Tudor Mendel-Idowu is a 16-year-old, left footed attacker that can operate on the flanks or centrally. Tudor has recently signed a scholarship with Chelsea but he has not let this get in the way of his educational ambitions. You would think that a player at one of the best academies in the world would pack it all in education wise and focus on football but with Tudor that is not the case…
The Slough born teenager attends Eton College alongside a presumably tough schedule that he has to maintain for Chelsea. Eton is notorious in England for being one of the top academic private schools and its exceptional students that get the highest grades. Eton is commonly found among the top 10 ranked colleges in England which means Tudor is literally in the best of both worlds. Elite facilities at Cobham with some of the best coaches in the nation and also receiving some of the best teaching in the world when he’s not playing football.
The mindset of Tudor must be astounding for his age, being able to keep up with the seemingly impossible task of maintaining grades at Eton whilst being 1 of 10 boys selected to receive a scholarship for 2021/22 at Chelsea.
Tudor’s academic promise has been evident since the early 2010’s, with an 8-year-old Tudor featuring on Channel 4’s show ‘Child Genius’ and placing second where he went up against other children much older than him.
His academic abilities did not plateau there as now at Eton he studies a wide variety of subjects including English, Greek, Latin, German, Maths and Physics.
Tudor has been with Chelsea since under-8’s and has been regularly featuring for the Blues since the under-9 age group. Whilst playing for Chelsea, Tudor has been apart of England training camps all the way up to under-15 level. Tudor is also eligible for Nigeria and the English FA appeared to up their attempts of persuading him to play for England in 2019.
Tudor has a 2 year scholarship with the club that runs out after the 2022/23 season, it will be interesting to see whether his contract gets extended as the records of matches that he has played in seems to be a bit sparse.
However, this is the final step before a pro contract for these scholars including Tudor and will be interesting to see how his career pans out. He is in the classic dilemma of studies or football, many youngsters are faced with this challenge and it seems at the moment Tudor has taken the rare option of both and is excelling.
Written by Frankie
The Chelsea Spot 
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