So, Jose Mourinho and young players. We all know the story, right?

Talks a good game, gives the kids a few meaningless minutes in the League Cup, but ultimately would rather purchase than promote from the academy. Just look at striker Bertrand Traore, who in two years under Mourinho at Chelsea played a grand total of 30 minutes, of which just seven came in the league. Now on loan at Ajax, he has the perfect chance to exact his revenge on Mourinho’s Manchester United in Wednesday’s Europa League final.

It may come as something of a surprise, then, to find that Traore himself does not share this view.

Just 21 but already mature beyond his years, Traore is a player on the cusp of the big time. And over an illuminating conversation at the club’s De Toekomst training ground, he underlines the debt he owes to his first professional club manager, who was sacked in late 2015.

“I owe him a lot,” Traore says. “People would say that when he was there, I didn’t play a lot, and I understand that,” Traore says. “But when you are at a club like Chelsea, and results are not going well, it is hard to change the team and put young players in. I wish he could have stayed. But this is football.