In a day and age where footballers are bursting onto the stage and taking the headlines younger and younger each time, and in the social media-driven age that requires comparison to define value, individual awards for young footballers grow not only in appeal, but in importance as well.
Achievements are always the centre of the attention, trophies, goals, plays that made headlines… at Sofascore, however, we’ve always loved to scratch beneath the surface, or, to be more precise, to dig deep into it.
So, when France Football Announced the shortlist for the Kopa Trophy, their annual award for the world’s best footballer under the age of 21, we took no time in comparing the youngsters that found themselves on the list to see how things would pan out if the sole criteria was raw data. Below you will find the list of ten nominated footballers, ranked by their average Sofascore rating in the period for which the award is given, between August 2024 and July 2025.
#10 – Ayyoub Bouaddi – Lille
Clocking in at number ten, we have Lille’s defensive midfield prodigy. In October 2023, aged 16 years and three days, he became the youngest-ever player to play in a European club competition when he made his debut. A season later, his importance in Lille’s midfield is increasingly growing.
Bouaddi is dynamic midfielder and covers a lot of ground, very useful in both ways, but his ball-winning work is particularly impressive.
The time is most definitely on his side, and should his eye-catching performances continue in Lille, it won’t be long before we see him at the very top.
#9 – Miles Lewis-Skelly – Arsenal
This young man’s stellar rise might be the best testament to his quality. He’s one of just two players on the shortlist who’s made his senior football debut this season, back in September against Manchester City. Lewis-Skelly is what many talk about as the prototype of the next generation’s full-back.
A centre-midfielder through most of his formation process, he gradually moved towards the left-back position and that’s where he usually features in Arteta’s side as well. His technical ability allows him to drift into central zones, providing additional numbers in midfield during build-up. His physical capacities, on the other side, make him more than able to run up and down the flank on both ends.
A product of the famous Hale End academy, Lewis-Skelly will join a list of players who’ve come up through the ranks to take Arsenal back to the pinnacle of world football.
#8 – Pau Cubarsí – Barcelona
A proper man with a boy’s face. A footballer whose composure and collected manner never give away his young age and lack of experience.
Promoted to the first team by Xavi Hernández, Cubarsí didn’t take too much time to impress at the centre of Barça’s defence. His partnerthip with Martínez last season was the talk of the town, the aggressive offside line that caused so many attackers to celebrate their goals too early was one of Barcelona’s best weapons.
In dealing with opponent’s threats Cubarsí leaves the impression of a seasoned veteran. Once the ball is at his feet, you again see a young boy playing in the park. It’s exactly that mentality switch that allows him to play often risky passes that end up breaking the opponent’s lines whenever he sees them. And he sees them a lot.
#7 – Rodrigo Mora – Porto
Rodrigo Mora is the next in line of the Portuguese wizards with the ball, a dynamic, technically gifted attacking midfielder equally comfortable between the lines and isolated on the flank.
Much like Lewis-Skelly, Mora needed no time to impress and catch the attention of the world. He’d only made his debut in September and by the end of the season he became the focal point not only of Porto’s future, but very much of their present as well.
A slick, elusive dribbler with a special instinct for a cool finish, Mora’s ten league goals have made him the highest-scoring u-20 footballer in Europe’s top seven leagues. The future is most definitely looking bright for him.
#6 – Kenan Yıldız – Juventus
The mix of Turkish brilliant talent and Germany’s impeccable formation has proved to be a hit on so many occassions that the people in FC Bayern München’s academy must’ve imagined a brilliant future for their club with Kenan Yıldız, but fate had different plans.
After winning the race with Barcelona for the youngster’s signature in July 2022, Juventus slowly nurtured him into the first-team, handing him his debut in August 2023. The big statement, however, came at the end of that season, when the club announced that Yıldız will be taking over the #10 shirts, following the footsteps of Bianconeri legends such as Alessandro Del Piero and Paulo Dybala.
With that he’s done this season, especially bearing in mind his age of 20, it all suggests that Juve have found a successor worthy of such a big number.
#5 – Dean Huijsen – Bournemouth/Real Madrid
And if Juve’s organization and the people working in the youth sector deserve praise for their job with Yıldız, then we could argue they deserve criticism for the way they’ve dealt with Dean Huijsen.
For whatever reason, after signing him in 2021, handing him his first-team debut and loaning him to the fellow Serie A outfit of Roma, Juventus decided that Bournemouth’s offer of €15M was enough to let Dean Huijsen go.
Less than a year later, Huijsen is now a Real Madrid player and one of the hottest upcoming centre-backs in the game. Bornemouth earned almost 4x as much as they paid Juventus, and, given the football Huijsen played in The Prem, it’s no surprise. Much like Cubarsí, his overall calmness and the collected approach to the game is very impressive. His height makes him a serious aerial presence as well, and that’s always been an important element for big teams.
Spain have got themselves quite a centre-back pairing for the future!
#4 – Estêvão – Palmerias, joined Chelsea on July 14th
The only name on the list that played it’s club football outside Europe and that really speaks volumes. The Club World Cup was the first instance that a bigger audience got to see Estêvão, and he did not disappoint.
But, by the time that the general public got the grasp of this young man, Chelsea have already secured a deal after following what he’d been doing back home in Brazil with Palmeiras.
He now seems to be ready to take the next step and become a household name in world football for years to come.
#3 – João Neves – Paris SG
Even though they might’ve missed out on the official title of the world champions after Chelsea picked them apart in the CWC final in July, all would agree, from TV pundits to casuals, that PSG were the best team in the world last season.
Their strength laid not in the hands of one inspired individual, even though Ousmane Dembélé had an incredible season, but in the work they all did as a team. And one of the most important pieces of that puzzle was João Neves. The young defensive midfielder was of importance in almost every phase of the game – during build-up, in the final third, in defensive transition…
Neves made the clock tick with his fine movement and passing, and got the recognition he deserved for his excellent, though at first sight invisible work.
#2 – Désiré Doué – Paris SG
If Neves was tasked with doing the invisible work in PSG, Doué was handed the very visible one – the end product. The unmistakeable, the undeniable.
Well… they chose a great guy for the job. More than few eyebrows were raised last August when Les Parisiens cashed out €50M to buy Doué from Rennes, as most of the fans simply haven’t seen too much of the Frenchmen in action.
But that was to change quickly. Doué hit the ground of the biggest stage running and never looked back. Week after week after week of goals, assists and mesmerizing moves, all culminating with a brace and an assist in the UCL final in Munich to earn the highest-ever Sofascore rating in a Champions League final. And, as every other name on the list, Doué is just getting started as well.
#1 – Lamine Yamal – Barcelona
Sometimes in football, as well as in life, words are not enough. But very, very rarely, in football at least, the numbers are not enough either. On this particular occasion, with this particular player, we cannot guarantee that words and numbers together would be enough.
Having just turned 18 a few weeks ago, Lamine Yamal already has a Kopa trophy to his name. So, what was left next was to mount a challenge for the Ballon d’Or. And that’s exactly what he did. He entered a dimension that was unknown both to him and, many would agree with the author on this one, to any other teenager in the history of the beautiful game.
Barça enjoyed a very successful season, completing the domestic treble and reaching the semifinals of the Champions League. In a team led by Robert Lewandowski’s irreplaceable experience, in a season when Raphinha put up unexplicably good numbers, when crunch time hit the clock, Lamine Yamal took over. Again and again. And again. Scoring, setting up goals, driving defenders crazy, everything, everything went through him.
That became blatantly obvious in the semifinal match against Inter, where Barça found themselves down by two after 20 minutes, only for Lamine Yamal to take over the show and get the game level before halftime.
Two Kopa trophies? Never done before. Kopa and Ballon d’Or in the same year? Never done before. This boy has already twisted so many paradigms and broken so many records that by now we shouldn’t be surprised by any height his special talent reaches.
