The Best Young Full-Backs in World Football Right Now

Football spent a decade turning the full-back into its most demanding job. It asks a player to defend one-on-one in space, invert into midfield, overlap, underlap, cross, press, and cover the ground of two positions while doing it. The game got what it asked for on one flank. On the other, it is running out.

Here is the finding that shaped this list. Across the 16,228 players in EA FC 26, there are 192 right-backs aged 21 or under and 179 left-backs — more bodies on the right. But once you filter for genuine quality, the numbers invert: 44 left-backs clear a 65 overall, against 38 right-backs. More right-backs, fewer good ones.

The top end is where it gets stark. Three left-backs under 21 are rated above 77. The number of right-backs above 77 is zero. The best young right-back in the world, by the game's own reckoning, is a 77 — and he did not start regularly last season.

One caveat belongs up front, because it runs through everything below: these are the game's classifications, and the game is slower than football. Arsenal's Myles Lewis-Skelly is carded as a left-back and is being converted into a defensive midfielder by Mikel Arteta, who had planned the move long before he made it. Manchester City's Rico Lewis is carded as a right-back and plays like a No. 8. We have counted them where EA FC 26 counts them — and where the label and the football disagree, we have said so.

That is not a rounding error. It is a shortage, and the transfer market has already priced it in: the two most expensive young right-backs on this list carry release clauses of €80m apiece, at clubs outside Europe's biggest five leagues.

Kosugi's path is the argument for watching leagues nobody scouts on television. He left Shonan Bellmare for Djurgardens IF in Sweden in March 2024 — a move most European clubs would not have tracked — and made 62 appearances across the Allsvenskan, the Swedish cup and the Conference League, scoring five and assisting seven from left-back. In January 2026, Eintracht Frankfurt paid €6.5m for him.

What Frankfurt bought is a genuinely quick defender with the recovery pace to hold a high line. Six and a half million euros for a 20-year-old with 62 senior European appearances already banked is the kind of price that only exists because the player was somewhere the cameras were not. He is one of several reasons Japan's talent pool is the most under-covered in world football.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 70 (PAC 85) — and still carded in Sweden, at a club he left eight months ago. Real-level: a Bundesliga full-back at twenty. Tier: Raw Gem.

Hall is the closest thing this generation has to a finished left-back, and the way his summer ended says more than the way it started. Manchester United made an initial enquiry in late July — Michael Carrick sees him as the long-term answer to the Luke Shaw question, with Shaw the only senior left-back left at Old Trafford after Tyrell Malacia's free transfer out. Newcastle rejected it and said he is not for sale.

Then they went further. With three years still to run, Newcastle opened discussions over improved terms and moved him into the club's leadership group — the response of a side that has read the same shortage everyone else has. Matthias Jaissle has him starting: Hall went the distance in the 1-0 win over Chelsea, delivering four crosses and picking up a late booking.

The one caveat is durability. Foot surgery cost him five months in 2025 and a hamstring problem took another month out of the season that followed, so he has yet to string a clean campaign together. He is fit now, and when he plays he is the most complete profile here — press-resistant, a genuine passer, comfortable inverting.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 80 (DRI 79, PAS 78) — the highest-rated full-back under 21 in the game. Real-level: a rejected Manchester United enquiry and a new contract on the table. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

Chelsea signed Hato from Ajax in August 2025 on a contract running to 2032 — a seven-year deal, which tells you how the club sees the timeline. He repaid it with 1,142 Premier League minutes in his first season, including a left-back performance against Liverpool built on five tackles and three clearances.

His profile is the reason the fee looks sensible in hindsight: 85 pace in a defender who can play left-back or centre-back without losing anything, and the positional intelligence you would expect from a player who captained Ajax as a teenager. Intermediaries have reportedly offered him to Arsenal and Manchester United, and he is understood to want Champions League football — but Chelsea have moved to give him a larger role rather than let the situation drift.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 78 (PAC 85) — the quickest defender on this list. Real-level: €40m market value and a contract to 2032. Tier: Ready Now.

Nobody under 21 is rated higher at right-back than Rico Lewis. He is a 77 — a mark six other young defenders clear: three left-backs and three centre-backs. He is the ceiling of his position's generation, and his ceiling is a number that would only make him the fourth-best left-back available.

It gets stranger when you watch him. Lewis started Manchester City's Premier League opener against Bournemouth on 23 August 2026, a 2-1 win, listed at right-back — and spent it operating centrally, drifting inside so persistently that analysts covering the game read him as a midfielder rather than a full-back. He had a shot saved by Dorde Petrovic inside five minutes. None of this is new: he is the archetypal inverted full-back, 79 dribbling and 74 passing against 58 physical, a midfielder who happens to start from the touchline. Pep Guardiola spent years building that player; Guardiola left at the end of 2025-26 and Enzo Maresca arrived in June 2026 on a three-year deal, and the early evidence is that the experiment continues.

Which is the whole argument. The game's highest-rated young right-back is a player his own managers keep pulling into midfield — and the shortage on that flank is severe enough that City have not gone out and bought a specialist to replace him. When the best card at a position belongs to someone who does not really play there, the position is in trouble.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 77 (DRI 79, PAS 74) — the highest-rated right-back under 21 on earth, and a midfielder in everything but the team sheet. Real-level: a Premier League starter under a new manager, contract to 2028. Tier: Watchlist.

The Right-Back Gap, in Three Numbers

Fernandes signed a contract extension in August 2025 running to 2030, with a release clause of €80m written into it. He was 19. Porto — a club whose entire financial model is built on selling well — decided the smarter play was to make him unbuyable rather than to cash in early, which is the strongest endorsement a selling club can give.

The market has responded exactly as Porto expected. Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have all been credited with monitoring him; Milan and Napoli have looked at him as a right-back solution. At 81 pace with 70 passing, he is the profile the modern game wants on that flank: fast enough to defend the space an inverted winger leaves behind, composed enough to be the first pass out.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 75 (PAC 81, PAS 70) — a fair card for a player the market rates far higher. Real-level: an €80m clause, agreed at nineteen. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

Read's summer is the clearest evidence of the shortage. Nottingham Forest had two bids rejected, the higher believed to be €19m. Roma came in at €25m and negotiated. Feyenoord turned down a total package of €29m — €25m guaranteed plus €4m in bonuses — and held out for a fixed fee of €33m.

Then the player ended it himself. Read stopped considering a move, saying he has full confidence in Giovanni van Bronckhorst and wants to compete for trophies in Rotterdam this season. A 20-year-old right-back turning down Roma is not a normal event; it happens when the player knows the market will still be there in a year, and that it will be more desperate.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 75 (PAC 81, PHY 76) — the most physically complete right-back here. Real-level: a €33m valuation he could have cashed in on and didn't. Tier: Elite-in-Waiting.

Barco arrived in Europe with as much noise as any Argentine teenager of his generation and then spent two seasons struggling to justify it. Strasbourg took him on loan in February 2025 and made the deal permanent five months later, and in 2025-26 he finally became what he was supposed to be: 20 starts in 23 Ligue 1 appearances, 1,695 minutes, one goal and four assists — and a place in Argentina's World Cup squad as the youngest player in it.

He is the least orthodox defender on this list — 78 dribbling and 75 passing against 68 defending — a left-back whose value is almost entirely in possession. That profile is fragile in the wrong system and devastating in the right one. Strasbourg found the right one. For more of this generation, see our Argentina list.

Scout Gamer Read — EA FC 26: 75 (DRI 78, PAS 75) — a midfielder's card in a defender's shirt. Real-level: 1,695 Ligue 1 minutes and a World Cup squad place. Tier: Ready Now.

Quick Reference

The scarcity on the right flank is not a quirk of one video game's ratings. It is visible in the release clauses — €80m for a Porto 20-year-old, €80m for Iván Fresneda at Sporting, outside Europe's big five leagues — and in what clubs will not sell. Feyenoord turned down Roma. Newcastle turned down Manchester United. Porto priced their own player out of the market before anyone asked.

For the position immediately inside them, see our best young centre-backs; for the one at the far end of the pitch, the best young strikers, where a different shortage is doing the same thing to fees.