Plymouth’s Jordan Houghton: ‘Having John Terry in my phonebook was surreal’

Jordan Houghton had not long arrived with his wife, Harley, at a family-run Italian restaurant in Plymouth’s dockside Barbican quarter when they turned to his phone to tune into the FA Cup fourth-round draw. “We were streaming it a few seconds behind,” Houghton says. “A load of messages started coming through but nobody actually said who it was. There were just emojis popping up, so I thought: ‘We must have drawn a big one.’ Then the next ball out was Chelsea. We started cheering and people were turning around thinking: ‘What are they doing?’ It will be the first time I’ve gone back since I left the club.”

Houghton’s 16-year association with Chelsea began when he was six and attending sessions in Isleworth before signing his first contract a couple of years later when the Roman Abramovich era was bubbling. He was released in 2018 without making a senior appearance but on Saturday is set to play his first competitive first-team game at Stamford Bridge for Plymouth Argyle, who will be backed by almost 6,000 supporters. His family, including his elder brother, James, a youth coach at Chelsea, will be among those in the away end. Houghton played the odd reserve game at the stadium but his fondest memory there came in the FA Youth Cup in 2014, when he scored as Chelsea came out on top of a topsy-turvy two-legged final against Fulham.

“I’ve got my medal and shirt signed by all the lads framed, but also the pair of boots I wore in the game framed because it is a special memory I hold,” he says of a final that was played before a crowd of 13,125. “I read Gary Neville speaking about the crop that came through at Manchester United, the Class of 92, where they talk about even though he has won so many things in his senior career,