The Best Young Ball-Playing Centre-Backs in World Football

Every club in Europe says it wants a centre-back who can play. Almost none of them have produced one. We took all 424 centre-backs aged twenty-one or under in EA FC 26 and measured the two attributes the phrase actually describes — passing and close control — and the result is not a shortage. It is a near-absence. Ten of the 424 clear a modest bar. One clears a demanding one. The rest of the position is still doing the job it did forty years ago.

The Position, in Three Numbers

The phrase is used so loosely that it has stopped meaning anything. So we defined it the only way that cannot be argued with: a centre-back has to be able to pass, and he has to be able to keep the ball under pressure. Passing and dribbling, both above the level where they stop being a liability.

Set the bar at 60 passing and 58 dribbling — not elite numbers, simply competent ones — and ten players out of 424 clear it.

For scale, here is the average young centre-back next to the ten who qualify.

The gap is not incremental. The qualifying group passes nearly nineteen points better than the position's average while defending twelve points better as well — which disposes of the oldest objection to this kind of player. They are not defenders who have traded safety for style. They are simply better defenders who can also play.

Huijsen is the outlier of his entire position. At 73 passing and 74 dribbling he is the only under-21 centre-back in the game who would not look out of place in midfield, and he does it while rated 82 for defending — the combination the phrase "ball-playing centre-back" was invented to describe and which almost nobody actually satisfies. Real Madrid signed him from Bournemouth on a deal running to 2030, and he has started this season in the side.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 82 (PAS 73, DRI 74, DEF 82) — the only player in a 424-man pool above 68 for passing. Tier: Elite Now.

Cubarsí is the counterweight. At 66 passing he sits below Huijsen, but 77 for dribbling is the highest close-control number of any young centre-back in the game, and 84 defending is the highest defensive rating in this group. He is nineteen and Barcelona's plan is built around him as the fixed centre-back with an experienced partner alongside.

The two of them sitting at 82 overall, in the same league, a year apart in age, is the reason this position looks healthier than it is. Remove them and the drop is immediate.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 82 (DRI 77, DEF 84) — the best close control and the best defending in the qualifying group. Tier: Elite Now.

Yarek joined PSV in the summer of 2025 and is now valued at around €16m. At 64 passing and 67 dribbling he clears the bar comfortably, and he is doing it in the Eredivisie rather than in Spain — which is the more interesting fact about him. The pipeline that produced Huijsen and Cubarsí exports its third-choice version of them, and the Netherlands is where that export landed.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 73 (PAS 64, DRI 67) — comfortably inside the qualifying group. Real-level: a €16m valuation at twenty-one. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

Belocian belongs to Bayer Leverkusen and is spending the 2026-27 season on loan at Racing Santander in Spain. At 64 passing and 65 dribbling he sits comfortably inside the qualifying group, and the loan reads as a deliberate choice rather than a demotion: a French centre-back being sent into the one league that coaches this profile better than anywhere else, at exactly the age it can still be taught.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 70 (PAS 64, DRI 65) — carded in the Bundesliga, playing in Spain's second tier. Tier: Watchlist.

Young clears the bar on both counts and almost nobody outside the Netherlands has watched him do it. He signed a contract with Sparta Rotterdam running to 2029, was named the Eredivisie's Johan Cruyff Talent of the Month, and is currently valued at around €4m — which is what a qualifying ball-playing centre-back costs when he plays for a club without a European profile.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 69 (DRI 66, PAS 60) — inside the group, outside the spotlight. Real-level: a contract to 2029 and a €4m valuation. Tier: Raw Gem.

Mykhavko is the one player here who does not clear our bar. His passing is 59, one below the line, and we are including him anyway — because the market has taken a clear position and it is the opposite of the card's.

Dynamo Kyiv turned down €15m from Marseille and asked for €25m. Porto were reported willing to pay €20m. Manchester United and Chelsea have both been credited with interest, Tottenham have discussed him internally, and Nottingham Forest, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Brighton and Bournemouth have all run checks. He responded by signing a new long-term contract in Kyiv in January.

A twenty-one-year-old defender in Ukraine is exactly the kind of player a ratings database gets wrong, because the ratings follow exposure and there is very little of it. One passing point is well inside the margin of that error.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 70 (PAS 59, DRI 60) — one point below our threshold, and the only player here with a €25m asking price. Tier: Raw Gem.

Quick Reference

Five of those ten are filed by the game at a club they no longer play for. Belocian is listed at Leverkusen, Anselmino at Borussia Dortmund, Özcan at Anderlecht, Janse at Groningen and Vázquez at Celta. Every club above is the one he actually plays for now; the ratings beside them are the game's, and those have not moved.

The phrase has outrun the reality by a distance. Clubs describe the profile as a requirement, recruitment departments write it into briefs, and the supply is ten players in an age group of 424 — four of them from one country and one of them genuinely elite. For the wider position see our best young centre-backs; for what the role actually asks of a defender on the pitch, our ball-playing centre-back breakdown covers the mechanics.