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Which Young Players Will be Stars?

Introduction

Over the years, I've shared results from my PlayerRatings model with lots of people, including a number of professional football clubs, and everybody always comes back with the same question - who are the best young players?

Let's take a look!

The Best Players Aged 21 or Under

Let's start off with the top 25 players aged 21 or under at the time of writing this article:

Name Team Age TransferMarkt Value £
1 Matthijs de Ligt Juventus 21 75.00m
2 Phil Foden Manchester City 20 70.00m
3 Alphonso Davies Bayern Munich 20 75.00m
4 Jadon Sancho Borussia Dortmund 21 100.00m
5 Erling Håland Borussia Dortmund 20 110.00m
6 Perr Schuurs Ajax 21 8.00m
7 Sergiño Dest Barcelona 20 25.00m
8 Ryan Gravenberch Ajax 18 28.00m
9 Mitchel Bakker Paris Saint Germain 20 10.00m
10 Pedri Barcelona 18 70.00m
11 João Félix Atlético Madrid 21 80.00m
12 Callum Hudson-Odoi Chelsea 20 35.00m
13 Mason Greenwood Manchester United 19 50.00m
14 Kai Havertz Chelsea 21 50.00m
15 Bukayo Saka Arsenal 19 50.00m
16 Ferrán Torres Manchester City 21 50.00m
17 Justin Kluivert RB Leipzig (loan from Roma) 21 14.00m
18 Moussa Diaby Bayer Leverkusen 21 38.00m
19 Jonathan David Lille 21 30.00m
20 Jens Petter Hauge Milan 21 10.00m
21 Óscar Mingueza Barcelona 21 10.00m
22 Aurélien Tchouaméni Monaco 21 25.00m
23 Antony Ajax 21 25.00m
24 Myron Boadu AZ Alkmaar 20 14.00m
25 Owen Wijndal AZ Alkmaar 21 15.00m

So that looks pretty reasonable to me. You may not agree with the exact list but there's nothing too controversial in there. They are all players who are getting regular first team minutes in some of the biggest leagues around Europe. Many of them are even full internationals despite being still being 21 or under.

They are also all already at big teams so if you are looking to recruit players with potential, then you are too late. These players have already been discovered and are probably on big contracts.

Let's try searching a bit younger and see if we can find the future stars before they hit the big time.

The Best Players Aged 17 or Under

Below I've got the top 50 players aged 17 or under at the time of writing this article. A lot of these players won't be getting first team minutes yet and it may well be a few years until they make a name for themselves. Some of them may not even make it in the game.

So, since it's going to take a while for this list to mature I'm going to keep the players anonymised to start with to avoid the temptation of judging the predictions too early. If / when players become well known, get bought up by bigger clubs or their value on Transfermarkt goes to £10.00m or above I'll reveal their names.

A few of the players already meet this criteria so are de-anonymised to start off with.

Name Team Age TransferMarkt Value £
1 Florian Wirtz Bayer Leverkusen 17 45.00m
2 Youssoufa Moukoko Borussia Dortmund 16 10.00m
3 Anonymous - 17 -
4 Anonymous - 17 -
5 Anonymous - 17 0.8m
6 Anonymous - 17 1.8m
7 Anonymous - 17 -
8 Anonymous - 15 -
9 Anonymous - 17 0.54
10 Anonymous - 17 4.5m
11 Anonymous - 17 -
12 Anonymous - 16 -
13 Anonymous - 17 0.18m
14 Anonymous - 17 -
15 Jude Bellingham Borussia Dortmund 17 35.00m
16 Anonymous - 17 -
17 Anonymous - 17 1.35m
18 Anonymous - 17 0.9m
19 Anonymous - 17 -
20 Anonymous - 17 -
21 Anonymous - 17 -
22 Anonymous - 17 -
23 Anonymous - 17 -
24 Anonymous - 17 3.15m
25 Anonymous - 17 0.45m
26 Anonymous - 17 -
27 Anonymous - 17 -
28 Anonymous - 17 -
29 Anonymous - 17 -
30 Anonymous - 17 1.08
31 Anonymous - 17 -
32 Anonymous - 17 -
33 Anonymous - 17 -
34 Anonymous - 17 -
35 Anonymous - 17 -
36 Anonymous - 17 -
37 Anonymous - 16 -
38 Anonymous - 17 -
39 Anonymous - 16 -
40 Anonymous - 16 -
41 Anonymous - 17 0.27m
42 Anonymous - 17 1.35m
43 Anonymous - 17 -
44 Anonymous - 17 -
45 Anonymous - 16 -
46 Anonymous - 17 -
47 Anonymous - 16 -
48 Anonymous - 17 0.585m
49 Anonymous - 17 -
50 Anonymous - 17 1.08m

Conclusions

I have no idea what a good hit rate is here, one out of the 50 going on to have a good career? Five? Ten? More?

The model is already flagging the players who are well known (to me at least), such as Florian Wirtz and Jude Bellingham, which is reassuring. However, the model only has information on youth football for many of the players so I'm really intrigued as to how predictive these types of fixtures will actually be!

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