The esteemed football magazine World Soccer compiled a list of “the 50 most exciting teenagers on the planet” in 2007. A considerable number of those players – Juan Mata, Mesut Özil, Karim Benzema, Ivan Rakitić, Sergio Agüero and Gareth Bale – went on to earn millions, win the sport’s biggest prizes and find global stardom. Others – Giovani Dos Santos, Bojan Krkic and Gregory Van Der Wiel – carved out long, distinguished careers in the game. And a fair few of them – Sadick Adams, Dumitru Copil, Gerardo Bruna, Andrea Russotto, Nour Hadhria – were rarely as famous again. One of them, Breno Borges, was praised for his ability to “stride forward with the air of a Beckenbauer” but ended up in prison after he tried to burn down his own house.
Not much has changed in the last decade. Making predictions about teenage footballers remains a tricky business but for the last three years – 2014, 2015 and 2016 – we have assembled a group of experts to select the best young talents at Premier League clubs and academies around the world. A couple of the players chosen in 2014 have already made it on the big stage – Marcus Rashford has won the FA Cup, scored for England and taken his captain’s place at Manchester United, while Ousmane Dembélé has become a France international and earned a €15m move to Borussia Dortmund – but others are still developing and many more will never fulfil the potential we saw in them.
In the fullness of time we’ll discover how far these teenagers go but, while we’re waiting, why not join us in the fun of making predictions? Which young players have we missed from our lists – and who will go the furthest in the next decade?
