Who will emerge as a breakthrough player over the next 12 months?
Last week on The Athletic’s two flagship podcasts — The Totally Football Show and The Athletic Football Podcast — we asked our panellists to name the footballer we’ll all be talking about in a year’s time that nobody is really mentioning now.
Here’s what they came up with…
Totally Football Show
Jay Harris: Brentford have a 19-year-old winger called Michael Olakigbe who is going to be a seriously good talent. He’s played a few times in the Premier League this season, and I feel a bit bad for him because Brentford are so out of sorts. He’s been coming on as a little bit of an emergency wildcard option in the final 10 minutes of a game, so what I’m looking forward to over the next 12 months is him starting a lot more and just being given an opportunity from the get-go, without the pressure to bail out his side.
JJ Bull: I will go with Joao Neves, a 19-year-old at Benfica. He’s probably quite known now, because he’s been linked in the transfer gossip, but he’s really, really good. An energetic, ball-winning midfielder naturally linked with Manchester United, he’s not exactly what they need, but he’s a good player. And you build your tactics around good players. Although I think he and Antonio Silva (also at Benfica), they might not be going anywhere for a little while — big release clauses.
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Daniel Storey: I’ll go a lot more niche. And that’s Amara Diouf, who is a 15-year-old who has already made his debut for the Senegal national team and is considered to be a very, very big prospect. He’s from that Generation Foot academy. He’s probably going to go to Metz (in France’s Ligue 1). That’s where a few of those players end up. But yeah, he is already on the radar of those big clubs.
The Athletic Football Podcast
Jon Mackenzie: I was watching Girona versus Atletico Madrid the other day and I was very impressed by Pablo Torre, who is a 20-year-old Barcelona player on loan at Girona. So I thought I’d throw him in to be topical. But the other players that I’ve got — Florian Wirtz at Bayer Leverkusen, who I think… at 20 and established in the team, a breakthrough is probably pushing it a little bit, but this summer he’ll get a move somewhere big and everyone will be talking about him. And I’ve got Valentin Barco, who is a Boca Juniors player who’s been linked with Manchester City. He’s 19, left-sided, has played as a full-back, also as a midfielder. I think he’s quite an exciting talent. He will move to Europe and do something fun.
Tim Spiers: The kid at Borussia Dortmund, Jamie Bynoe-Gittens. I mean, he’s already broken through — he’s 19 and scored in the Champions League, for goodness sake — but it feels like he’s the one who could get a move to the Premier League this summer. And everyone will start to hear of him. Unlike John, who knows everything about him already…
Nick Miller: Again, it’s slightly stretching the definition of breakthrough, given that he’s been playing in the Champions League this season. But Johan Bakayoko at PSV Eindhoven looks very exciting. I don’t know whether he’ll go in January, but he turns 21 in April and I suspect he will move somewhere in the summer.
(Top photos: Getty Images)