Will there be a surprise at this year’s Golden Boy Awards? Despite some notable competition, a talent from 1. FC Köln is currently leading the rankings.

Every year, the Italian sports newspaper Tuttospor presents the Golden Boy Award to the world’s best U21 player. In October, it will be decided which talent will take over from Jude Bellingham, who won the prestigious award last year.

Lamine Yamal is the favorite. The 16-year-old is currently playing for the Spanish national team at the European Championships. However, it is not the shooting star in the service of FC Barcelona who is currently leading the rankings – but Max Finkgräfe from 1. FC Köln!

A few days ago, Tuttosport published the list of 100 candidates for 2024, and since then fans have been able to vote for their favorite. Every month, the 20 last-placed players are removed from the list. And Finkgräfe has collected by far the most votes so far. By Monday evening, almost 11,000 fans had voted for the 20-year-old left-back from Cologne – that corresponds to 36.6 percent of the 30,000 votes cast.

Finkgräfe was one of the few bright spots for the relegated Bundesliga side last season. In the first half of the season, he was mainly used in the regional league team. After the change of coach in the winter, he established himself as a regular in the professional squad and impressed – some pundits even called for the Gladbach-born player to be nominated for the European Championship.

Golden Boy: Nine Bundesliga talents on the list

However, Finkgräfe’s lead in the Golden Boy voting is probably less to do with his sporting achievements. Rather, FC called on its fans a few days ago to support the winger in the vote. Cologne’s Jan Thielmann already made it into the top 40 in 2022.

Despite the fan support, it is unrealistic that Finkgräfe will actually win the award in the end. The public no longer has any influence on the final decision. Once the list has been whittled down to 20 players, an expert jury of journalists will decide on the winner.

In addition to Finkgräfe, eight other Bundesliga talents are up for election: Dortmund’s Youssoufa Moukoko and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Aleksandar Pavlovic and Mathys Tel from FC Bayern, Hugo Larsson (Frankfurt), Brajan Gruda (Mainz), Tim Drexler and Umut Tohumcu (both Hoffenheim). Since the first award in 2003, there has been one German winner so far, with Mario Götze in 2011.