Mourinho seeks special one for 'Football Idol'

Move over Pop Idol, newly crowned Premiership champions Chelsea are to launch a rival show for budding footballers with the lure of a prized contract with Jose Mourinho's team for the winner. The club will conduct a nationwide talent search for a footballer aged between 16 and 17, filming the auditions for Football Icon, an eight-part documentary Sky One will broadcast in the autumn.

The club said today it expected 15,000 teenagers to take part in auditions in Manchester, Birmingham and London in June and July. These will be whittled down to a shortlist of 12 players, who will join Chelsea's football academy, which produced the likes of captain John Terry and German international Robert Huth for the first team.

North One Television - the former sports arm of Chrysalis TV run by sports TV supreme Neil Duncanson - will produce the programme for Sky One. "If I had a quid for every time someone had approached us with an idea for a football version of Pop Idol I would have retired," said Mr Duncanson.

"There are three reasons why it hasn't worked before. One, the concept has not been good enough; two, the club hasn't been big enough; and three, the prize has not been interesting enough."

The format, jointly owned by Chelsea and the Football Icon company, fits in with the west London club's grand plan to become a global sport brand via expansion into America, Russia and China. The programme will be sold to those markets and if successful local versions will be developed.

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