When Moises Caicedo was unveiled as a Chelsea player, the club’s content team recreated a photograph of him sat in the boot of a car with his mum, Carmen, taken a few years earlier in Ecuador. Caicedo is in his late teens in the original photo – already a young professional footballer in his homeland – and he is wearing the Chelsea home shirt from the 2020/21 season. ‘It’s only ever been Chelsea,’ read the caption on the announcement post, referencing the fact that we were not the only club interested in signing the midfielder from Brighton. But what was the story behind that Blues shirt in the photo from 2020? We ask the man himself as we sit down for our first interview with him, just under three months into his Chelsea career.

‘I spoke to my old agent and I asked him if I could get that shirt,’ he tells us. ‘I wanted N’Golo Kante’s shirt, but it was a bit impossible to get it. But he said, “I’m gonna buy one for you.” ‘One day he came to Ecuador and said, “Look, I have a present for you,” and it was that shirt. It was fantastic for me, and I started to wear it. It was like a motivation for me, because Chelsea was one of the best teams I watched when I was a kid.’

Caicedo’s fascination with all-action Blues midfielders went back further than Kante, though, as he goes on to explain…

‘I used to watch videos of [Claude] Makelele from when he was here,’ he adds, ‘because when I started to play in the midfield, I started to watch videos of Chelsea. I saw some videos of Makelele, and some of Kante as well. It was a motivation for me to play football because they were legends here.’

It shows how seriously Caicedo took his development when you consider that he was six years old when Makelele departed the Bridge at the end of the 2007/08 season. He was watching archive footage of that Chelsea vintage who dominated the Premier League for two years in the mid-2000s. Caicedo has dreamed of playing at the very highest level ever since.

As a kid, he played football in the streets of Santo Domingo in Ecuador, where his older brothers and their friends used to tell him he had the talent to go places. Even as he felt he was simply learning the game, they were offering him advice, saying things like, “If you want to be one of the best players in the world, you have to work hard, you have to fight, you have to train every day.”

After hearing comments like these for a number of years, it became clear to him that he must have a chance. ‘To be honest, they saw something in me and felt I could be a top player, but I didn’t feel it, because it was so hard to play against them,’ he says. ‘They were really good, but my dedication and my hard work was everything. When I was a kid, my dad used to say to me that you have to work hard to be one of the best.

‘When I played with my brother’s friends, it was good but it was tough at the same time. They were older and stronger than me, they kept the ball, and I was frustrated when I couldn’t get the ball from them because they were too strong. But it was good for me, because I learned from them and they were like a motivation, an inspiration for me. They were with me in every moment when I was a kid.’

Caicedo was surrounded by family throughout his childhood. He has nine siblings, the eldest of whom have children around his age, so he was never short of team-mates for kickabouts. He could also count on the support of a local coach, Ivan Guerra, who helped to prepare him for the competitive game. Eventually, one of his brothers took him to Independiente del Valle – one of Ecuador’s top football clubs – for a trial. It was a chance for him to test his mettle against the nation’s best talents, and he made it into their ranks.

‘Independiente del Valle is a big club,’ he says of the 2016 Copa Libertadores finalists from Sangolqui. ‘If you go there, you’re going to find the best players in Ecuador. They are in every city in Ecuador, looking for the best players in the country.

‘It’s amazing because you have a school inside the club, you have rooms to sleep and live there, you have everything. You have good food, good facilities, a training ground, it’s the best place to start. I learned a lot from them.’

Independiente’s academy is about a two-hour drive from Caicedo’s hometown, so it was a first taste of independence for him, while he remained very close to his family. On the pitch, he excelled at a club known for developing top young talent, and captained his age group to the Under-20s Copa Libertadores title. In the final, they defeated a River Plate side featuring a young Enzo Fernandez, just three years before they became midfield partners on the other side of an ocean.

‘We got a great reception in Ecuador,’ Caicedo says, thinking back to that triumph. ‘There was a “caravana” – like a really crazy party. Then they gave us a few days off to celebrate with the family.’

The following winter, Caicedo was signed by Brighton & Hove Albion, having played just over 30 first-team games for Independiente del Valle. He was already a full Ecuador international by that point and it was clear that he had enormous potential, but he was only 19 and he was moving across the Atlantic in the midst of a global pandemic. He found himself confined to a hotel in Brighton, looking out at the choppy channel in the midst of the British winter, about 9,000 miles from his tight-knit family. These are the unseen challenges that young footballers from around the world face when they travel to Europe in search of an opportunity.

‘It was tough,’ Moi admits. ‘It was really tough, because I came here on my own, without my family. I didn’t know English, it was a different time zone, different food… the weather is so different! It was really tough for me.

‘I came here when Covid was blowing up, and before I could go out in England I had to stay for 10 days in a hotel. I didn’t meet my team-mates. I cried every day in that hotel. I remember. I called my mum and dad and told them I wanted to come back to Ecuador because everything was so different and I didn’t want to be here. “They said, ‘Son, you have to be strong. This is your dream. You prayed for this. So keep strong, keep praying, because God is everything in our life.”

‘So, I started to do that. Every day, I kept praying and I started to feel better and better. Now I’m here at Chelsea, enjoying every game. It’s great to be here, to be part of this amazing club.

‘My dream is winning something with this club, this season. I’m gaining confidence in every game, because playing at Stamford Bridge is amazing and the crowd is always supporting us. It’s so good to have their support in good and bad moments, because when the good moments come, we are going to celebrate with them.

‘The Premier League season is long, there is a long way to go, and we have to keep fighting and working hard. When you do that, you are going to start seeing the achievements.’

It hasn’t been a straightforward start to the season, but Caicedo retains his belief in what this group of players can achieve, under this coaching team. He speaks about the rewards down the line as though they are certainties, and insists that is just part of his mentality.

‘Winners never give up,’ he states. ‘If you have a bad game, or things are not going like you wanted… it’s frustrating because you always want to win, or always want to go home happy. When you lose, you are going to be sad – that’s normal – but in that moment, you have to learn. You have to think about the game you lost and see what you have to improve, what you have to do to help the team.

‘When we start to win more games, I’m going to remember the things I said to myself in those difficult moments, and say: ‘I never gave up, I kept fighting and working hard, and now look at the results.’

Hear more from Moises by purchasing the matchday programme that contains this interview in full by clicking here.