From the 10th tier of English football to managing the world club champions in just eight years, football coaches McFarlane and Hudson have had a meteoric rise
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Touch of class: captain Reece James takes former Croydon FC assistant manager Calum McFarlane over the to Chelsea fans after the 1-1 draw at Manchester City
There’s plenty of vacancies to be manager or head coach at some of the country’s top football clubs right now. Celtic, Manchester United and Chelsea, all past winners of the European Cup, have sacked their first-team bosses in the first five days of 2026.
Such opportunities come along very rarely, but few will have predicted that in the dug-out for the world club champions when they faced six-time Premier League winner Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the Premier League last night will have been a Chelsea back-room staff which just eight years ago was in charge of… Croydon FC, in the lowly South-East Counties League
When Enzo Maresca was handed his P45 on Friday, Calum McFarlane didn’t even have a pass to access the first-team areas at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground.
By Sunday night, after the Chelsea side McFarlane had picked snatched a late equaliser against City, he was being led over to accept the applause of the delighted away fans by club captain Reece James.
In the Chelsea dug-out alongside McFarlane for the game were two figures who he has worked with since their days together at the Kinetic Foundation and their football coaching education courses held at Croydon Arena just a decade ago: Harry Hudson and Dan Hogan.
None of the trio ever played at the highest level, but through hard graft, lots of coaching training and peripatetic careers through the backwaters of football that has taken in places as varied as Whyteleafe (before they went bust), Wycombe, Tromso in Norway and Sevenoaks Town FC, they showed last night what you can do with a playing squad assembled for a mere £1billion.
Coaching team: Harry Hudson, Hogan and Calum McFarlane in the dug-out last night " data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?fit=300%2C175&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?fit=640%2C374&ssl=1" class=" wp-image-219787" src="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?resize=579%2C338&ssl=1" alt width="579" height="338" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?resize=1024%2C598&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?resize=300%2C175&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?resize=150%2C88&ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?resize=768%2C449&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/McFarlane-Hudson-and-Hogan-at-Chelsea.jpg?w=1044&ssl=1 1044w" sizes="(max-width: 579px) 100vw, 579px">
Coaching team: (from left to right) Harry Hudson, Dan Hogan and Calum McFarlane in the dug-out last night
McFarlane, Hudson and Hogan joined Chelsea last summer. McFarlane had spent the previous two years as Southampton’s under-21s coach. He had also worked with Manchester City’s youth sides in the past. Hudson joined Chelsea as an under-18s coach, Hogan with the under-16s.
Hudson and McFarlane, then respectively manager and assistant manager, stunned Croydon FC in 2018 when they walked out with no notice, their project to integrate Kinetic’s rapidly rising talents into the Trams’ first-team squad barely started. Their departure for Whyteleafe, together with a large proportion of the club’s better players, was a seismic shock to Croydon which saw them plummet to the 10th tier of English football, from which they have barely recovered.
McFarlane’s time as Chelsea caretaker manager may not last long, although he, Hudson and Hogan may get one more go at the ultimate game of Fantasy Football when Chelsea play Fulham tomorrow night.
South Londoner Liam Rosenior (his father, Leroy, went to school in Tooting in the 1970s) is the favourite to be offered the Chelsea top job. He flew in to London yesterday from Strasbourg, where he has been in charge of another of the clubs run by Chelsea’s American owners, Clearlake. Rosenior, a former Fulham full-back, might not have agreed terms in time to take charge for the derby at Craven Cottage.
Last night, McFarlane did appear slightly overwhelmed by the whole experience when the final whistle blew at the Etihad just a couple of minutes after World Cup-winner Enzo Fernandez had scored the injury-time goal to earn their team a point.
McFarlane’s half-time change of formation and substitutions helped turn the game around.
Seismic shock: Hudson and McFarlane quit Croydon FC to join Whyteleafe in 2018 " data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?fit=300%2C197&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?fit=640%2C420&ssl=1" class=" wp-image-219789" src="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?resize=376%2C247&ssl=1" alt width="376" height="247" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?resize=1024%2C672&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?resize=300%2C197&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?resize=150%2C98&ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?resize=768%2C504&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/insidecroydon.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-05-at-17-09-30-Croydon-FC-rocked-as-Whyteleafe-poach-manager-Hudson-Inside-Croydon.png?w=1126&ssl=1 1126w" sizes="(max-width: 376px) 100vw, 376px">
Seismic shock: Hudson and McFarlane quit Croydon FC to join Whyteleafe in 2018
After a few fraught days, the Chelsea players celebrated as if they had won the game. But McFarlane held back, quietly applauding and watching on from the pitch.
It was England international James, himself a Chelsea youth product, who went over to his interim boss to take a standing ovation from the thousands of travelling supporters.
“I didn’t want to do that, if I’m honest! But Reece asked me to,” McFarlane said at the post-match press conference, a part of the job every Premier League manager has to endure.
“This is not an easy job. There’s a lot of change that’s gone on,” McFarlane said.
“Enzo…”, he said, referring to Maresca, “…was incredibly successful with this group. Some of them were shocked by the decision.
“So the character that they’ve shown in the last two days, the character that they’ve shown today… They’ve really dragged the group together because everyone thought we were coming here to lose. No one thought we stood a chance.
“So I can’t speak highly enough about the characters in the group. That’s just another moment of Reece being selfless and wanting to share the applause, really.”
By the weekend, and the FA Cup third round, McFarlane will probably be back working with Chelsea’s next crop of superstars, Hudson reunited with the under-18s and Hogan the under-16s. But for one brief, shining moment, they will be able to say that the coaching team that worked with Kinetic and Croydon FC had achieved Premier League status.
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