7 Golden Boy award winners who peaked too early: Three Man Utd players lead list…

The Golden Boy award is given out to sports journalist to one young player in Europe each year who’s deemed to have been more impressive than the rest, and some clearly wear the tag better than others.

The likes of Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero have clearly gone onto big things after bursting through in their youth.

Some others have been decidedly less impressive, and we have looked into seven of those who peaked too early.

Anderson

In 2008, the award was given to Anderson, not long after his move from Porto to Manchester United. While he played for eight years at United, the Brazilian was never much more than a squad player.

Only in his first season did Anderson play more than 20 times in the Premier League for United.

He won a lot of trophies at Old Trafford, but never played a consistent role on the way to those accolades. He moved on to Internacional, and finished his career at Adana Demirspor.

Alexandre Pato

A year after Anderson, Pato was named Golden Boy in 2009, having scored nine Serie A goals for AC Milan in 2007-08 and 15 in 2009-10.

But that was the last time in a top European league that Pato would reach that tally.

The Brazilian striker has been something of a journeyman since, moving to Corinthians, Sao Paolo, Chelsea, Villarreal, Tianjin Tianhi, and then back to Sao Paolo twice either side of a spell at Orlando.

To highlight his fall off, Pato debuted for Brazil at 18, and his international career was finished by the time he was 24.

Mario Balotelli

In 2010, the year he moved from Inter Milan to Manchester City, Italian striker Balotelli won the Golden Boy award.

He’d shown consistent goalscoring form in Italy, and kept things up in England, though not to a massively impressive level.

While he’s not had any major dips, Balotelli has never been the elite talent he threatened to be, and off-field antics have perhaps overshadowed what he’s done on the field.

Paul Pogba

Always seen as a prodigious talent, from his academy days at Manchester United to when he burst onto the scene in senior football with Juventus. The midfielder scored five goals from midfield in his first Serie A season and continued to show his former side what they were missing.

Pogba’s rise continued with 72 direct goal contributions in 190 games for Juve, and United decided to bring him back for a club-record £89million.

His first few seasons back in Manchester were good, but Pogba then began to fade away, and while he shone in a World Cup triumph with France, he never quite enjoyed the trophy-laden peak years that always appeared to be his destiny.

He showed more than a few glimpses of his world-class ability over the years at Old Trafford, but playing in a dysfunctional United side just seemed to knock him off track. Who knows what he might have achieved had he made a different decision back in 2016.

Anthony Martial

“Welcome to Manchester United, Anthony Martial” overlaid the Frenchman’s first goal for the club, when he skinned Martin Skrtel and iced a Red Devils win over Liverpool on debut in 2015.

United thought they had got a proper player, and would have likely felt that for the rest of the season, as the Frenchman went on to score 17 goals and register eight assists in all competitions.

In the next season, he scored just eight goals, though, and only once in his career has he passed 15 goals since. Not yet 30 years old, Martial has been forgotten by Europe’s big leagues, and is plying his trade in Greece, with AEK Athens.

Renato Sanches

Sanches had a good Euro 2016 campaign, and that seemingly tipped the scales in his favour for 2016 Golden Boy.

He also got himself a move to Bayern Munich from Benfica that summer, but that he went on loan to Swansea a year later shows how well that went.

Now 27, and still with the potential of some good years ahead of him, Sanches’ best career campaign so far saw him score two goals and assist five times in Lille’s midfield.

Joao Felix

The early period of Felix’s career saw him become a highly-touted prospect for good reason. The Golden Boy award followed a season in which he scored 20 goals and provided 11 assists in all competitions for Benfica.

That paved the way for a £113million transfer to Atletico Madrid, who never saw Felix score more than 10 goals in a season.

The forward has since bounced around Chelsea, Barcelona and AC Milan – where he went on loan after just six months as a permanent Blues player. The first time he was at Chelsea was on loan, as was his spell at Barca.

That shows his original move to Atletico was far too expensive for anyone to want to pay close to that fee for him again, as the LaLiga club severely overestimated his potential.

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