Fikayo Tomori has revealed his dad convinced him to continue at Chelsea after an extremely daunting first experience at the club's Cobham training base.
Before the Premier League was stopped in its tracks due to the coronavirus crisis, Tomori had enjoyed a brilliant breakthrough season in the first-team under Frank Lampard.
However, things could have turned out very differently for the young England defender if it wasn't for the intervention of his father back in the day.
Tomori joined Chelsea at the age of seven where he would rise through the ranks before leaving the club's centre of excellence to begin training at Cobham.
But following his first impression of training at Cobham, Tomori questioned whether he was capable of mixing it with those at a higher level.
'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 while in discussion with his father, Olayinka.
'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.'
And his father's words of encouragement seem to have paid off with Tomori having broken into the first-team under Lampard this season.
The 22-year-old centre back has played 22 times in all competitions for Chelsea this campaign, while also winning his first England cap against Kosovo in November last year.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com