Street football to Premier League: Nicolas Jackson’s road to Chelsea

They hadn’t expected him but Villarreal awaited Nicolas Jackson with open arms when he landed back in Spain on board the same plane in which he had left. It was late January and the journey, supposed to be one way, hadn’t gone as planned. He had flown to England to join Bournemouth for €25m, but a failed medical forced a return, his big opportunity gone.

At 21, still on a B team contract six months since he was playing in the third tier, and with just eight first division starts and a hamstring injury that would limit him to a solitary minute until April, he didn’t know if another would come.

The answer, to their surprise, was soon. “We will try to cheer him up, to encourage him because it was a great opportunity,” the Villarreal coach Quique Setién said. “We’ll support him, help him overcome this disappointment and strengthen him so that when the summer comes he is worth twice as much.”

While few imagined it would pan out like that, he wasn’t so far off. Despite what had happened in January, five months later Jackson flew to England again and this time there was no turning back. On Sunday he joined Chelsea for £32m on an eight-year deal.

Those close to the forward say the aborted deal was good for him and not solely because it turned out well, the second call from England even more attractive than the first. Instead, something shifted. Few players can have responded so fast, so decisively to a setback, as if driven by it. When at last Jackson started a game again, his first since Bournemouth had backed out, it began a run of nine goals in nine matches. A man transformed, from April on, a player few regarded as a prolific goalscorer scored more than anyone in Europe’s top five leagues. He also scored more than Chelsea.

At