Sports
How Premier League footballers have turned two Surrey villages into ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’
Welcome to the ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’, where the only thing missing is sunshine.
There are luxury cars, fancy restaurants, gated mansions and enough high-level professional footballers to create the United Kingdom’s most dominant five-a-side league.
‘Elmbridge Borough Council welcomes you to Cobham’, the sign reads as you enter the village made famous by Chelsea Football Club, whose training ground named after this place is a four-minute drive from its high street (and actually in nearby Stoke d’Abernon).
Chelsea moved to Cobham, part of London’s southern commuter belt, 19 years ago from Harlington, near Heathrow Airport on the western outskirts of the city. Since then, the village itself and surrounding areas, including Oxshott, have become home to footballers past and present, the streets — many of them private roads — lined by multi-million-pound mansions hidden behind security gates.
Cobham and the surrounding area have become home to a host of Premier League players (Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
Over the past two decades, residents have become accustomed to seeing Premier League footballers wandering down the high street (Belgium international Eden Hazard was a regular in the village’s high-end Waitrose supermarket during his 2012-19 spell at Stamford Bridge), stopping for a coffee or enjoying a meal in one of the restaurants.
Even on the gloomy September morning when The Athletic visits, an array of fancy cars — Land Rover Defenders dominate — are passing through or pulling over to park outside one of the local stores.
Just over 20 miles south-west from central London, but away from the glare living in the UK capital would bring, Cobham and Oxshott are two of the most desirable — and expensive — locations in the country, where houses regularly sell for millions of pounds.
On any given day, you could bump into John Terry, the former Chelsea and England captain, or Sir Andy Murray, the British men’s tennis player who retired from that sport after the recent Olympics in Paris.
It is the south of England’s answer to the north’s ‘Golden Triangle’ of villages — Hale, Alderley Edge and Wilmslow — which is home to many Manchester City and Manchester United footballers.
GO DEEPER
Welcome to the ‘goldplated’ villages the Premier League elite call home
(Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
Nicknamed the ‘Beverly Hills of Britain’ due to the number of celebrities who now call it home, this area has long been popular among London-based stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers. There are elite private schools, fancy hair salons, Pilates studios and yoga classes at the disposal of players and their families.
Trevor Kearney, founder of property company The Private Office Real Estate, sums up what life is like as a Premier League footballer based around here: “If you go to Grappelli on a Saturday night then, no matter who you are, there is always someone more famous than you in the room.”
Grappelli, an Italian restaurant only a couple of hundred yards away from The Ivy Cobham Garden, is frequently visited by footballers and, alongside its pasta dishes, is known for its ebullient front-of-house manager, Eddy, who has become a friend to many of them.
(Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
During Eddy’s chat with The Athletic over coffee, several passers-by stop to say hello, while Chelsea player Cesare Casadei parks his Mercedes on the other side of the road before disappearing into a shop. Eddy says Casadei, a 21-year-old midfielder, is a “good guy”.
“Most of the footballers that come here are Chelsea players,” Eddy says. “Lots of old players still live in the area, so we have Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Ashley Cole… they are regulars and good friends with the owner.
“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 football, but I started following it because I needed to know who they are!”
During our conversation, Ryan Bertrand, the former Chelsea and England defender, pulls up in his car down the road. Yes, Eddy knows him, too. But with the most prominent players away on international duty at the moment, this is a relatively quiet morning in Cobham.
On the day The Athletic visited, Ahmed Alsanawi, a barber with 1.2 million Instagram followers whose social media posts show him cutting the hair of Hazard, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Reece James, among others, turned up in his yellow Lamborghini Urus.
“It’s trendy, it’s cool, but it has all the right fundamentals of what makes up a great community and environment,” Kearney says of the area. “When Chelsea arrived at Cobham, there was a mandate that the players need to live in a two-and-a-half-mile radius of the training ground, so that meant Cobham and Oxshott has seen a new breed and type of buyer.
“All of a sudden, you had this new breed of person, wealth and fame injected into it. It transformed it, but it was already headed in that direction.
“Chelsea didn’t change the market, they just turbo-fuelled it.”
Kearney estimates that around 100 footballers are living in this part of the county of Surrey, including the towns of Weybridge and Esher a few miles to the north. Many of them, particularly those of a Chelsea persuasion, reside near Cobham, though.
A typical house in the area — where gated mansions dominate (Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
“Chelsea moved here and then other players at different clubs, let’s say (their west London neighbours) Fulham, who didn’t want to be in central London, saw everyone was in Oxshott or Cobham and moved there instead,” Kearney says. “It’s the same at (south Londoners) Crystal Palace.
“It became the south’s hub for players. If you were at a north London club, you would stay relatively north. But if you lived more towards the south, then you were coming to Cobham or Oxshott.
“Even if you were further south, let’s say at Bournemouth (on the south coast), you would live in Cobham or Oxshott and commute. I had two friends playing for Stoke City (in the Midlands, north of Birmingham) who lived in Oxshott and got the train there because the family didn’t want to move as it was the perfect area for them.
“That shows the allure and pull of the area.”
It became common for the players from other top clubs in London, such as Palace, to make Oxshott their home and they would frequently travel to the training ground together. A Palace contingent of Joel Ward, Gary Cahill, Martin Kelly and Scott Dann, for example, used to link up in the mornings, collecting team-mate Jason Puncheon at the nearby Reigate junction of London’s orbital M25 motorway along the way.
According to data from Foxtons, a UK-based estate agency, the average price of a house in Cobham has doubled since Chelsea made this area their home in 2005. On average, houses were selling for just over £600,000 then, compared to more than £1.2million in 2024. The gated enclaves lining the private roads and populated by footballers are selling for much more than that latter figure.
Including Oxshott, Kearney estimates that footballers are spending around “£4m to £7m” on a house. Houses in Oxshott, though, are, on average, more expensive than those in Cobham, which is under four miles away.
“What Oxshott has is the Crown Estate,” Kearney explains. “The Crown Estate was once Crown land (property of the Royal family) and has an incredibly high-end housing estate with values from £3m to £20m. They are gated enclaves, safe environments, roads that were run by management companies and it is a super-smart setup.
“Oxshott was in that radius and it has an incredible school called Danes Hill. People were training in Cobham and a couple of minutes up the road is an amazing place to live, with knockout houses and a brilliant school, and it works for them.
“Cobham has a few of those estates, too, but not as big or as powerful as the Crown Estate. Oxshott has a little high street, but it hasn’t got an Ivy or a Grappelli’s. People who live in Oxshott would visit Cobham for the coffee spots, hair salons and restaurants.”
The drive of the Crown Estate (Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
In 2022, Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast international striker who left Chelsea in 2015 to play for Montreal in MLS, put his six-bedroom house on the Crown Estate up for sale for £6.25million, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. In 2014, the same newspaper also reported Terry sold two Oxshott properties for a combined £21.5m.
Players who choose to rent instead of buying, especially if they are arriving from a different country and are reluctant to commit to spending millions on a house, are spending anywhere from £15,000 to £30,000 a month. “The rental market is interesting because there isn’t enough good enough stock to come and rent,” Kearney says. “If I had a house that someone could move into today, it would go instantly.”
When it comes to a player getting a mortgage, banks will consider their career and trajectory before deciding on the terms of a deal.
Kearney notes how a lot of them can “very easily get high-leverage” mortgages, sometimes “up to 100 per cent”. The majority of these are spread over the length of the individual’s club contract, although exceptions can be made if a player is more established or quite clearly on their way to becoming a superstar.
Aside from a modern exterior and interior, along with a big enough garden to install a five-a-side pitch — Kearney says this is a more common request than you may think — the most important thing house-hunting footballers are looking for is safety and security.
The houses are imposing and worth millions (Dan Sheldon/The Athletic)
Footballers are often deemed easy targets by criminals who will know when a player is likely to be at training or playing in a match, maybe at the other end of the country or possibly overseas, due to their club’s schedule and fixture list.
In recent years, players’ houses have been targeted, including in Oxshott.
Chelsea and England forward Raheem Sterling’s home was broken into in December 2022, leading to him flying back from the World Cup in Qatar.
Four men were jailed in July 2017 after targeting Terry’s home in Oxshott in February 2017, as reported by the BBC, with the former Chelsea defender being told by Judge Susan Tapping in court that it “might have been a mistake to post a family photograph on social media to show that he was away on holiday”.
During that raid, the convicted burglars stole more than £220,000 of jewellery and designer handbags worth £126,000. “His home was deliberately targeted and the master bedroom suite was ransacked,” Judge Tapping said.
Sterling returned home from the World Cup in Qatar after his Surrey home was broken into (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
According to police.uk data, from October 2021 to the end of June 2024, 193 burglary offences were committed in Cobham and Oxshott, with the most prevalent crimes being violence and sexual offences (1,075) during the same period.
“Safety and security is paramount,” Kearney says. “I’ve also got a company that is a security service around players and that works phenomenally well. If you are buying a new house, they go in and make sure the basics are right, such as intercoms, CCTV, and everything like that, but also layering additional security depending on your needs.”
Safe rooms, panic buttons and patrol dogs have become commonplace. “They want to live really normal, unaffected lives, with the best technology and security systems in their house,” Kearney says.
Given the focus and attention placed on footballers, especially those playing at the highest level, living an ‘unaffected life’ almost seems implausible. But in Cobham, Oxshott and the wider Surrey area, that is something they, within reason, have been able to do. Their fellow local residents have become used to seeing them on a daily basis, whether that is Terry, who played 78 times for England, or the lesser-known ones such as Casadei.
As in Beverly Hills, the Los Angeles district that is home to actors, singers and other A-list celebrities, a Premier League footballer can turn up to a supermarket or restaurant in Cobham and, like Kearney says above, there is a good chance they will not be the most famous person there.
(Top photos: Daniel Sheldon/The Athletic; design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic)
Sports
Jon Jones requests UFC release after Dana White says legend was ‘never’ considered him for White House card
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Mixed martial arts legend Jon Jones ended his retirement from UFC simply because he wanted a spot on the “Freedom 250” fight card at the White House in June.
But, when UFC CEO Dana White announced the card during UFC 326 this past weekend, Jones wasn’t among the fighters. As a result, he has requested a release from his UFC contract.
White was candid when asked about Jones following the UFC 326 card.
Jon Jones of the United States of America reacts after his TKO victory against Stipe Miocic of the United States of America in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York City. ((Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images))
“Never, ever, ever, which I told you guys a hundred thousands times, was Jon Jones ever even remotely in my mind to fight at the White House,” White explained, per CBS Sports. “Some guy with Meta Glasses filmed him talking about his hips – that his hips are so bad. And I don’t know if you guys saw that flag football game where he can barely run. Jon Jones retired because of his hips. He’s got arthritis in his hips. Apparently, doctors say he should have a hip replacement.”
White added that “the Jon Jones thing is bulls—,” saying that he texted the fighter’s lawyer saying he would never be on the White House card despite Jones saying he was in negotiations for it.
UFC ANNOUNCES CARD FOR WHITE HOUSE EVENT
The Meta Glasses incident White is referring to came from a viral video, where Jones, unaware he was being filmed, discussed issues with his hips to a fan.
On Monday, Jones composed a thorough response to White’s comments about him and the White House Card. He previously posted and deleted social media explanations, but Monday’s appeared to be his final statement on the matter.
UFC President Dana White speaks after UFC Fight Night at Toyota Center on Feb. 21, 2026. (Troy Taormina/Imagn Images)
“Yes, I have arthritis in my hip and it’s painful, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” Jones, who retired a heavyweight champion in 2025, said. “So let me get this straight, if I had accepted the lowball offer, suddenly my hip would be fine and I’d be on the White House card? That doesn’t make sense. I even received stem cell treatment last week to get ready for the White House card, and training camp was scheduled to start today. I was preparing to be ready.
“I understand business deals fall through sometimes, but going out publicly and saying things that aren’t true isn’t right. After everything I’ve given to the UFC, the years, the title defenses, the fights, hearing that I’m ‘done’ is disappointing. Especially when as recently as Friday UFC was calling me trying to get me on that White House card for a much lower number.”
Jones finished his statement by saying he “respectfully” asks to be released from his UFC contract.
Jon Jones enters the ring before facing Stipe Miocic in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City, New York. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
“No more spins, no more games. Thank you to the real fans who know what’s up,” he wrote.
The UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.
Jones is considered one of the best UFC fighters of all time, owning a 28-1-1 record, which includes his last bout with Stipe Miocic, knocking him out to take the heavyweight title belt. He is also a two-time light heavyweight champion.
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Twelve days ago the U.S., a World Cup host country, launched a full-scale bombing campaign against Iran, a country that has qualified to play in the tournament. That’s never happened before.
Five days later, that same World Cup host began military operations inside the borders of Ecuador, another World Cup qualifier, half a world away. That’s never happened before either.
With the tournament scheduled to kick off in three months, those events have soccer scholar Jonathan Wilson questioning whether it’s wise for the World Cup to go on at all.
“It seems to me, for each passing day, it’s less and less likely that the World Cup can happen,” he said.
That take seems unduly alarmist said David Goldblatt, a British sportswriter and sociologist who is a visiting professor at Pitzer College in Claremont. Anything short of a full-scale war inside the U.S. would not be enough to pull the plug on the tournament now, he said. Especially with FIFA expecting revenues of as much as $11 billion.
“I mean, it’s not a good look,” Goldblatt conceded. “And certainly when set against FIFA’s official pronouncements on its role in encouraging world peace and cosmopolitan celebrations of a universal humanity, none of that sits terribly easily.
“But in terms of actually running the World Cup, I don’t think it’s going to make very much difference at all.”
However, with the Trump administration open to engaging in more international conflicts, there’s little doubt this World Cup, the largest and most complex in history, will also be the most political in history as well.
Complicating things further is the fact the current conflict in the Middle East hasn’t been limited to just the U.S. and Iran. Iranian missiles have hit both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, and Jordan has fired on U.S. assets.
Those three countries are World Cup qualifiers as well.
The fate of a soccer tournament pales in importance to the death and destruction the conflagration in the Middle East has produced, of course. But the need for unity is the very reason there’s a World Cup in the first place.
When French soccer administrator Jules Rimet founded the tournament 96 years ago, he believed soccer could be a tool for international peace. And in the early years of the tournament, Rimet, FIFA’s longest-serving president and a talented diplomat, was able to limit the impact of geopolitics on the World Cup, watering down Mussolini’s influence on the 1934 World Cup, for example, and steering the 1938 tournament away from Hitler’s Germany.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has taken a far different approach, courting President Donald Trump’s support despite his growing number of global conflicts.
A week before bombs began falling on Iran, Infantino appeared at the inaugural meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace wearing a red cap with ‘USA’ on the front and the numbers ‘45-47’ — a reference to Trump’s non-consecutive presidencies. That act was so blatantly partisan, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said her organization would investigate whether Infantino, an IOC member, breached the terms of the group’s charter, which requires members to act independent of political interests.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino holds up a USA hat as he attends the inaugural meeting for the Board of Peace at the Institute of Peace in Washington on Feb. 19.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
“Infantino has absolutely breached every FIFA protocol on neutrality,” said Wilson, author of “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”
“Absolute neutrality is always impossible and not desirable, but it has clearly gone way, way, way beyond. The peace prize looked grotesque at the time. It looks even worse now. And I can’t see how the future will look kindly on Infantino. I think Infantino has to some extent legitimized Trump.”
This is hardly new behavior from Infantino, who had close relationships with Vladimir Putin ahead of the 2018 tournament played in Russia and Qatar’s leaders ahead of the 2022 tournament despite their well-known human rights violations.
The list of countries Infantino is asking to overlook poor relations with the country hosting the majority of World Cup games this summer is growing.
Consider that Denmark, which administers Greenland, an autonomous territory Trump has also threatened to invade, can qualify for the tournament in a European playoff that will take place later this month. Then there’s World Cup qualifiers Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal, who aren’t at war with the U.S. but whose citizens have been banned from entering the country to cheer for their teams. That completely contradicts a promise from Infantino, who said “everybody will be welcome” at the 2026 World Cup.
“If I had a crystal ball I could tell you now what is going to happen,” Heimo Schirgi, the World Cup chief operating officer for FIFA, said Monday. “But obviously the situation is developing. It’s changing day by day and we are monitoring closely. [But] the World Cup will go on right? The World Cup is too big and we hope that everyone can participate that has qualified.”
Goldblatt, the Pitzer professor, said Infantino’s action are understandable since he has few cards to play against Trump.
President Trump speaks as he receives the FIFA Peace Prize as FIFA president Gianni Infantino applauds on Dec. 5 the Kennedy Center in Washington.
(Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
“What’s Infantino going to do? What levers can you pull?” he asked. “You can threaten to take it away. That’s not happening. Moral admonishment? Who’s going to take that from FIFA? It is a farcical idea that anybody thinks that the president of FIFA has any kind of collective moral authority or any role as a spokesperson for the progressive part of the world.
“They may fantasize that this is the case. But it is morally and politically absurd that any of us should expect that of these people. So if you are Infantino and that is the case, you know what works with Trump? What works is flattery. So of course he’s gone down that path.”
The games, Goldblatt said, will go on even if bombs are still falling. And that may not be an entirely bad thing.
“Football’s a great distraction. That’s partly why it’s so popular,” he said. “It will be virtually impossible, if the war continues, for that not to be a central element of like, the meaning and the purpose of what we’re all doing here.
“How we’ll feel and what it will look like, I don’t know. It will be very strange. Football is unpredictable and extraordinary. Something will happen that will warm our souls.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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Australia granted asylum to five players from the Iranian women’s soccer team who were visiting for a tournament when the U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran began.
Australian federal police officers on Tuesday transported the five women from their hotel in Gold Coast, Australia, to a “safe location” after they made asylum requests to meet with Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and to finalize the processing of their humanitarian visas.
“Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian Women’s Soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here,” Burke said on X.
The move comes after the team refused to sing the Iranian anthem before their first Women’s Asian Cup match early last week against South Korea, although they later sang and saluted the anthem in two subsequent matches, including ahead of their final match, when they were eliminated by the Philippines.
IRANIAN WOMEN’S SOCCER FANS SHOW SUPPORT FOR TRUMP AS TEAM APPEARS TO PIVOT ON NATIONAL ANTHEM STANCE
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke poses with five Iranian women soccer players who have been granted asylum in Australia, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Australia Ministry of Home Affairs)
“I don’t want to begin to imagine how difficult that decision is for each of the individual women, but certainly last night it was joy, it was relief,” Burke told reporters after signing the documents. “People were very excited about embarking on a life in Australia.”
The five women said they were happy for their names and pictures to be published, according to Burke, who emphasized that the players wanted to make clear that they were not political activists.
The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the tournament before the war against Iran began on Feb. 28.
After the team was eliminated from the tournament over the weekend, they faced potentially returning to a country still under bombardment. The team’s head coach, Marziyeh Jafari, said on Sunday the players “want to come back to Iran as soon as we can.”
An official squad list named 26 players, as well as Jafari and other coaches.
While only five players were granted asylum, Burke said the offer was given to everyone on the team.
IRAN FLAG REMOVED FROM PARALYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY AFTER SOLE ATHLETE WITHDRAWS OVER TRAVEL SAFETY CONCERNS
Iran players during their national anthem ahead of the Women’s Asian Cup soccer match between Iran and the Philippines in Robina, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAPImage via AP)
“These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realize they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making,” Burke said. “The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.”
It remains unclear when the remaining players will leave Australia.
“Australians have been moved by the plight of these brave women,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters. “They’re safe here and they should feel at home here.”
“They then had to consider that and do it in a way that did not present any danger to them or to their families and friends back home in Iran,” he continued.
The asylum offer came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called on Australia to grant asylum to any team member who wanted it.
Trump had blasted Australia on social media, saying Australia was “making a terrible humanitarian mistake” by allowing the team to be “forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”
Supporters react towards a bus transporting Iranian woman players following their Women’s Asian Cup soccer match against the Philippines on the Gold Coast, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAP Image via AP)
“The U.S. will take them if you won’t,” Trump said, despite his administration’s efforts to limit the number of immigrants in the U.S. who can receive asylum for political purposes.
Just hours later, Trump praised Albanese in another post.
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“He’s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way,” Trump wrote.
Albanese said Trump had called him for “a very positive conversation,” about the issue. The prime minister said he explained “the action that we’d undertaken over the previous 48 hours” to support the women.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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