Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho sees Kurt Zouma as John Terry's eventual successor.

Zouma, 20, shone as an emergency defensive midfielder in Chelsea's Capital One Cup final win on Sunday.

Mourinho said: "They (Terry and Zouma) are different players. Sometimes you get replicas of players.

"Other times you can't do it, and if you can't Zouma now is 20, so one day Zouma will be 23 or 24 and will be a player of great maturity and probably leadership, too, to replace John.

"Zouma is playing more than I expected, more than he expected, more than everyone expected. So he's getting very important experience."

He added: "When he gets caps with France and is playing with Chelsea at this level his development will have an acceleration.

"We bought him because of his physical profile, but we were not happy with his tactical knowledge of the game.

"We trusted we could give that to him. In pre-season, I saw mistakes in Germany against Werder Bremen. Mistakes in Hungary against Ferencvaros.

"I thought 'No problem, it will take time.' He's bright, humble, wants to work and learn, listens and is intelligent, so he's had an acceleration in that process to bring him to a level where he is competing with Gary Cahill.

"I thought in pre-season that Branislav Ivanovic would be my first option to replace John and Gary, but certainly not any more."