Tony Mount – Mason’s father – is very popular with Blues fans, and interacts with them on Twitter.
He did a brilliant job coaching his son as a footballer and raising him as a good person too.
But he wouldn’t have been nearly as popular if he’d convinced his son to leave the club.
According to Mount’s recent interview in Tatler, quoted here by Football.London, Tony wasn’t convinced that his boy would ever get a first team breakthrough at Chelsea, where no academy players had really established themselves for more than ten years at that point.
“There wasn’t the best track record of academy products making it into the first-team. But I always said: ‘I’m going to be the one that goes through, to prove you wrong.'”
And indeed he did. The combination of outside circumstances, a favourable manager and his own talent and hard work meant that Mount was the first through the breach, and now just a few years later, there are several academy players being picked every week.
Here’s to many more Masons!
