Fikayo Tomori says he came close to quitting football in his early days as a youngster at Chelsea.
The defender, 22, has played 21 times for the Blues during a breakthrough campaign which has seen him earn his first England cap.
Tomori signed a new deal at Chelsea in December that will keep him at the club until the summer of 2024 but he admits that he was close to quitting football as a youngster coming through at Cobham.
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“Once I’ve left the centre of excellence, I’m going to Cobham and obviously this is proper Cobham, I’d see Tammy [Abraham] there, Dom Solanke,” Tomori told Chelsea TV.
“I noticed that I couldn’t just pick the ball up and run through everyone. So after that I got back in the car and I told my parents: ‘I’m not coming back here anymore.’
“It was obviously a level up and my dad said: ‘No, you’re going to come back.’ It wasn’t the fact that he was saying: ‘You must be a footballer, you must play football,’ it was kind of like, you are at a level where you need to challenge yourself.
“There is no point playing with people that you find it too easy, if you come here and challenge yourself you are going to get better and I am glad he had that take on it.”
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