Joe Cole will take up a coaching role at the Chelsea academy in the new year, the latest of the club’s famous old boys to lay the foundations for a career in management in what has become the most successful youth development programme of the last decade.

Cole, 37, announced his retirement from playing last month and said that he was ready to move into coaching with his Uefa A license qualification already completed. It is expected that he will move between the clubs age groups at first and then be assigned a specific team next season.

Under the club’s academy director Neil Bath, the club have not just produced a long line of top young footballers for the England youth teams but they have also begun launching the careers of coaches. Brendan Rodgers began as a youth team coach at Chelsea and Frank Lampard’s assistant at Derby County, Jody Morris, was a successful coach of the club’s Under-18s.

Chelsea’s Under-18s have won the last five FA Youth Cups although they have been eliminated from the competition this season by Manchester United. The academy has become a benchmark for the new standards in youth development, twice winning the new Uefa Youth League and reaching the final last season.