PREMIER LEAGUE starlets dominated the list of Europe’s top young football talents.
The 25-player “absolute best” shortlist for the Golden Boy award included NINE current Prem aces, including Arsenal and England left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly and Tottenham’s Archie Gray.
It also has two players on Chelsea’s books but currently elsewhere PLUS Jobe Bellingham – whose elder brother Jude was the winner in 2023.
Paris Saint-Germain’s teenage sensation Desire Doue is the favourite to take the title, based on performances by players under the age of 21.
Last year’s winner Barcelona wing sensation Lamine Lamal – like all previous award winners – is ineligible to win it a second time.
But the number of Prem stars is a further signal of the growth of the English game.
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Jude Bellingham became the third English winner of the award – first presented in 2003 and devised by Turin-based TuttoSport – after Wayne Rooney and Raheem Sterling.
Other winners have included Cesc Fabregas, Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Paul Pogba, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland.
Lewis-Skelly, who earned his sixth England cap in the win in Latvia on Tuesday, was joined on the shortlist by Arsenal team-mate Ethan Nwaneri.
Gray and fellow Spurs ace Lucas Bergvall completed the North London contingent, with Chelsea’s Brazilian sensation Estevao Willian and Dutch defender Jorrel Hato also included.
The Prem’s North West Big Three each had a player named – Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly, Leny Yoro of Manchester United and Liverpool’s currently crocked Italian defender Giovanni Leoni.
In addition, defender Mamadou Sarr, on loan from Chelsea at Strasbourg, and Porto’s Geovany Quenda, who has a deal to join the Blues in the summer, were also named.
That adds up to 11 of the 25 on the books of Prem clubs, plus Jobe Bellingham – who left Sunderland to move to follow in his sibling’s Borussia Dortmund footsteps in the summer, and defender Dean Huijsen, who joined Real Madrid from Bournemouth in June.
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