How Premier League footballers have turned two Surrey villages into ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’

Welcome to the ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’, the place the one factor lacking is sunshine.

There are luxurious vehicles, fancy eating places, gated mansions and sufficient high-level skilled footballers to create the UK’s most dominant five-a-side league.

‘Elmbridge Borough Council welcomes you to Cobham’, the signal reads as you enter the village made well-known by Chelsea Soccer Membership, whose coaching floor named after this place is a four-minute drive from its excessive road (and really in close by Stoke d’Abernon).

Chelsea moved to Cobham, a part of London’s southern commuter belt, 19 years in the past from Harlington, close to Heathrow Airport on the western outskirts of the town. Since then, the village itself and surrounding areas, together with Oxshott, have turn out to be residence to footballers previous and current, the streets — lots of them personal roads — lined by multi-million-pound mansions hidden behind safety gates.

Over the previous twenty years, residents have turn out to be accustomed to seeing Premier League footballers wandering down the excessive road (Belgium worldwide Eden Hazard was an everyday within the village’s high-end Waitrose grocery store throughout his 2012-19 spell at Stamford Bridge), stopping for a espresso or having fun with a meal in one of many eating places.

Even on the gloomy September morning when The Athletic visits, an array of fancy vehicles — Land Rover Defenders dominate — are passing via or pulling over to park outdoors one of many native shops.

Simply over 20 miles south-west from central London, however away from the glare dwelling within the UK capital would deliver, Cobham and Oxshott are two of essentially the most fascinating — and costly — areas within the nation, the place homes recurrently promote for hundreds of thousands of kilos.

On any given day, you could possibly stumble upon John Terry, the previous Chelsea and England captain, or Sir Andy Murray, the British males’s tennis participant who retired from that sport after the current Olympics in Paris.

It’s the south of England’s reply to the north’s ‘Golden Triangle’ of villages — Hale, Alderley Edge and Wilmslow — which is residence to many Manchester Metropolis and Manchester United footballers.     

Nicknamed the ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’ due to the variety of celebrities who now name it residence, this space has lengthy been standard amongst London-based stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers. There are elite personal faculties, fancy hair salons, Pilates studios and yoga courses on the disposal of gamers and their households.

Trevor Kearney, founding father of property firm The Personal Workplace Actual Property, sums up what life is like as a Premier League footballer based mostly round right here: “In case you go to Grappelli on a Saturday evening then, irrespective of who you might be, there may be at all times somebody extra well-known than you within the room.” 

---

Grappelli, an Italian restaurant solely a few hundred yards away from The Ivy Cobham Backyard, is ceaselessly visited by footballers and, alongside its pasta dishes, is thought for its ebullient front-of-house supervisor, Eddy, who has turn out to be a buddy to lots of them.

Throughout Eddy’s chat with The Athletic over coffee, a number of passers-by cease to say good day, whereas Chelsea participant Cesare Casadei parks his Mercedes on the opposite aspect of the street earlier than disappearing into a store. Eddy says Casadei, a 21-year-old midfielder, is a “good man”.

“A lot of the footballers that come listed here are Chelsea gamers,” Eddy says. “Numerous previous gamers nonetheless dwell within the space, so we’ve got Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Ashley Cole… they’re regulars and good associates with the proprietor.

“Now we have had John Terry, Ashley Cole, Noni Madueke, (Marc) Cucurella, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfranco Zola, Andriy Shevchenko, Mauricio Pochettino, Joao Felix, Robert Sanchez… I don’t watch soccer, however I began following it as a result of I wanted to know who they’re!”

Throughout our dialog, Ryan Bertrand, the previous Chelsea and England defender, pulls up in his automobile down the street. Sure, Eddy is aware of him, too. However with essentially the most outstanding gamers away on worldwide responsibility for the time being, it is a comparatively quiet morning in Cobham.

On the day The Athletic visited, Ahmed Alsanawi, a barber with 1.2 million Instagram followers whose social media posts present him slicing the hair of Hazard, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Reece James, amongst others, turned up in his yellow Lamborghini Urus.

“It’s stylish, it’s cool, but it surely has all the correct fundamentals of what makes up a terrific group and surroundings,” Kearney says of the realm. “When Chelsea arrived at Cobham, there was a mandate that the gamers have to dwell in a two-and-a-half-mile radius of the coaching floor, in order that meant Cobham and Oxshott has seen a brand new breed and kind of purchaser. 

“Swiftly, you had this new breed of particular person, wealth and fame injected into it. It remodeled it, but it surely was already headed in that path.

“Chelsea didn’t change the market, they only turbo-fuelled it.”

---

Kearney estimates that round 100 footballers live on this a part of the county of Surrey, together with the cities of Weybridge and Esher a number of miles to the north. Lots of them, significantly these of a Chelsea persuasion, reside close to Cobham, although.

“Chelsea moved right here after which different gamers at totally different golf equipment, let’s say (their west London neighbours) Fulham, who didn’t wish to be in central London, noticed everybody was in Oxshott or Cobham and moved there as a substitute,” Kearney says. “It’s the identical at (south Londoners) Crystal Palace.

“It turned the south’s hub for gamers. In case you have been at a north London membership, you’d keep comparatively north. However should you lived extra in direction of the south, then you definitely have been coming to Cobham or Oxshott.

“Even should you have been additional south, let’s say at Bournemouth (on the south coast), you’d dwell in Cobham or Oxshott and commute. I had two associates taking part in for Stoke Metropolis (within the Midlands, north of Birmingham) who lived in Oxshott and obtained the prepare there as a result of the household didn’t wish to transfer because it was the right space for them.

“That reveals the attract and pull of the realm.”

It turned widespread for the gamers from different prime golf equipment in London, comparable to Palace, to make Oxshott their residence and they might ceaselessly journey to the coaching floor collectively. A Palace contingent of Joel Ward, Gary Cahill, Martin Kelly and Scott Dann, for instance, used to hyperlink up within the mornings, gathering team-mate Jason Puncheon on the close by Reigate junction of London’s orbital M25 motorway alongside the best way.

In line with information from Foxtons, a UK-based property company, the typical worth of a home in Cobham has doubled since Chelsea made this space their residence in 2005. On common, homes have been promoting for simply over £600,000 then, in comparison with greater than £1.2million in 2024. The gated enclaves lining the personal roads and populated by footballers are promoting for way more than that latter determine.

Together with Oxshott, Kearney estimates that footballers are spending round “£4m to £7m” on a home. Homes in Oxshott, although, are, on common, costlier than these in Cobham, which is below 4 miles away.

“What Oxshott has is the Crown Property,” Kearney explains. “The Crown Property was as soon as Crown land (property of the Royal household) and has an extremely high-end housing property with values from £3m to £20m. They’re gated enclaves, protected environments, roads that have been run by administration firms and it’s a super-smart setup.

“Oxshott was in that radius and it has an unimaginable faculty known as Danes Hill. Individuals have been coaching in Cobham and a few minutes up the street is a tremendous place to dwell, with knockout homes and a superb faculty, and it really works for them.

“Cobham has a number of of these estates, too, however not as large or as highly effective because the Crown Property. Oxshott has a little bit excessive road, but it surely hasn’t obtained an Ivy or a Grappelli’s. Individuals who dwell in Oxshott would go to Cobham for the espresso spots, hair salons and eating places.”

In 2022, Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast worldwide striker who left Chelsea in 2015 to play for Montreal in MLS, put his six-bedroom home on the Crown Property up on the market for £6.25million, in line with the UK’s Every day Mail. In 2014,  the identical newspaper additionally reported Terry bought two Oxshott properties for a mixed £21.5m.

Gamers who select to hire as a substitute of shopping for, particularly if they’re arriving from a special nation and are reluctant to decide to spending hundreds of thousands on a home, are spending anyplace from £15,000 to £30,000 a month. “The rental market is attention-grabbing as a result of there isn’t sufficient ok inventory to come back and hire,” Kearney says. “If I had a home that somebody may transfer into right now, it will go immediately.”

Relating to a participant getting a mortgage, banks will take into account their profession and trajectory earlier than deciding on the phrases of a deal.

Kearney notes how plenty of them can “very simply get high-leverage” mortgages, generally “as much as 100 per cent”. The vast majority of these are unfold over the size of the person’s membership contract, though exceptions could be made if a participant is extra established or fairly clearly on their technique to changing into a famous person.

---

Other than a contemporary exterior and inside, together with a large enough backyard to put in a five-a-side pitch — Kearney says it is a extra widespread request than it’s possible you’ll assume — crucial factor house-hunting footballers are in search of is security and safety.

Footballers are sometimes deemed simple targets by criminals who will know when a participant is prone to be at coaching or taking part in in a match, perhaps on the different finish of the nation or probably abroad, resulting from their membership’s schedule and fixture listing.

In recent times, gamers’ homes have been focused, together with in Oxshott.

Chelsea and England ahead Raheem Sterling’s residence was damaged into in December 2022, resulting in him flying again from the World Cup in Qatar.

4 males have been jailed in July 2017 after focusing on Terry’s residence in Oxshott in February 2017, as reported by the BBC, with the previous Chelsea defender being informed by Choose Susan Tapping in court docket that it “may need been a mistake to submit a household {photograph} on social media to point out that he was away on vacation”.

Throughout that raid, the convicted burglars stole greater than £220,000 of jewelry and designer purses price £126,000. “His residence was intentionally focused and the master suite suite was ransacked,” Choose Tapping mentioned.

In line with police.uk information, from October 2021 to the top of June 2024, 193 housebreaking offences have been dedicated in Cobham and Oxshott, with essentially the most prevalent crimes being violence and sexual offences (1,075) throughout the identical interval.

“Security and safety is paramount,” Kearney says. “I’ve additionally obtained an organization that may be a safety service round gamers and that works phenomenally nicely. In case you are shopping for a brand new home, they go in and ensure the fundamentals are proper, comparable to intercoms, CCTV, and every thing like that, but in addition layering further safety relying in your wants.”

Secure rooms, panic buttons and patrol canines have turn out to be commonplace. “They wish to dwell actually regular, unaffected lives, with the very best know-how and safety methods of their home,” Kearney says.

Given the main focus and a spotlight positioned on footballers, particularly these taking part in on the highest degree, dwelling an ‘unaffected life’ virtually appears implausible. However in Cobham, Oxshott and the broader Surrey space, that’s one thing they, inside motive, have been in a position to do. Their fellow native residents have turn out to be used to seeing them every day, whether or not that’s Terry, who performed 78 instances for England, or the lesser-known ones comparable to Casadei.

As in Beverly Hills, the Los Angeles district that’s residence to actors, singers and different A-list celebrities, a Premier League footballer can flip as much as a grocery store or restaurant in Cobham and, like Kearney says above, there’s a good probability they won’t be essentially the most well-known particular person there.

(Prime photographs: Daniel Sheldon/The Athletic; design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic)