What Reece James did to finally complete three-year Chelsea mission with landmark Milan moment

Almost three years separate Chelsea's two three-goal wins over Milan at Stamford Bridge. In October 2022, it was Graham Potter's side doing the business in the Champions League group stage with a 3-0 victory. On Sunday, it was Enzo Maresca's final pre-season friendly of the summer.

It will be no surprise to anyone who has witnessed Chelsea's squad building methods since the Clearlake Capital-Todd Boehly takeover just five months prior to the first of these matches that only two players started both games. One of them is Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who returned to SW6 as a Milan player over the weekend. The other is Reece James.

Even extending out to Chelsea's bench, and it is just Trevoh Chalobah and Marc Cucurella who complete the list of those still at the club. Wesley Fofana started in 2022 but did not here due to an injury.

He went off in the Milan game with the first of what would turn into a set of serious knee problems to almost completely stall his career. James has only been marginally more available.

The very next game after scoring and assisting against Milan, Chelsea lost their now-captain for almost 12 months of Premier League football due to a knee injury of his own. He went on to miss almost all of the next two seasons with various hamstring issues, requiring surgery and major rehabilitation work.

When he went down in America last year and was ruled out for the opening seven games (three of which he would have been suspended for anyway), serious questions were raised over his long-term viability. Chelsea rewarded James with a bumper contract a month before the 2022 Milan match. It recognised his position as one of the best attacking full-backs/wing-backs in the world.

They have not had value out of that deal yet but it is not too late. James has had multiple false dawns, coming back before being sidelined for extended period just weeks later, months if he was lucky.

Watching the mental toll it took on him was tough but Chelsea never gave up on one of the most unique players around. When James is fully fit, he is still entirely irreplaceable.

For the whole of 2025, James has been up for selection. He was added to the Conference League squad for the knockout stages having not been risked during the group phase, and it paid off.

Maresca has not asked James to play more than once per week in a bid to look after him physically, but the trajectory has been undoubtedly positive for a while now. From cautiously seeing him sprint to seeing James in the closest to his pomp for years, this has been a year of growth.

Not only has he managed to maintain fitness for eight months, James is back in the England team and can finally be optimistic of going to a major tournament again having had his hopes in Qatar for the World Cup and Euro 2024 dashed. His role is evolving too.

Maresca initially urged extreme caution with James, playing him as an unadventurous centre-back when Chelsea had the ball, shielding him from facing the quickest and most direct wingers, and not even debating the task of overlapping. It limited him but did result in Chelsea having a version of James on the pitch.

Even this model of James is better than no James. His passing from a standing start is still exceptional and he remains a player able to dictate no matter where he is placed.

Slowly, James has become more trusting in his body, pushing forward and testing himself in game situations. Tuchel has not been as safe and put him into a wing-back role for England. Maresca is moving in that direction.

At the Club World Cup he varied his tactical setup, using full-backs to hold width in a way he barely had during the main season. James was as impressive as ever, showing quality from dead balls and offering key defensive solidity.

Maresca had seemed to shift away from the midfield experiment, especially with Andrey Santos and Dario Essugo being added to the squad. There is little need for him to cover in that position anymore and if anything, reflected poorly on Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and others last season. Still, Maresca preferred to play James in any form rather than leave him out.

There were questions when he started the Club World Cup final in midfield but the decision proved right. Without too much pressure in possession, James carried out a disciplined set of duties to shut down PSG.

As he lifted the trophy, it was the culmination of three years' hard work. It was clear what the Conference League had meant to James just a month earlier.

As a boyhood Chelsea fan, raised in the club's academy, it has been his dream to taste success. Writing in the matchday programme for the past weekend's friendlies, James said: "We have taken this club back to where it deserves to be - winning trophies on the biggest stages. Now we want to keep moving forward, and continuing to get better and better."

He now looks ready to be a genuine part of that, not just as a character but as a player. James' leadership has become increasingly obvious throughout the year, something he was challenged to do by Maresca early on. He has shrugged off the notion that he is too quiet to be a captain and that he is unable to balance the responsibility with getting (or staying) fit.

It is notable just how good James has now been for Chelsea. He is in good shape and marked a tough turnaround from 2022 with another lockdown of Milan's most dangerous figure, Rafael Leao.

In the 3-0 win, James had the last laugh despite being tested thoroughly by the freakish athlete and incredible talent that Leao is. Here, Milan's main attacker went centrally so spent more time away from James but did not get given any incentive to go wide and challenge him.

In the second half he whipped in a cross that 2022 James would have been proud of. It is the sort of moment he has not been able to provide too often from deeper.

After the most nonchalant of side-foot flicks back to Filip Jorgensen on Friday, picking a ball out of the air on the volley and under pressure, James has started to show his star-studded quality again in more meaningful ways. With the cross for Andrei Coubis' early own goal, which has come after a free-kick equaliser against Bournemouth in January, the delightful assist to Cucurella in May's crucial win over Manchester United, and his strike against Benfica in the Club World Cup, James is truly back.

The story between two big performances against Milan has been long. The road has never been smooth. But it now seems that Chelsea have the best of James since his injury troubles started and as ever, the whole club is all the better for it.