Welcome to the sun-drenched ‘Britain’s Beverly Hills’.
There are luxury cars, fancy restaurants, gated mansions and enough top-class professional footballers to create the most powerful five-a-side football league in England.
“Welcome to Cobham from Elmbridge Borough Council” is the sign that greets you as you enter the town made famous by Chelsea Football Club, whose namesake training ground is a four-minute drive from the town centre (it’s actually in nearby Stoke Davenport).
Chelsea moved to Cobham, a southern London commuter town, 19 years ago, from Harlington, near Heathrow Airport on the city’s western outskirts. Since then, the town itself and the surrounding area, including Oxshott, have become home to footballers past and present, and the streets (most of which are private roads) are lined with multi-million-pound mansions hidden behind security gates.
Cobham and the surrounding area have been home to a number of Premier League players (Dan Sheldon/work out)
Over the past two decades, residents have become accustomed to seeing Premier League footballers strolling down the high street, having a coffee or dining in one of the restaurants (Belgium international Eden Hazard was a regular at the town’s upmarket Waitrose supermarket during his time at Stamford Bridge in the 2012-19 season).
Even on a gloomy September morning work out Among the visitors are a number of luxury cars (Land Rover Defenders are a major draw) passing by or stopping to park in front of one of the local shops.
20 miles southwest of central London, But away from the glitz and glamor of the British capital, Cobham and Oxshott are two of the most attractive – and expensive – areas in the UK, with houses here regularly selling for millions of pounds.
On any given day, you might bump into former Chelsea and England captain John Terry or Sir Andy Murray, the British tennis player who recently retired from tennis after the Paris Olympics.
It is England’s southern answer to the northern ‘Golden Triangle’, made up of the towns of Hale, Alderry Edge and Wilmslow, and is home to Manchester City and Manchester United football clubs.
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Welcome to the ‘Golden’ town that the Premier League elite call home.
(Dan Sheldon/work out)
Nicknamed the ‘Beverly Hills’ of EnglandWith a growing number of celebrities now calling the area home, the area has long been popular with London-based stockbrokers and hedge fund managers. Athletes and their families have access to prestigious private schools, high-end salons, Pilates studios, yoga classes and more.
Trevor Carney, founder of property company The Private Office Real Estate, sums up what life is like as a Premier League footballer here. “If you go to Grappelli on a Saturday night, no matter who you are, there’s always someone more famous than you in the room.”
Just 200 yards from Ivy Cobham Gardens, Italian restaurant Grappelli is a footballer’s favourite and is famous for its pasta dishes and its lively front desk manager, Eddie, who has become a friend to many footballers.
(Dan Sheldon/work out)
While Eddy was chatting work out c or higherOpie, several passers-by stopped by to say hello, and Chelsea player Cesare Casadei parked his Mercedes across the street before disappearing into the shop. Eddie said the 21-year-old midfielder was a “good guy”.
“Most of the footballers who come here are Chelsea players,” Eddie said. “A lot of the old players still live in the area, so you’ve got Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Ashley Cole… they’re regulars and close friends of the owner.
“We had John Terry, Ashley Cole, Noni Madueke, (Mark) Cucurella, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfranco Zola, Andriy Shevchenko, Mauricio Pochettino, Joao Felix, Robert Sanchez… I don’t watch football, but I started watching because I had to know who they were!”
During the conversation, former Chelsea and England defender Ryan Bertrand pulls up across the road. Yes, Eddie knows him too. But with the biggest names currently away on international duty, it’s a relatively quiet morning in Cobham.
On that day work out Ahmed Al-Sanawi, a barber with 1.2 million Instagram followers, has been seen cutting the hair of the likes of Hazard, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Reece James, all in social media posts, and has been seen driving a yellow Lamborghini Urus.
“It’s hip and cool, but it has all the essential elements of a great community and environment,” Kearney said of the area. “When Chelsea arrived in Cobham there was a rule that players had to live within a two-and-a-half mile radius of the training ground. So Cobham and Oxshott saw a new breed and type of buyer.
“Suddenly, you’re injected with a new kind of person, wealth and fame. It transformed it, but it was already headed in that direction.
“Chelsea didn’t change the market, they just gave it turbo fuel.”
Kearney estimates there are about 100 footballers living in this part of Surrey, which also includes the villages of Weybridge and Esher a few miles to the north, but many of them, particularly Chelsea supporters, live near Cobham.
The typical home in this area is a gated mansion. (Dan Sheldon/work out)
“Chelsea moved here and then other players from other clubs, like (neighbouring west London club) Fulham, didn’t want to be in central London, they saw everyone else was in Oxshott or Cobham and moved there instead,” says Kearney. “The same goes for (south London) Crystal Palace.
“It became a southern hub for players. If you were in a north London club, you stayed relatively north. But if you lived further south, you would come to Cobham or Oxshott.
“Even if you’re further south, say in Bournemouth (on the south coast), you’ll live in Cobham or Oxshott and commute. I had two friends who played for Stoke City (in the Midlands, north of Birmingham) who lived in Oxshott and their families didn’t want to move so we took the train down there. It was the perfect area for them.
“It shows the charm and allure of the area.”
It has become common for players from other top London clubs, such as Palace, to call Oxshott their home and frequently travel to the training ground together. For example, a Palace delegation of Joel Ward, Gary Cahill, Martin Kelly and Scott Dann would gather in the morning to meet teammate Jason Puncheon near the Reigate junction on London’s M25 ring road.
According to data from UK estate agency Foxtons, the average house price in Cobham has doubled since Chelsea took over the area in 2005. At the time, the average house price was just over £600,000, but by 2024 it will be over £1.2 million. The gated areas along private roads and where football players live are selling for far more than the latter amount.
Including Oxshott, Kearney estimates that footballers spend “between £4m and £7m” on their homes. But a home in Oxshott is more expensive on average than one in Cobham, four miles away.
“What Oxshott has is the Crown Estate,” explains Kearney. “The Crown Estate was once Crown land and it’s an incredibly luxurious housing estate with values ranging from £3m to £20m. It’s gated enclaves, a secure environment, roads run by management companies, it’s a very smart set-up.
“Oxshott was in that radius and there was a fantastic school called Danes Hill. People were training at Cobham and just a few minutes down the road there was this fantastic residential area with lovely houses and a great school and it suited them well.
“There are a few such estates in Cobham, but they are not as big or as powerful as the Crown Estate. Oxshott has a small shopping centre, but there is no Ivy or Graffellis. People who live in Oxshott visit Cobham for the coffee shops, hairdressers and restaurants.”
Driving the Crown Estate (Dan Sheldon/work out)
Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba, who left Chelsea for MLS side Montreal in 2015, has sold his six-bedroom home to Crown in 2022. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, the property is listed for £6.25 million. The same paper reported in 2014 that Terry had sold his two Oxshott properties together for £21.5 million.
Players who choose to rent rather than buy, especially those from other countries and reluctant to spend millions of pounds on a home, spend between £15,000 and £30,000 a month. “The rental market is interesting because there’s not enough good inventory to come in and rent,” Kearney said. “If there’s a house that someone can move into today, it’ll sell in an instant.”
When a player takes out a home equity loan, the bank considers the player’s career and background before determining the terms of the contract.
Kearney notes that many of them can get “high leverage” mortgages “very easily,” sometimes “up to 100 percent.” Most of this is spread over the life of the individual’s club contract, but there can be exceptions if the player is more established or on the path to superstardom.
Aside from a modern exterior and interior, and a garden big enough to fit a five-a-side football pitch (which, according to Kearney, is a more common request than you might think), the most important thing football players look for when looking for a home is safety and security.
The homes are impressive and worth millions of dollars. (Dan Sheldon/work out)
Football players are often seen as easy targets for criminals because criminals know when players are training or playing. If you look at the schedule and match schedule of the clubs they play, there is a good chance that the players are training or playing in other parts of the country or overseas.
In recent years, players’ homes, including Okshot, have been targeted.
Chelsea and England striker Raheem Sterling’s home has been broken into. He is expected to return for the World Cup in Qatar in December 2022.
Four men were jailed in July 2017 after an attack on Terry’s home in Oxshott in February 2017, with the former Chelsea defender told by Judge Susan Tapping in court that it may have been a mistake to post family pictures on social media to show they were on holiday, the BBC reported.
During the raid, the convicted robbers stole more than £220,000 worth of jewellery and £126,000 worth of designer handbags. “His home was deliberately attacked and the master bedroom suite was ransacked,” Judge Tapping said.
Sterling returns home from Qatar World Cup after home invasion in Surrey (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
According to police.uk data, there were 193 robberies in Cobham and Oxshott between October 2021 and June 2024, with the most common crimes over the same period being violent and sexual offences (1,075).
“Safety and security are paramount,” Kearney said. “I also have a company that provides security around the players, and they do an amazing job. When buying a new home, they go in and check that the basics are in place, such as intercoms, CCTV, etc., and add additional security as needed.”
Safe rooms, panic buttons and patrol dogs have become commonplace. “They want to have the best technology and security systems at home and live a really normal, unaffected life,” says Kearney.
Given the amount of attention and scrutiny that goes into football players, especially those playing at the highest level, it seems almost impossible to live a ‘life without influence’. But in Cobham, Oxshott and the wider Surrey area, they could do so within reasonable limits. Their locals had become accustomed to seeing them every day, whether it was Terry, who played 78 times for England, or a lesser-known figure like Casadei.
As in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, home to actors, singers and other A-list celebrities, when a Premier League footballer walks into a supermarket or restaurant in Cobham, as Kearney said above, there’s a good chance they won’t be the most famous person there.
(Top photo: Daniel Sheldon/The Athletic; Design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic)
