DBasia.news – Tuttosport, Italian top media, has filtered the candidate of 2018 Golden Boy from 100 to 20 names. The achievement will be given to the best young players below 21.
Some famous names are listed like Kylian Mbappe (Paris Saint-Germain), Phil Foden (Manchester City), Vinicius Junior (Real Madrid), Patrick Cutrone (AC Milan), and Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool).
From these 20 names, no one represents Barcelona. In fact, La Masia academy is known worldwide. The nearest name, according to Sport-English, is Dani Olmo.
The 20-year-old player is the alumni from La Masia academy. But, Olmo decided to join Dinamo Zagreb in 2015. The absence of Barcelona representative in that category is a bit worrying.
Apparently, Barca are known as the club who successfully orbited the La Masia academy alumni to the main squad. This has been the team tradition since years ago. The tradition starts to fade recently because the club prefers the experienced players to perform.
The awarding of Golden Boy will be decided by the panel consists of 30 famous journalists from Europe. This is the 16th edition, the previous one won by Mbappe, who might win it again this year.
Vinicius Junior
Here are 20 names of 2018 Golden Boy candidate:
- Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool)
- Kelvin Adou Amian (Toulouse)
- Houssem Aouar (Olympique Lyonnais)
- Josip Brekalo (Wolfsburg)
- Patrick Cutrone (Milan)
- Dani Olmo (Dinamo Zagreb)
- Thomas Davies (Everton)
- Matthijs de Ligt (Ajax)
- Diogo Dalot (Manchester United)
- Eder Militao (Porto)
- Odsonne Edouard (Celtic)
- Phil Foden (Manchester City)
- Gedson Fernandes (Benfica)
- Amadou Haidara (RB Salzburg)
- Achraf Hakimi (Borussia Dortmund)
- Jonathan Ikone (Lille)
- Justin Kluivert (Roma)
- Kylian Mbappe (PSG)
- Oswald Upamecano (RB Leipzig)
- Vinicius Jr (Real Madrid)