It was not until he took a walk along one of the corridors at the City Ground that Callum Hudson-Odoi realised the stature of the club he was about to join.
‘You know, I didn’t realise until the day I came here to sign,’ smiled the Nottingham Forest midfielder.
‘I did the tour round and saw the two Champions League trophies on display and I was like: “Wow. Big club, massive history”. You realise it when you see that.
‘It was a big moment for me because, you know, I have one of those nice things myself too…’
Hudson-Odoi is the London boy who chose to move from what he knows to try and find himself again. From Chelsea – where he was on the bench as they won the Champions League in 2021 – to Forest whose own glory days in Europe are rather more distant.
Callum Hudson-Odoi admits he did not realise the stature of Nottingham Forest until he took a tour of the City Ground before signing for the club at end of the 2023 summer transfer window
Hudson-Odoi is a London boy but made the move to Nottingham Forest to find himself again
The 23-year-old admitted he needed to leave Chelsea to reignite his football career
It was an emotional step for the 23-year-old, made on the last day of the 2023 summer window. Forest are at Chelsea next weekend and it will be his first return to his boyhood club.
‘I had to go, to leave,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘To find my football again.’
And now, as Forest show themselves upwardly mobile under their Portuguese coach Nuno Espirito Santo, Hudson-Odoi is starting to make noises at his new club too. His winning goal at Anfield a fortnight ago brought Forest their first win at Liverpool for 55 years.
‘Wow, that was unforgettable for the whole team and the staff,’ Hudson-Odoi smiles.
‘Some of the fans there had never seen the team beat Liverpool in their lives, you know. It’s amazing when you think like that.
‘The dressing room afterwards was lively man! The music pumping. I have never seen smiles on faces like that since I have been here.
‘Then I got a great message from my dad.
‘It said: “I love you son and I am proud of you… but I hate what you’ve done to my team.”
‘I have so many Liverpool fans around me. My brother, my dad. So I knew it was a big day.
‘I knew if we won they would kill me but I spoke also to my dad.
‘I just said: “I love you too but it had to be done”.’
Hudson-Odoi scored Nottingham Forest’s goal in their shock victory over Liverpool at Anfield
The winger described the victory as ‘unforgettable’ for the team, staff and club’s fanbase
Nottingham Forest supporters were able to celebrate a first victory at Anfield for 55 years
If Hudson-Odoi ever needs evidence of the day things changed for him then he just needs to roll up his trouser legs. When he looks down, he sees that his right calf is smaller than his left. Despite his daily gym sessions, he is at peace with the fact that it will probably always be like that.
This peculiar physical anomaly is the legacy of an Achilles injury suffered playing for Chelsea against Burnley in April 2019. Hudson-Odoi was only 19 and thought it was cramp. It was not cramp. It was a type of injury that used to finish footballers in the 1980s and 1990s.
It did not derail Hudson-Odoi’s career but it changed it. It has changed him physically and mentally and, to a degree, he has had to relearn the game he loves, a game that saw him debut for Chelsea at the age of 17 and for England a little over a year later.
‘It 100 per cent took a toll and yeh looking back that was a turning point in itself,’ Hudson-Odoi says.
‘You are young and you don’t really understand. Will I be able to play football again?
‘Even today my calf hasn’t gone back to the same size. A lot of power is still not there.
‘It changes a lot. Your running style, how you shoot, your ankle movement. But you adjust to it which is what I have been trying to do for five years. Trying to power it up every day. Strengthen it, strengthen it, strengthen it.
Hudson-Odoi admitted his leg has not been the same since an achilles injury back in 2019
‘They told me at the time: “Listen you are never gonna have the same amount of power. You maybe one day will get the feeling back but never the same power”. Part of the battle after that is about accepting. But I got there.
‘I think it takes a bit of pace away, a little bit. For me I feel it has. But I work on that every day too.
‘But I am ok. I feel good and it feels strong and it feels okay and every game that comes you have to use your calves and legs to run so there is not much I can do is there?’
Hudson-Odoi is smiling as he talks. He is in a good place with the past and excited about the present. It feels as though he has finally entered the second phase of a career that started with a bang and then stalled a little through some in and out spells at Chelsea and a time on loan in Germany at Bayer Leverkusen.
He admits he is a confidence player – who isn’t? – who needs the courage to play brave, attacking and front-foot football. He lost a bit of that at Chelsea and, even though he blamed nobody at the club he joined when he was seven, it’s only now that he realises how that vital part of himself went missing.
‘For me all this here at Forest was about coming to a different place, a different chapter, a different start,’ he says.
‘It’s not that far away. Two and half hours. But this is completely different and that’s what I wanted.
‘It’s been a year of enjoyment, getting game time and finding confidence and helping myself. The more you are on the pitch the happier you are. You just wanna feel more free and happy.
‘I do know my ability. I think everyone knows their ability. But it’s about momentum and how ready you feel to play a game. That’s so important.
Hudson-Odoi’s career appeared to have stalled with an unsuccessful loan at Bayer Leverkusen
‘There were times in myself where I was like: “Okay, this is not me. This is not how I play. This is not how I was a year ago, two years ago. Things have changed”.
‘But in the last year and a bit I have got back to that sense of: “Just be yourself. Be you. Do what you do best”.
‘When you do that and it works then the confidence comes.’
Hudson-Odoi was brought to Forest by Steve Cooper, who had admired him since leading the England Under-17s to the World Cup in India in 2017.
‘I can’t believe it’s that long ago,’ laughs Hudson-Odoi.
‘That’s why some people can’t believe I am still only 23. People said that to me when I arrived here.
‘A lot has happened!’
Under Nuno, hired in the wake of Cooper’s sacking last December, Hudson-Odoi has continued to flourish. He has started four of Forest’s five Premier League games so far this season and can expect to do so again at home to Fulham on Saturday.
Then, next week, it’s back to Chelsea with whom he won a full set of European medals and played for 72 times in the Premier League.
‘It’s a nice feeling,’ he says.
‘I haven’t been back since I left. Hopefully the fans won’t boo me! Hopefully they will clap or something!
Hudson-Odoi had been brought to Nottingham Forest under Steve Cooper’s management
He had been part of the England under-17 World Cup winning side under Cooper in 2017
Hudson-Odoi has started four of the last five matches under manager Nuno Espirito Santo
‘I have a lot of love for Chelsea. That’s the club I grew up with as a kid. But we will go there with the same mentality as we did to Liverpool, to hopefully get three points.
‘It was a huge decision to leave but these are the big decisions you have to make in life. I was there for 13 years. Born round the corner. It was all Chelsea ever since I was a kid.
‘And when you do leave it is a bit like: “Wow I will never see this place again”.
‘But me and my family just felt it was the right time, to start a new place and find a new adventure and make my way. It has turned out to be an amazing decision to come here as everything is going so well.’
A look across the footballing landscape of Europe sees Chelsea alumni everywhere. Chelsea academy products can be found just by dropping pins into maps. Hudson-Odoi isn’t fazed by how his former club chooses to operate.
‘In football, that’s how it goes,’ he says.
‘You have to recognise when it is the right time to move on. And that was my time.
‘A case of I needed to get out of there. Not in a bad way but to go and find my football again and enjoy myself again. Go and be that person who has a good connection with everybody again. That was the major thing for me, to go back on the pitch and enjoy myself again.
‘Growing up at the academy I always had that drive and belief to want to get in the first team and showcase my talent. I got the opportunities at Chelsea and played a load of games.
‘But I got to the point where I had to look at it and realise it had been nice but it was time to go. So, yeh, it was a big decision but the right one.’
Hudson-Odoi lifted trophies with Chelsea but knew it was the time for him to leave the club
When he arrived at Forest, Morgan Gibbs-White told Hudson-Odoi that the City Ground would provide him with the best atmosphere he had ever played in. He didn’t believe him.
‘He was right though,’ he laughs.
‘I realised it the first game I played here. Morgan told me to listen and yeh it was just “loud”!
‘I couldn’t even hear myself say anything so yeh it is the best atmosphere.’
Last season Hudson-Odoi never heard a song been sung in his name, though. He is not too proud to admit that he noticed.
‘As a player you do hear chants for other players and you do think: “Oh maybe they have got one for me”.
‘And then it doesn’t come and you are “Oh no, not again, when is it coming?”
‘Basically you just want to have a connection with the fans.’
Into this season and Hudson-Odoi used the club’s social media account to ask for a song. It worked. As the players left the field after a 2-2 draw at Brighton last weekend, he heard Forest’s away contingent singing a version of Estelle’s American Boy with some carefully adjusted lyrics.
Morgan Gibbs-White, left, told Hudson-Odoi the City Ground would provide him with the best atmosphere he would play in and has now received his own chant from the supporters
‘It’s a good chant, I can’t deny,’ he says.
‘At Liverpool I heard it but most at Brighton.
‘I was the last one off, clapping them and everything. I heard them singing it all the way from the moment the game ended and I was like: “You lot have finally got me one. Thank you. At last guys”.
‘Past players and the community here all have that connection with each other and it’s really good. They get behind us every game and we try and do the same with them. Try and give them the best performance we can.’
Last year was a challenge for everybody at the club. Forest were mocked for their transfer policy and their bloated squad. Then they fell the wrong side of the Premier League’s spending rules.
‘That stuff we just don’t take notice off,’ says Hudson-Odoi.
‘We just play. Same mentality. We have a job to do, regardless. In those situations we don’t listen. We have had a good start to the season now and we just want it to continue.
‘It’s just much more settled now. We have had more time with the manager, a pre-season under him.
‘His way of managing is good. He tells you how it is and that’s the best way. If you are honest with players you will get the best out of them.
‘So we are learning very well under him. He’s done amazing for us so we are doing our best to repay him.
‘The players are getting more confident and the moral is going up. You can feel it.
‘There are a lot of games to play but for us it’s trying to get in to the top ten or top eight or you never know even Europe. We are a confident group of players now.
‘We all understand each other more and I understand myself more now, in terms of my ability and my game. That’s really important.’
Hudson-Odoi once said he was never scared or nervous of anything, only excited. He stands by that, despite the lessons learned along the way.
I ask him if, given the kinks and the forks in the road, whether he ever looks back and wonders if it all came a little too soon. Chelsea, the U17 World Cup, full England honours. Maybe a gentler path – one with a less steep an incline – may have served him better.
‘No,’ he says without pause.
‘I have no regrets or a feeling it was too early.
‘When you are young and everyone has that belief in you and they look at you thinking: “Great footballer, great this, amazing talent, great prospect or whatever” it gives you that confidence and that mojo to prove every day that you actually are that.
‘You can’t let it go to your head but you do have to try and use it and make it your aim. I think I did that.
‘The things you mention are all achievements and all blessings, you know. They are blessings that I try and take with me.
Hudson-Odoi said he is more determined and hungry to win and appear in big competitions
‘It just makes me more determined and hungry to go and win some of those things again. That’s my mentality now.
‘Every team wants to be in the big competitions yeh? That’s our aim.’
As he stands up to leave, Hudson-Odoi picks up a small bag with some Forest merchandise in it. A red bag with two white stars on it. One star for each European Cup.
‘I know about this club now and I know that everybody has to represent it in the right way,’ he smiles.
‘You look at it and see the history and know you have to make as much of it as possible.
‘Before I came here I didn’t really know much did I?
‘But I know how the people are now. I know this place.’