Andreas Christensen: The making of Chelsea's brilliant young defender

Antonio Conte has described Andreas Christensen as the "best surprise" of Chelsea's season, but his breakthrough is not unexpected to the people close to him. Nick Wright finds out how the quiet, humble Dane became one of the best young center-back in the Premier League.

"I was there last week when we signed the new contract," Sten Christensen tells Sky Sports. "When we left Stamford Bridge afterward, I asked Andreas if he wanted to go somewhere to get something to eat, but he said no. He was already thinking about his game the next day. He said he just wanted to go home, order something and go to bed. So that was our celebration."

Sten laughs as he recounts his most recent visit to London. His son had just agreed a new four-and-a-half year contract at Chelsea, confirming his status as an important member of Antonio Conte's first-team squad, but his reaction to signing on the dotted line said a lot about how he has got there. "That's Andreas," adds Sten. "He is totally focused on football."
That focus has been evident on the pitch all season. Christensen has been outstanding for Chelsea since returning from a two-year loan spell at Borussia Monchengladbach in the summer, making 24 appearances in all competitions and usurping David Luiz at the heart of their defense. "Every time I have given Christensen the opportunity to play, he has given an amazing performance," said Conte last month.

The 21-year-old's emergence has been an unexpected positive for Chelsea's head coach, who has lauded his "composure" and "calmness" on the pitch and described him as a future captain. To those who know him best, however, it is just the latest upward step in a career which seemed destined to take him to the top even as a young boy back in Denmark.

"I would say the first time I really saw his talent was when he was seven or eight years old," says Sten, a former goalkeeper now coaching at Christensen's boyhood club Brondby. "When he had the ball at his feet, he wasn't looking down, he was looking up. He had a special style when he was running with it. You could just see that this guy had the potential to be a footballer."
Christensen played for a small club near his hometown of Lillerod at the time, but it wasn't long before he joined up with Brondby. "I drove him there five or six times a week for six years," says Sten. "It was a 90km round trip so it was a lot of driving, but as a father, it was also nice to spend that quality time together. When I started coaching there as well, it was perfect."

Sten was closely involved in his son's development at Brondby but he credits long-serving youth coach John Ranum as the biggest influence. "I didn't work with Andreas directly when he first arrived but I knew about him," Ranum tells Sky Sports. "He was a player we had followed closely. His talent was so obvious that we made the decision to play him one year up from his age group."

Christensen was "humble and quiet", according to Ranum, but he was also completely confident in his own ability. The young defender embraced the challenge of playing with older boys, breezing through the age groups with such ease that by the age of 15, he was promoted to Ranum's U17s.

"Andreas was playing with very talented players two or even three years older than him, so we thought it was a good phase to teach him how to play in other positions," says Ranum. "We were almost positive that he would end up as a center-back, but we thought it would help him to understand the jobs of the players to the side of him and in front of him.

"We put him at full-back and at No 6, where he had players in a 360-degree radius around him. He listened a lot and he reacted well to it. Sten was a bit more worried, he said 'don't you know where to play him?' But we explained to him that it was part of Andreas's development plan to learn those things and he accepted it."

Christensen's understanding of the game improved in each position and it was at around that time that he came to the attention of bigger clubs. "When he was 15, Brondby's U17s entered a tournament in Holland arranged by Ajax," says Sten. "All the big clubs were there, Real Madrid, Barcelona and teams from England, but Brondby made it to the final."

Among the watching scouts were David Wilson and Alfie Apps from Aston Villa. "After the tournament in Holland they came to watch Andreas in another tournament in Denmark," says Sten. "I talked to them and they invited us to Villa. Brondby allowed us to go over and have a look."

Christensen and his father traveled to the Midlands but it soon became clear that Villa was not the only interested party. "I heard one story, I'm not sure if it's right, that Alfie couldn't keep his mouth shut and told other clubs and scouts that they had found the best young defender in Europe," says Sten with a chuckle. "Suddenly, all these clubs were calling us. It was crazy."