If there is any pressure that comes with being voted League Two’s young player of the year, then Junior Tchamadeu is not showing it.
The 19-year-old Colchester United wing-back’s stellar season left him in high spirits heading into the summer. It would not be a surprise to see interest from teams higher up the pyramid when the transfer window opens next week — Championship sides Norwich City and Blackburn Rovers have been linked with him — such has been Tchamadeu’s impact since making his debut for the club at the age of 16 under then-manager Steve Ball in December 2020.
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Despite a difficult season in which Colchester spent most of it flitting around the lower reaches of English football’s fourth tier and going through three managers in Wayne Brown, Matt Bloomfield and Ben Garner, as well as a spell with head of recruitment Ross Embleton in interim charge, Tchamadeu’s progress has been impressive.
“I’ve come a long way in all aspects of my game, things like my positioning and things like that,” he says. “That showed in my performances throughout the season. I don’t think Colchester get the credit they deserve, in terms of that side of the game, developing players; if you see over the last few years the amount of players who have come through and gone on to bigger things, it’s been a huge amount of players.
“That’s one of the best things about the club. The way they develop players is what attracted me, it’s the pathway and knowing that if I did well I could have a chance and I was given that opportunity when I was 16. They put trust in young players. I’m 19 now and I’ve played almost 100 games.”
Colchester’s commitment to giving youngsters a chance in senior football is impressive — their 2022-23 squad included 12 players under the age of 25. Over the season, they gave the most minutes of any team in the 72-club EFL to players aged 20 or under, with Tchamadeu, Samson Tovide and Noah Chilvers — all under the age of 23 — providing 34 per cent of their goals and assists between them.
A goal made in the @ColU_Official Academy 🙌
🅰️ @TovideSamson
⚽️ Junior Tchamadeu
Two teens with big futures in the game 🌟#EFL | #SkyBetLeagueTwo pic.twitter.com/tGfQO2pDiV
— Sky Bet League Two (@SkyBetLeagueTwo) January 8, 2023
After first being picked up by Charlton Athletic as a 10-year-old growing up in east London, Tchamadeu was released in the under-16s age group, but he has used the disappointment to spur him on.
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The academy life at Charlton was “more of a structured environment” than playing casually for his Sunday League team and he says the routine, combined with his school studies, helped to set him up “perfectly” to have the discipline for focus on a professional career at an early age.
“Just getting into that routine of having to go to training, being disciplined to get to training on time, really helped,” he says. “The earlier you get that in, the better it sets you up for your career. Football is a game of opinions. One person’s opinion doesn’t define you and one club’s opinion doesn’t define you, I have shown that for a lot of young players who have been released.
“After Charlton, I went on a few trials. The first club I went to was Tottenham and it didn’t quite happen. I was supposed to go to Luton but ended up going to Colchester first and then just speaking to a lot of coaches here and looking at the pathway, I thought that it was best for me. I took the scholarship straight away with both hands and that was one of the best decisions I’ve made.”
Tchamadeu initially joined Colchester’s youth setup in the summer of 2020 but was soon fast-tracked into the first-team squad before making his debut — becoming the club’s youngest-ever player — in the December, playing the full 90 minutes of a 2-1 home win over Grimsby Town.
🚀 A Junior Tchamadeu rocket from our last meeting with tomorrow’s opponents…#ColU | #WeAreUnited pic.twitter.com/TjDxXSCh4y
— Colchester United FC (@ColU_Official) August 26, 2022
Since then his importance to the team has grown, making 10 further appearances in that first season, 33 in 2021-22 and 46 across all competitions in the one just ended. Moving out to Colchester, around a 90-minute drive north east from London and away from his loved ones, first living with a host family and now on his own, has been a learning curve.
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“It came about so quick,” he says. “The first season, as a first-year scholar, I was in the first team within four months. That was my aim but I wouldn’t have thought so soon. I always wanted to be called up for sessions to train with them, so when that opportunity came, it was two days before my debut. I was just so grateful to be just training.
“Then I was involved on the Saturday but as a young player who had just trained twice, I would have been buzzing just being the 19th man to be around the matchday experience. That is what I was fully expecting, but on the day I got to the changing room and found out I was starting. It was the first game fans were back as well (after crowd restrictions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic), so we had a thousand fans who didn’t even know who I was. I was so nervous. In the changing room, they had to calm me down — I was shaking.
“The intensity is so different in senior football and you’ve got to think so much sharper. To come from where I was at to now, I’ve come along leaps and bounds and it’s shown in my performances.”
This season was the real breakthrough year for Tchamadeu after being given more freedom to get forward under Bloomfield before the manager’s February move to Wycombe Wanderers of League One. It paid off, with the wing-back scoring five goals over the season to earn not only the League Two young player of the year award but also be named in the division’s team of the season. They are statistics that will have been noted higher in the pyramid.
“Matt Bloomfield was here early on in the season and he converted me and pushed me into the wing-back role, where I feel I have a positive impact on the team,” says Tchamadeu. “I was able to improve as a player and for the team because I was contributing more attacking-wise. He was also a great person, a great manager who helped me individually a lot.
“It’s the same for Ben Garner now, the manager has helped me one-to-one. I was happy when Ben came in after Matt, you know you’re going to get the same return.”
(Top photo: MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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