Tuttosport has finalised its 2026 Golden Boy shortlist, with 25 of Europe\u2019s most promising young players in contention for the award that will be presented in November. Lamine Yamal, who won the prize in 2024, is age-eligible again but cannot win it twice, while last year\u2019s winner D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Dou\u00e9 is also excluded from the list.<\/p>\n
That leaves a wide-open race, and the shortlist includes talent spread across several of the continent\u2019s biggest clubs. Sports Illustrated\u2019s ordering of the 25 nominees places Joane Gadou at 25, Jon Mart\u00edn at 24, Charalampos Kostoulas at 23, Franco Mastantuono at 22 and Kerim Alajbegovi\u0107 at 21. Rodrigo Mora follows at 20, Konstantinos Karetsas at 19, Sa\u00efd El Mala at 18, Gianluca Prestianni at 17, Finn Jeltsch at 16, Endrick at 15, Xavi Espart at 14, Est\u00eav\u00e3o at 13, Marc Bernal at 12 and Jorrel Hato at 11.<\/p>\n
Transfermarkt has worked with the award\u2019s organiser to produce a top 20, with five further wild cards added by an unnamed panel. None of those additions are viewed as genuine favourites, but several have cases worth noting. Xavi Espart\u2019s progress at Barcelona this season has drawn attention, while Franco Mastantuono has had a difficult start before showing signs of recovery in Florence. Joane Gadou is still only 19 and could be better placed for future editions.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Rodrigo Mora\u2019s move to Roma has given him a platform to build on, and Charalampos Kostoulas now has time to develop at Brighton. Marc Bernal continues to look comfortable at the highest level for Barcelona, while Finn Jeltsch has already made 57 appearances for Sebastian Hoene\u00df\u2019s side and is attracting interest from the La Liga leaders.<\/p>\n
There are also strong individual cases further down the list. Lennart Karl\u2019s 2025-26 season, which included double-digit goal contributions in just over 1,200 Bundesliga minutes and four Champions League goals, should have made him a serious top-10 candidate. Eli Junior Kroupi\u2019s breakthrough with Bournemouth was equally striking, while Rayan\u2019s performances for both club and country have strengthened his case. Myles Lewis-Skelly, Victor Froholdt, Luka Vu\u0161kovi\u0107, Warren Za\u00efre-Emery and Yan Diomande round out a shortlist with a wide spread of profiles and plenty of long-term potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuttosport\u2019s 2026 Golden Boy shortlist features 25 rising talents, with several leading cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2025],"tags":[1162,180,182],"class_list":["post-21580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-player-rankings","tag-analytics","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}