodigy since he was 14, attacking spearhead of Burkina Faso, the 2013 Cup of Nations runners-up.

Traore, who first trialled for Chelsea in 2010, might want to pass a cautionary message to another young West African, Victorien Angban: You need to be patient waiting for your chance at Stamford Bridge.

Angban, 20, is this week with the Ivory Coast squad, the reigning African champions. Like the rest of the Marginal Seven, Angban has not appeared for Chelsea this season.

Like nearly 30 other senior players on the London club’s official payroll, all these seven internationals are all out on loan at other clubs, and it is a status most are getting used to.

Angban (now on loan at Granada), Omeruo (at Alanyaspor) and Atsu (at Newcastle United) have between them played for 11 different clubs while owned by a Chelsea for whom they have not played a single Premier League game.

Rahman, loaned to Schalke, and Traore, to Ajax, have at least reached double figures, just, of senior Chelsea matches they participated in. Kalas has two games in blue to his credit in six years – and five different loan spells, his latest with Fulham.

It is a strange existence.

Only perhaps, in Cuadrado’s case, is distance from Chelsea a wholly welcome exile. He is 28, and at Juventus, where he was a major contributor to last season’s Italian title triumph. He joined Juve on loan after an unhappy six months in the Premier League. The rest are footballers whom Chelsea signed young and deemed, again and again, to be better off developing elsewhere.

The parent club may be right in some cases, but the use of loans so extensively raises some eyebrows. Just ahead of the current international break, Fifa’s new president Gianni Infantino pinpointed the issue, in an interview with Reuters.

“It doesn’t feel right for a club just to hoard the best young players and to park them left and right,” said Infantino, acknowledging that the so-called “hoarders” are not acting against regulations.

Nor are Chelsea alone for having a long roster of senior players out on loan.

At the top end of the wealthy Premier League, it is habitual. Some Italian and Spanish heavyweight clubs are serial loaners.

While Infantino did not name Chelsea, the club responded to his comments with an invitation to come and visit them, to see for himself how their development system was working.

There are examples.

Thibaut Courtois, the Chelsea and Belgium goalkeeper, spent three seasons on loan at Atletico Madrid, picking up Copa del Rey and Primera Liga medals before returning, matured, to take over from Petr Cech.

Indeed, Infantino was working at Uefa when Chelsea’s concerned manager Jose Mourinho suggested Courtois should not play against Chelsea for Atletico in the 2013/14 Uefa Champions League.

Uefa insisted there could be no compromise of competitive values because of ownership issues. Atletico, with Courtois in goal, beat Chelsea.

The current Marginals might take hope from that, and from the example of Victor Moses, now thriving, at last, at Chelsea after umpteen loans.

But the Marginal Seven would, equally, be entitled to wonder if their careers have suffered a lack of continuity with so many shifts, and, in some cases, late-summer moves that mean they miss spending pre-season with the borrowing clubs who take them on.

“It’s not good for the development of the player,” Infantino observed of serial loaning. “It’s not good for the club itself.”

That is a moot point. It can be very profitable.

Buying players young, and relatively cheap, and then having a portion of their salaries paid by the loaning clubs while they grow up, can be very good business indeed if and when they are sold on as the finished article.

Sometimes, hoarding and loaning only works out badly for the wealthy, parent club when they realise, embarrassed, they may have made a misjudgement, and see that, perhaps, they should have kept a young starlet closer at hand.

That can happen when a Marginal comes to global attention at an international tournament, dazzling for his country, showing off to his forgetful club owners what they should have been making more use of.

This week and next, a few forgotten loanees have a chance to dream of that scenario.

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