10. Antonio Silva
Club: Benfica
Nation: Portugal
Age: 19
Defenders' best work comes in stark black-and-white – but it's in the grey areas that Antonio Silva fascinates. Smart and brave, athletic and well-positioned, an expert in stopping the ball getting past him and, well, pretty good at putting it in the back of the net.
Comparisons to Van Dijks, De Ligts and Ramoses are apt. Silva is leggy, strong and a leader at the back. He's still raw but he has notable composure: he loves nothing more than to fly in with all the aggression of peak Pepe and yet he's deft in possession, too. Defenders don't tend to look quite so multi-faceted at such a young age.
9. Alejandro Balde
Club: Barcelona
Nation: Spain
Age: 19
The last superstar through Barcelona's La Masia setup with Bissau-Guinean ancestry was Ansu Fati. The latest is Alejandro Balde, who's managed to do what the Brighton loanee couldn't and cement his place in Xavi's starting line-up.
Balde is only a full-back on paper. He's cut from the cloth of classic wingers, getting forward for overlaps, yet he's comfortable underlapping too, a la Alphonso Davies. He's already displaced Jordi Alba, got the No.3 shirt and he looks like the finishing puzzle piece in the 4-3-3, enabling Joao Felix to sit in the halfspace where he's truly dangerous.
Full-backs are changing once again. 30 years ago, they didn't charge up and down the flanks like this – now, they drift in or sit back. Balde, incredibly, is a throwback – to a recent time at least. But he's so dynamic, so key to Barça already that he makes this style look so relevant and so much fun.
8. Ousmane Diomande
Club: Sporting
Nation: Ivory Coast
Age: 19
Centre-backs shouldn't hold this much authority so young. It took Virgil van Dijk years organising Southampton's defence, Ruben Dias cut his teeth leading Benfica's backline in the shadows.
Ousmane Diomande looks fully-formed already: he has the aura of a much older commander at the heart of Sporting's defence. The Ivorian is physically elite already and intelligent to match. He's excellent in recovery, equally good driving forward and his reading of the game is fantastic. There are so few young footballers this complete in their respective position.
7. Gabriel Moscardo
Club: Corinthians
Nation: Brazil
Age: 17
Argentina have Federico Redondo, Brazil have Gabriel Moscardo. Both are elite young talents who could end up defining the defensive midfield role for the big two in South America over the next decade, with Moscardo taking the nettle from Casemiro in the next few years.
There's a Declan Rice resemblance, for sure. Moscardo is virtually unpressable in his own third, can stride through the middle of the pitch with ease and his defensive awareness is already lightyears ahead of his age group. His passing range is great – he can loft a long ball or ping one to players around him – and his long-legged gait makes him inevitable when he bears down on attackers.
Where he goes is still uncertain. What is obvious, however, is that Moscardo will own the centre of whichever pitch he plays on.
6. Endrick
Club: Palmeiras (joining Real Madrid in 2024)
Nation: Brazil
Age: 16
"I'll be persistent and try until the last minute I'm in the game," Endrick once said of his breakneck style. "I never give up, I pressure defenders, I run more than anyone else on the pitch."
165 goals in 169 games for Palmeiras youth teams certainly suggests similar. There's a question as to how he will mature once he's not the strongest player physically on a pitch but that only adds to the intrigue. His ferocious shot feels un-Brazilian – his physical speed is impressive, of course, but the speed that his mind works at in the penalty box is what has delivered so much so far.
At £50 million, he'll become the next Samba Galactico through the Bernabeu doors, after Real Madrid lined up to lay gifts of gravity and light at his feet to seduce him. The story may only be beginning: let's see how his breakneck trajectory develops.
5. Evan Ferguson
Club: Brighton & Hove Albion
Nation: Republic of Ireland
Age: 18
Harry Kane came within 50 of Alan Shearer's fated 260 Premier League goals, departing for Germany in the end. Weeks after his exit, Evan Ferguson picked up the fallen baton from the England captain, with a first senior hat-trick in English football against Newcastle United.
Ferguson is Kane's natural successor in the poise with which he wallops the ball, his instinctive movement in the 18-yard box and the way he uses his body. Whether he can add Kane's passing range and drift out of the box remains to be seen – but he has everything else you'd want from a complete No.9. He's taken to senior football with precious little adaptation time: just as he can swivel from any position within range to hit the target, he's looked as natural as you like when dropped into Brighton's lineup.
After Grealishes and Rices, it doesn't look like he'll succeed Kane in the England team, however. Ferguson is Ireland's next big superstar – and he could well be the Premier League's.
4. Arda Guler
Club: Real Madrid
Nation: Turkey
Age: 18
Watching Arda Guler in limited appearances for Fenerbahce, FFT noted that he already has both spheres of an elite playmaker. The role requires one to make the pitch as big as possible and to always drop possession into a better space than the place you received it. It's a long slog – and most playmakers don't realise their potential until late in their 20s.
Arda Guler is special: you have to be, to be compared with the likes of Mesut Ozil and Lionel Messi. He has the same velvet sweep with his left foot, similar 8K vision – but watch his movements and you'll see the whole of the game. In a Real Madrid side of muscle and bustle, he looks primed to be the artist – yet the signs are good that he could become a pure output machine, should he find himself in the right spaces.
Players this inexperienced don't often make the step up to 14-time European champions without a stepping stone. That in itself is hugely exciting – just watch him take Madrid by storm.
3. Lamine Yamal
Club: Barcelona
Nation: Spain
Age: 16
When Lamine Yamal started his first-ever Barcelona game last month, he not only became the youngest ever player to do so, he was applauded off the field by the opposition. Cadiz fans realised they were witnessing history.
Wingers have come, gone and been produced at Barcelona but Yamal is different to most. Fittingly for a La Masia graduate, he won't make a career for himself using raw pace or explosive energy to beat players: he'll use his intelligence. He's composed, tactically astute and whether in wide spaces or centrally, he has an almost unrivalled picture of what's happening around him.
Starting for the champions (and being relied on, no less) when you're not old enough to drink is special in any country – but to do so for a club with such a rich tradition and precise way of playing? Only the best do that. Yamal seems measured enough to take the plaudits in his stride: he might not receive too many from opponents if he keeps tearing them apart, mind.
2. Warren Zaire-Emery
Club: Paris Saint-Germain
Nation: France
Age: 17
Marco Verratti was adored: he may well go down as a cult hero with status a peg or two above 'Streets Will Never Forget' for his midfield mastery but lack of moments watched by half the globe. That Luis Enrique and the PSG hierarchy didn't mind dismissing him for a 17-year-old boy is incredible.
This is an institution that has struggled, remember, to implement the best French talent into its ranks, despite a wealth of it elsewhere in the country and within the academy itself. Yet WZE feels like a complete midfielder already, despite the fact he's too young to remember a time before PSG ruled Ligue 1. He can dictate games, not just with his passing but his physical movements, his ability to drop a shoulder, his awareness of what's around him and where he needs to be at any given moment. It's frightening how good he is already.
France in the last decade has produced Pogbas, Camavingas, Tchouamenis… and Zaire-Emery is something particularly interesting in comparison. He controls tempo and he seems more than able to orchestrate a team of players almost double his age. But he can do it all. He's a jewel in this crown.
1. Gavi
Club: Barcelona
Nation: Spain
Age: 19
In a FFT World Cup in Motion episode, Spanish football expert Andy Murray pondered whether Gavi's build could see him succeed Sergio Busquets in time. Well, he spent much of last season on the wing. He really does feel like all the best bits of the most celebrated academy on Earth.
Pablo Gavira is essentially capable of whatever Xavi asks. He's composed, his passing is exquisite, his movement looks choreographed and his pausa is beautiful to watch. It's like he's being controlled by remote: he's able to receive, turn, swivel and stop to a halt. He's excellent in all phases of play. He seems capable of absorbing information and bossing midfields in equal part.
For those of us who watched Barça change football in the 2000s, Gavi is a tribute to everything we loved – but as football evolves in the 2020s, it's fascinating to see how a player this fully-formed so early in his development will influence the future of positional-play, so-called 'tiki-taka' or Juego de Posicion. Gavi is both effortless and everything: he is the next decade of Spanish football.
