How Rice overcame adversity to reach the top

For Declan Rice to join Arsenal - a club challenging for honours in the Premier League and UEFA Champions League - is to go full circle, completing the journey he began as a teenager in Chelsea's Academy.

He probably doesn’t see it that way.

Watching Rice storm to the top of the game gives the impression of a frictionless ascent, yet his arrival at this point was far from inevitable.

His is a career littered with nearly moments, with setbacks and disappointments, typical of an industry that is so often ruthless to its young players.

Released by Chelsea

Rice was 14 when he was released by Chelsea. “I felt like that was it,” he said in an interview with Gary Neville on Sky Sports' The Overlap.

He had joined the club as an eight-year-old following a successful pre-trial, despite not having a team at the time. Rice's dad had seen how tough football can be and didn’t want him to go into football.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if those feelings had re-emerged when Rice failed to make the cut at Stamford Bridge.

“I never got the reason why I was released," Rice told The Guardian in 2019. "When we tried to find out they told us to come in for a meeting, which was then cancelled. I cried my eyes out for about an hour.”

What happened next typifies his character and the determination that is routinely praised by all who have worked with the 24-year-old.

Signing for West Ham

He had a trial at Fulham the very next day. The day after that, he trialled at West Ham. Fulham was just a couple of miles away compared to the 26 mile distance to West Ham, which would require him to leave the family home.

Rice chose the tougher option, the one that would be better for his development.

“It's a very difficult age for a young player to be rejected,” West Ham Under-23s coach Steve Potts said in 2019. “They feel they are on the verge of starting a career in the game. Many don't recover.

"Declan just got his head down, fought for everything and forged his own path. He has continued improving ever since, and is still improving now."

Rice immediately impressed the West Ham coaches - who had been tracking him since he was nine - with his attitude and his hunger to improve, even if at the time his recent growth spurt had left him a little gangly, or “Bambi on ice,” as he described himself.

“In his first year with us there was not much to talk about,” West Ham's then academy manager Terry Westley told the Evening Standard. “You could understand why Chelsea thought he would probably not have enough for them.

"He was very ungainly. But then, from about 16, you saw a massive increase in potential.”

That sudden spurt came from hard work and “a willingness to want to learn every day,” said Westley, yet still the coaching staff were split over whether to offer Rice a scholarship at 16.

Earning his scholarship

 “It was a 50-50 decision,” Rice said. “Half the coaches wanted to keep me on, half were saying 'We’re not too sure.'

"We played a game against Fulham, I played for the Under-18s that day at centre-half and Terry Westley told me after that he would give me my scholarship.”

Westley pulled rank to get the deal done, but even then it was only for two years, rather than the usual three and with no guarantee of a professional contract at the end of it.

“In the end I just said, 'I’m head of academy at West Ham and I’m taking the decision to keep him'," Westley said. “I was convinced he was a late developer, that there was lots to come and he had an outstanding mentality.”

He was quickly rewarded – and Rice’s upward trajectory began in earnest, starting with an endorsement that must have felt like vindication for Westley.

During one of Rice’s first matches in his debut campaign for the U18s, a 1-0 win over Arsenal in 2015, Arsene Wenger saw enough in 20 minutes to turn to the West Ham bench and point out who their best player was.

Meteoric rise

It was around this time that West Ham decided to move Rice back into central midfield, where he had initially played at Chelsea, and all of a sudden – having grown into his body – his work-rate led to a meteoric rise through the age groups.

Rice signed his first professional contract just a few months after that Arsenal match. By the time he was 17, he was playing for the Under-23s and at 18, making his first-team debut at the end of the 2016/17 season, five days after captaining the U23s to promotion.

Rice's PL debut v Burnley in May 2017

“I remember a pre-season game, against Rubin Kazan in 2016, Slaven Bilic was manager and he brought on this 17-year-old called Declan Rice,” Aaron Cresswell told The Athletic.

“I remember him giving the ball away for a goal. How did he react? From the off, he was screaming for the ball. I was thinking, 'Bloody hell, he’s just given a goal away' - but he was that confident, he could let it go.”

His rejection at Chelsea and that crucial U18s match against Fulham were both sliding doors moments for Rice, but arguably just as significant was his adaptation to the demands of Manuel Pellegrini at the start of the 2018/19 campaign.

Rice had broken into the first team in 2017/18, making 15 league starts predominantly under David Moyes, but with a more adventurous coach in the dugout, things weren’t so smooth the following year.

Fresh setback

Rice started in a 4-0 loss at Liverpool on the opening day but, struggling badly, was substituted at half-time and subsequently dropped from the first-team squad for the rest of August.

“He had every right to be disappointed at coming back to the U23s and not being at his best in training,” Potts said of the Liverpool disappointment. “But he was the exact opposite. He led the way, trained as hard as he could, and got himself back in.”

Remarkably, once Rice was reinstated at Everton in mid-September, he played every minute up until March 2019 – when he was handed his England debut by Gareth Southgate.

Captain fantastic

By this point Rice was a renowned defensive midfielder, yet it was no surprise that his work-rate would quickly lead him beyond this limited remit to the all-action box-to-box player he is today.

“Now he has more confidence to drive with the ball and bring it forward as well," Southgate noted recently, while Moyes has even suggested that Rice could play as an attacking midfielder.

See: Tackling, speed, stamina: Why Rice can transform Arsenal's midfield

There is no doubting that Rice can carry the ball and dictate the tempo of a match just as well as he can defend, and it is these more progressive qualities that will have attracted Arsenal.

It is also these traits that saw Rice become the first West Ham captain to win silverware since Billy Bonds 43 years ago - and their first major European success since Bobby Moore in 1965.

“We’ve seen the effect that Casemiro and Rodri can have on Manchester United and Manchester City, I put Declan right next to them,” Joe Cole told The i before West Ham's UEFA Europa Conference League final.

“That’s how good he is. He’s got more strings to his bow than those two.”

Those are the sorts of comparisons that have made Rice one of the most sought-after midfielders in European football.

His journey at West Ham, from gangly 14-year-old to winning captain in Europe is over, but judging by the manner of his ascent – the determination and the drive that have kept him pushing beyond expectations – Rice has by no means reached the end of his development as a player.

See: Analysis of 2023 summer signings