England's Best Young Footballers: Four of the Ten Play Somewhere Else

Thomas Tuchel named a twenty-seven man squad on 18 September for four matches in sixteen days, and the most interesting name in it was an eighteen-year-old with 100 Premier League minutes to his name. Rio Ngumoha is the only one on this list already training with the senior side, and a year ago the game rated him lower than anyone else here. That gap — between what England's manager can see and what the database has recorded — is the story of this generation. So is where they are playing. Four of the ten best young English footballers in the game right now are employed outside England.

The Window, in Numbers

Ngumoha turned eighteen on 29 August and was in a senior England squad three weeks later. Under Andoni Iraola he has played on both flanks, three Premier League appearances and 100 minutes so far this season, one of them a start. EA FC 27 rates him 75, up from 68 a year ago — the biggest jump on this page — and keeps him at 90 for pace, still the highest figure any player here carries in any attribute. The card is still built around one elite weapon: 79 dribbling has caught up, but 68 passing and 49 physical have not.

We wrote about this gap in detail in our scouting report on Ngumoha. The England call-up is the first external confirmation of it.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 75 (PAC 90, DRI 79) — one elite number, the structure only starting to arrive. Real-level: a senior England squad at eighteen. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

The game files him at left-back. He has not been one for some time. Lewis-Skelly has said publicly that Arteta planned the move into central midfield long before it happened, and England named him among the midfielders in this squad. His card is the best-balanced on this list — 78 overall, the highest here — with 76 defending and 77 physical underneath 75 passing, which is exactly the profile of a modern six rather than a full-back.

The obstacle is not ability. Arsenal's midfield now contains Declan Rice, Martin Ødegaard, Martín Zubimendi and Mikel Merino. He has won the argument about his position and inherited a harder one about his minutes.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 78 (PAS 75, DEF 76, PHY 77) — carded a full-back, built like a midfielder. Real-level: England midfielder at nineteen. Tier: Ready Now.

Almost nobody reading an English list will have watched him. Amo-Ameyaw left Southampton for Strasbourg and made the move permanent, and he has been scoring at a rate that makes the sample size the only argument against him — two goals in 141 minutes is not a season, but it is not nothing either. He has represented England at every age group from under-16 to under-21.

Strasbourg is the most interesting employer in European football for a player his age, and we took that club apart in our scouting report on the youngest squad in Europe. A twenty-year-old English forward choosing Ligue 1 over a Premier League bench is the whole thesis of this piece in one transfer.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 72 (PAC 77, DRI 76) — rated as a prospect, playing as a contributor. Real-level: two Ligue 1 goals before October. Tier: Raw Gem.

The game still files him at Arsenal, where he has not played this season. Nwaneri spent the second half of last season at Marseille and is now at Borussia Dortmund on a season-long loan. An attacking midfielder by trade who has spent much of his Arsenal career on the right wing, he is the clearest case on this list of a player leaving the Premier League not because he failed but because there was nowhere to put him.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 75 (PAC 81, DRI 77, PAS 74) — a card that describes an Arsenal player. Real-level: a Bundesliga loan to find out what he is. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

Four Bundesliga matches this season, four appearances, three of them starts, 298 minutes and an assist against Stuttgart on 19 September. The surname has cost him more attention than it has bought him, and the sensible read is the boring one: he is a twenty-year-old playing regularly for a Champions League club in a league that is harder than his age suggests he should be handling.

Eighty defending and 83 physical under 73 passing is a box-to-box eight, not the ten his brother plays — a card built for the middle third rather than the final one.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 77 (DEF 80, PHY 83) — built for the middle, not the final third. Real-level: four from four in the Bundesliga. Tier: Ready Now.

Gray captained Tottenham through pre-season and has 239 Premier League minutes this season. His problem has been the opposite of everyone else's on this list: not a shortage of opportunity but a surplus of positions. He has played as a number six, at centre-back, at right-back and at left-back, which is a compliment paid in the currency of a player never getting a settled run anywhere.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 77 (PAS 73, DEF 75) — carded a six, used as four different players. Real-level: a pre-season captain at twenty. Tier: Ready Now.

Rigg is closing in on one hundred first-team appearances for Sunderland and he is nineteen years old. He started eleven Premier League matches in Sunderland's promotion season with seven more from the bench, and Régis Le Bris has spoken about his growing versatility rather than his potential, which is the more useful compliment.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 74 (PAS 74, DEF 60) — a card with no weakness and no standout. Real-level: a hundred senior games before twenty. Tier: Watchlist.

Chelsea sold him permanently to Everton in July after a loan spell in which he started once in eleven appearances. This season he has four starts and a goal. EA FC 27 has caught up and files him at Everton, rated 72 — one point above the card that still had him at Chelsea a year ago. The club is right now; the rating still describes a squad player rather than a starter.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 72 (PAC 78, DRI 74) — the game has caught up with the move, not yet with the minutes. Real-level: four starts and a goal by late September. Tier: Watchlist.

Every list like this one is written as though the arrow only points up. Dibling is here because it does not. He arrived at Everton as one of the most coveted young English forwards in the country and has made eighteen appearances without a goal or an assist. His card — 74 overall, 76 pace, 77 dribbling — still describes the player everyone wanted. The season does not.

He is twenty. There is nothing here that a run of games does not fix, and RB Leipzig have reportedly been watching. But a list of ten prospects with ten upward trajectories would be a marketing document, not a scouting one.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 74 (PAC 76, DRI 77) — a card the season has not earned back yet. Real-level: eighteen games, no goal contributions. Tier: Watchlist.

The game has him back at Tottenham. He was PFA Scotland's Young Player of the Year there, seven goals in forty-seven games, and Tottenham sent him to the Bundesliga next rather than back to their bench. He came on at half-time on his Köln debut against Stuttgart on 5 September, was moved into a central position behind the striker rather than the wing he is carded on, and assisted Köln's only goal in a 4-1 defeat.

That is the detail worth keeping: a nineteen-year-old winger, on his first appearance in a new country, was trusted as a number ten and immediately created something. Nobody in England watched it.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 27: 74 (DRI 77, PAS 72) — carded a winger, debuted as a ten. Real-level: Scotland's young player of the year, now in the Bundesliga. Tier: Raw Gem.

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