Alfie Gilchrist came on for Chelsea in their 2-1 win over Crystal Palace to make his senior debut for the club.
The youngster opened up on what was going through his mind as he was told to warm up and then sent on for the final few minutes of the game.
"Sometimes I wouldn’t be sent out to warm up much in the second half, but I felt I was out warming up a bit more than normal, so I was thinking this could be it," revealed Gilchrist.
"The longer it stayed at 1-1, Alex [Matos] and I were looking at each other thinking “maybe this is not the game we’re going to be coming on”.
"Then we saw Jesus [Perez, assistant head coach] running down the line and realised what it meant. We looked at each other again as if to say “Which one of us is it?”.
"It was me, so I sprinted back to the bench and got changed. I was on the side ready to come on, but then there was a long wait for VAR when we got a penalty. So I had to warm up a bit more until they called me over again.
"I was standing there watching as we scored the penalty and waiting for the moment. My mouth had gone dry so I kept drinking water. I was just trying to prepare myself."
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