The prestigious Golden Boy award will once again be handed out later this year, with Europe’s top talents all battling to add the prize to their blossoming CVs.
Unlike many other awards, the Golden Boy can only be won once, so there’s always a new winner to celebrate each and every year.
2023’s victor, Jude Bellingham, will watch the crowning of a new ultimate wonderkid, with the initial shortlist of 100 players now whittled down to the final 20.
Here’s who made the cut, ranked by their likelihood to win the win award.
Making the final Golden Boy shortlist is an achievement in itself, but it’s fair to say a number of players won’t be in consideration to win the award.
Oscar Gloukh and Adam Wharton are two extremely promising prospects, plying their trade at Salzburg and Crystal Palace respectively, while big things are expected of young Valencia centre-back Cristhian Mosquera.
Samu Omorodion was one of the summer transfer window’s hottest commodities and he’s proving why after an electric start to life at Porto. Desire Doue was another big mover to Paris Saint-Germain, but his achievements at Rennes are unlikely to get him noticed.
Kenan Yildiz, Jamie Gittens and Leny Yoro all have huge futures ahead of them, while Jorrel Hato has already captained Ajax and does not even turn 19 until March 2025.
As for Rico Lewis, he’s knocking on the door of a regular starting gig at Manchester City – if that doesn’t tell you how talented the versatile defender is, nothing will.
After a steady debut season with Bayern Munich, Mathys Tel had the unenviable task of trying to improve while watching his club splash out on Harry Kane to play instead of him.
The 19-year-old showed an ability to diversify his game as he transitioned from a striker into a winger, allowing him to make 41 appearances in all competitions last season. He racked up ten goals and six assists for good measure.
Helping Tel’s statistics stand out further is the fact he actually started just ten games. That productivity rate is up there with the best.
Injuries derailed Arda Guler’s start to life with Real Madrid, but the Turkish wizard ended the 2023/24 campaign in the sort of sublime form we all expected him to display several months earlier.
Guler scored six goals in just 373 La Liga minutes, before heading to Euro 2024 to play an integral role in Turkiye’s run to the quarter-final.
Regular minutes are what’s needed next in Guler’s career, but the 19-year-old can still be satisfied at this stage.
Since the summer of 2023, few players have enjoyed the same sort of meteoric rise as Bayern’s Aleksandar Pavlovic.
Handed his senior debut in October 2023 in response to Bayern’s failure to sign Joao Palhinha, Pavlovic quickly made the most of the opportunity handed to him. The towering, powerful midfielder started 14 games last season and is now a permanent starter, despite Palhinha finally making the move last summer.
A Germany call-up came earlier this year, and 20-year-old Pavlovic now appears to be a fixture of his country’s future.
The breakout star of the 2023/24 La Liga season, Savinho’s return of nine goals and ten assists for a Girona side who had no right to be as good as they were quickly saw him linked with Europe’s elite.
Manchester City used their CFG links to win the race for his signature, and the Brazil international quickly picked up where he left off.
As close to a regular starter as you get in a Pep Guardiola team, Savinho has made an immediate impact in the Premier League and looks like a star of the future.
The excitement surrounding Pau Cubarsi has faded somewhat, but that’s because his supreme performance levels have simply become the norm. He doesn’t feel like the kid playing for Barcelona anymore, but rather the anchor in their defence.
Still only 17 years old, Cubarsi showed his senior teammates how it should be done as the Blaugrana climbed to the top of the La Liga standings under new manager Hansi Flick.
There are still flashes of inexperience, but it would be more concerning if there wasn’t considering we are still in the infancy of Cubarsi’s career. The future is terrifyingly bright.
Like Cubarsi, Warren Zaire-Emery almost feels like a victim of his own success. He’s been a regular starter for Paris Saint-Germain since the end of the 2022/23 season, and is somehow still only 18 years old.
Zaire-Emery is flirting with 100 appearances for one of the world’s top teams, and they’re not just hand-out minutes either. This is a key fixture in a side who are once again tipped to make some serious noise in the Champions League.
The shadow of Kylian Mbappe has been lifted, allowing Zaire-Emery the chance to be the next star of the PSG project. It’s a matter of time.
The speed at which Kobbie Mainoo went from academy talent to arguably Manchester United‘s top performer was dazzling.
Injury derailed his start to the 2023/24 season, but once the midfielder returned, he stamped his authority all over the senior game, commanding minutes under Erik ten Hag with his composure on the ball and even forcing his way into the England squad.
The only thing working against Mainoo at this point is longevity. If he can improve on this level over the coming years, the individual honours will start flooding in.
Case in point. Alejandro Garnacho has been starring for Man Utd since late 2022 despite the fact he only turned 20 this past summer.
A devastating dribbler with a reliable end product, Garnacho feels like the archetypal £100m player, and that price tag is surely only going to rise as he continues to inch closer to his full potential.
United struck gold when they lured him over from Atletico Madrid in 2020. Even the scouts who found him can’t have predicted they’d get such an immediate return on their investment.
Benfica love churning out wonderkids. Midfielder Joao Neves emerged from the conveyor belt in 2023, and it soon became clear that this young metronome was special.
Clubs watched him spend the 2023/24 season as a permanent starter before the chequebooks came out. PSG signed off on a £59m deal and sat him alongside Zaire-Emery, creating perhaps the most exciting midfield pairing anywhere in football.
Neves grabbed two assists in each of his first two Ligue 1 appearances, announcing himself on the global stage with real flair.
At this point, you’ve probably heard of this guy.
You only get to win the Golden Boy award once, and 2024 will be the year of Lamine Yamal, who needed 12 months to go from an unknown La Masia talent to arguably one of the top wingers on the planet.
Yamal racks up goals and assists for Barcelona, but he also plays an integral role for his country, having been named the best young player at Euro 2024 after inspiring Spain to glory.
He only turned 17 in July, by the way.
