This article is part of The Athletic’s series revisiting memorable debuts. To view the whole collection, click here
No Chelsea fan will forget Cesc Fabregas playing his first competitive game for the club.
Even if you weren’t at the game in the flesh or missed it on TV, you can be sure one clip of the Spaniard’s immediate impact will be posted on Twitter several times a year, generating thousands of likes and retweets.
Advertisement
We are talking about one of the greatest assists ever seen in the Premier League.
The kind of pass that will be used regularly by TV executives in montages celebrating the beautiful game or those at home simply putting a collection together on YouTube.
The date is August 18, 2014, and Chelsea are starting their bid for the title in tricky fashion: Burnley away. The fixture at Turf Moor has been selected for Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football and it really did become a case of saving the best until last as far as moments of quality from that opening round of games was concerned.
Three months before, Chelsea had gone very close to being crowned champions. Jose Mourinho returned for a second spell as manager and missed out on his third Premier League title by four points.
It was easy to see where the trophy was lost.
It wasn’t in the big games against the contenders — six meetings with the other members of the eventual top four that season (champions Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal) saw Chelsea take 16 of the 18 points available.
No, their failing was in matches against lesser opposition, the sides who would sit back, defend deep and hit them on the counter. Losses on the run-in to Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland, who would all finish in the bottom half of the table, were particularly costly.
These results highlighted two gaps in a very talented squad: a creative central midfielder to unlock stubborn defences and a top-class centre-forward in his prime to finish the chances off. Cue a combined £62 million being spent on Diego Costa and the aforementioned Fabregas in the summer window.
Costa made an instant impact himself against Sean Dyche’s side, scoring his first goal for the club just three minutes after Scott Arfield had put the home side in front on 14 minutes.
Advertisement
But the moment that took the breath away, which had observers like myself lucky enough to be there to see it in person gasping in admiration, came from the right foot of Fabregas shortly afterwards.
It was the penultimate touch of a 25-pass move that involved everyone in a Chelsea shirt, apart from goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois and captain John Terry.
After a spell of possession, the attack really sparked into life when a trademark Eden Hazard run caused panic among the Burnley players before the Belgian switched the ball to full-back Branislav Ivanovic advancing on the right.
Instead of hitting a hopeful cross into the box, Ivanovic picked out Fabregas, who was lurking with intent on the edge of the penalty area. He could have tried a shot but instead the Spain international clipped a first-time pass into a gap that had appeared in the Burnley defensive line.
'Since I was little, I always preferred the feeling that the assist gave me more than the goal.' 🎯@cesc4official 🎩 pic.twitter.com/t7IvM9rdtM
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) January 11, 2019
Fabregas was probably the only one in the stadium to have spotted Andre Schurrle making a run in the inside-right channel behind the bank of seven static defenders and the Germany international, fresh off assisting Mario Gotze’s winner in the World Cup final a month earlier, didn’t have to break stride as he knocked the ball into the bottom corner.
“Even this early, can you say is this the response of future champions?” exclaimed commentator Martin Tyler, working on US broadcaster NBC’s coverage that night. It was quite an extraordinary thing to say in Chelsea’s opening fixture. But as premature as it sounded, that’s how special a moment it was.
Fabregas doubled his assist tally before half-time when his corner was met by the boot of Ivanovic for the evening’s final goal, but it was his first key intervention that was the talk of the game afterwards.
Advertisement
Mourinho is not exactly one to get too carried away by a performance or a victory in post-match interviews, but he struggled to conceal his delight at what he had seen Fabregas produce on his debut.
“I hope he has more of that,” Mourinho said of the former Arsenal captain, who set up Spain’s winner in the 2010 World Cup final. “We know he’s capable to do it. More important than the pass (for Schurrle’s goal), which obviously was brilliant, was the control he had with the game, the understanding he had with Nemanja Matic in central midfield which brings our team to a different dimension in the quality of football that we play.”
Counterpart Dyche was even more expressive and put his Burnley affiliation to one side to just appreciate what he had witnessed.
“The Fabregas pass is arguably the best I’ve seen in a long, long time because of the control, the awareness, the quality and shape of the pass — it lands perfectly for him (Schurrle) to guide it into the goal,” said Dyche.
“You don’t see that every week. It was an absolutely fantastic moment.”
It’s all about the run. Make a good run, I’ll find you. If you don’t, no goal. https://t.co/ttt7DugYOh
— Cesc Fàbregas Soler (@cesc4official) January 7, 2020
The crucial thing is it wasn’t a one-off. Fabregas ended up with a remarkable 18 assists in the top division that season, usually with Costa the beneficiary, as Chelsea virtually led the league from start to finish.
Supporters, who took great delight in having a man synonymous with London rivals Arsenal (having played there from 2003-11) doing so well for them, made up a chant in his honour that can still be heard at games today.
To the tune of the ageless British ditty My Old Man’s a Dustman, they sing:
“Ohhhh,
“Fabregas is magic. He wears a magic hat.
“He could have signed for Arsenal, but he said, ‘No, fuck that’.
Advertisement
“He passes with his left foot, he passes with his right,
“And when we win the league again, we’re gonna sing this song all night.”
Fabregas would make 198 appearances in four and a half years at Chelsea, adding a second Premier League title (2016-17), a second FA Cup (2017-18) and a League Cup (2014-15) to his collection of medals won with club and country. There were 22 goals and 57 assists in all, which works out as a goal involvement every two and a half Chelsea games.
But he will always be remembered for what he did first time up. In 2020, one Chelsea fan asked Fabregas, now 34 and playing for Ligue 1 side Monaco, on Twitter to talk about that assist at Turf Moor.
“It’s all about the run,” he replied modestly. “Make a good run, I’ll find you. If you don’t, no goal.”
It wouldn’t have been a goal without Fabregas’s magic feet.
(Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
