How does Golden Boy voting work? Nominees and format explained

According to the Golden Boy's official website, its "famous panel" has "not misjudged a winner over the years".

The likes of Wayne Rooney (Golden Boy winner in 2004), Lionel Messi (2005) and Sergio Aguero (2007) serve as potent examples of prodigious young talents that blossomed into senior stars. But it would take a very generous appraisal of the careers of Anderson (2008) or Alexandre Pato (2009) to suggest that the Golden Boy panel boasts a 100% strike rate.

Billed as "Europe’s most innovative award" (again, by its own publication) the Golden Boy singles out the best male player plying their trade in one of Europe's top tiers under the age of 21 each year.

Here's everything you need to know about how the famous judges come to their supposedly unerring decision.

2023 Golden Boy nominees

Perennial Austrian champions RB Salzburg had as many as five players on their books when the 100-player long list was revealed in June. However, only Lucas Gourna-Douath makes the cut for the final 25.

Jude Bellingham is the runaway favourite for the award, having starred at Borussia Dortmund before making an electric start at Real Madrid. Los Blancos teammate Arda Guler is also included.

Chelsea defender Levi Colwill remains in the running, while Irish forward Evan Ferguson has been rewarded for his breakout performances with Brighton. Lamine Yamal has also been included as a wildcard entrant.

2023 Golden Boy format

After two decades of relying solely upon the received wisdom of international journalists, the Golden Boy has an element of statistical analysis coursing through the 2023 iteration of the award.

Initially created by the Italian sports paper Tuttosport, the Golden Boy has entered into a partnership with Football Benchmark. The self-styled "home of football business data" primarily focuses on the financial aspect of the game - player market value, club revenues, etc. - but has branched out to give the Golden Boy a statistical flavouring.

The 100-player long list was drawn up exclusively according to Football Benchmark's "humanised algorithm". FB ranked all eligible players based on three aspects; sporting performance, playing time and club strength before taking into consideration any involvement with the national team or in European club competition.

The end result was one number, between 1 and 100, dubbed 'the Golden Boy rating'. Musiala recorded the highest Golden Boy rating of 98.3, closely followed by Bellingham (95) and Gavi (93).

There is not a great deal of detail about how FB came to this single number which supposedly sums up the myriad of qualities about a player. It is always dangerous when combining lots of information - FB vaguely reveal that they took into consideration "passing, tackling, scoring efficiency, creativity, etc." - especially when judging players across all positions on the pitch and from 22 different leagues.

Nevertheless, the 100 names spat out of this black box are all under contention in the first round of voting. One month before the award ceremony in December, the long list is cut to the 20 most popular players alongside five "wild cards".

The final decision is made by the aforementioned panel of 50 journalists. The exact identity of these writers is not revealed but they are said to have "20 years of experience" and hail from publications in England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Switzerland.

Tuttosport's editor-in-chief Guido Vaciago loftily billed the new system as a combination of "human intelligence and experience with technological perfection".

READ THE LATEST NEWS, RANKINGS AND EXPLAINERS FOR THE 2023 GOLDEN BOY AWARD