Callum Hudson-Odoi will not be part of Chelsea‘s squad that will travel to Aston Villa on Sunday for the club’s first match in the concluding part of the 2019-2020 season.
The manager of the club, Frank Lampard, didn’t drop him because of the rape scandal the 19-year-old winger was entangled in less than three weeks ago. He was dropped from the squad because of an ankle injury he suffered during training.
Recall that the English footballer broke the lockdown guidelines by inviting a lady to his apartment in May. Shortly after the lady arrived at his apartment, his neighbours reportedly heard screams from his residence and the police were invited to see what was going on.
Before the police arrived, the young woman was reportedly on a bad state and she was rushed to the hospital for medical attention while the Chelsea youngster was arrested for allegedly raping the lady.
The next day, May 17 to be precise, the police released the Chelsea star on bail while an investigation into the rape scandal continued. On the other hand, Chelsea, especially Lampard showed that the club doesn’t take the judgement of players’ off the field activities as seriously as expected as Callum was allowed back to training immediately after he was released on bail.
Luckily for the Chelsea star, on 13 June, the police issued a statement to announce that Callum Hudson-Odoi was no longer under investigation for allegedly raping the lady and all cases against him were dropped.
Though most people didn’t know the reason behind dropping all cases against him, most critics wondered why the football FA didn’t fine him for at least breaking the lockdown rule and why Chelsea didn’t take any disciplinary actions against him.
Frank Lampard is more concerned about seeing Callum Hudson-Odoi “work” his way into the team.
While speaking to newsmen on Friday, Frank Lampard said he was happy that the cases against Callum have been dropped because the scandal has been the main concern for the club initially.
The coach who was once a player at the club said it is not strange for footballers to make mistakes especially when they are still as young as Callum. Hence, he urged the youngster to take positives from the experience and use it to improve his game.
“I’ve hopefully shown in my short time in management that I’m very sympathetic towards the idea that we’re not angels or saints, and that we can make mistakes, particularly at a young age”, Lampard said.
“As much as the pitfalls off the pitch, I want to see how he can work on the training pitch and get into this team, and perform to the levels we all believe he can.
“I will never be one to come down too harshly on that, albeit we have had conversations, myself and Callum. And the big conversation now is to make sure that he learns his lesson from what happened.
“He broke lockdown, that wasn’t good enough. He’s admitted to that, and we move on.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic halted football in March, Callum Hudson-Odoi had played 25 times for Chelsea in all competitions and had scored three goals.
