At another time, or at another club, the signing of Jorrel Hato might well have prompted far greater fanfare.
When Chelsea signed him from Ajax in August, it brought to an end months of the Dutchman’s name being bandied around and linked with a host of top clubs. He was, after all, considered one of the brightest young defenders on the continent.
Instead, his arrival brought a somewhat underwhelming reaction. When you are a club’s eighth signing in a single summer window, taking that team’s total spending above the £250million mark, it can be hard to stand out.
But Hato’s chance may finally have come.
The hope inside Chelsea is that Levi Colwill will play again this season, but his first minutes of a campaign totally ruined by a pre-season ACL injury are still weeks away. Trevoh Chalobah is expected to miss six weeks with an injury of his own.
Opportunity knocks for someone else to get a run of games at centre-back. Each of Mamadou Sarr, Tosin Adarabioyo and Benoit Badiashile will feel it should be them alongside Wesley Fofana, but Hato is as likely as any of them to enjoy a run in the team, starting against Everton in Chelsea’s first-ever visit to the Hill Dickinson Stadium this evening.
Indeed, Hato came out of Tuesday’s 3-0 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain with more credit than most in blue. The fact he started at centre-back felt a statement of faith in him from Liam Rosenior.
Chelsea spent £37m on Hato — a not insignificant fee — and yet his involvement under Enzo Maresca in the early months of the season was limited. Only in less important matches, such as in cup games, did Maresca call on his new teenaged defender, a suggestion of Hato’s need to prove himself still.
In total, Hato featured in just nine of 28 games available to him under Maresca: 32 per cent. In Calum McFarlane’s two matches in caretaker charge, Hato played both.
Then Rosenior came in. Hato has featured in 16 of 18, or 89 per cent. A huge hike. And who was it who scored the very first goal of the Rosenior era? Hato himself, with a fierce drive into the top corner against Charlton. His first Chelsea goal. Rosenior’s lucky general? Maybe.
Rosenior was asked by Standard Sport about Hato’s growing responsibility, and said: “He has earned my trust and the staff’s trust and he’s a very, very exciting player.”
The Chelsea head coach added: “In my time, he’s been magnificent. I’m so impressed with him. His temperament, his physicality. Technically, he’s a joy to work with every day. And his age is scary, how good he could be.”
Hato, now 20, felt a slow starter in those early days under Maresca and when he did get opportunities did often look short of confidence. “It takes time,” Rosenior insists, though. “He’s a young player who’s come through at Ajax, captained Ajax at 17 years old. Then he comes to a massive club, different league, different culture. It takes time to bed in. And so in terms of what has happened before me, there are loads of different contextual things.”
Adept as a left-back or as a left-sided centre-back, it is this versatility and fact of being left-sided that made him such an attractive proposition across the continent while he was starring at Ajax, for whom he played 111 times as a teenager. Arsenal scouted him before he turned 18 and made efforts to sign him as their flexible left-sided defender, before eventually landing Riccardo Calafiori.
Positional flexibility has actually held some players back in football history, because they never specialise in one role, but Rosenior says it can “for sure” be Hato’s USP.
He goes further. “He could play pretty much every position on the pitch, which normally Ajax-educated players can do,” Rosenior smiled. “That won’t stop him from becoming [a top player]. If he stays with his temperament and keeps improving at this rate, the sky is the limit for him.”
