JUDE Bellingham has been rated the most valuable young player in world football.
The new Real Madrid signing is the favourite to win the coveted Golden Boy award for the best under-21 prospect in Europe.
And Bellingham’s status was underlined by a new computer algorithm designed to assess contenders for the prize, now in its 21st year.
According to the number crunchers from Football Benchmark, Bellingham, who joined Madrid for an initial £85m, is actually worth £130.3m.
That places the England star ahead of his two closest rivals, Bayern Munich’s English-schooled Jamal Musiala and Barcelona’s Pablo Gavi.
Musiala, though, was rated fractionally ahead of Bellingham in the “Golden Boy Index”, which took into account success at club level.
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The list of the top 100 prospects included Liverpool’s Harvey Elliott, in 14th place with an estimated transfer value of £31.2m and no fewer than FOUR players at Brighton last season.
But Levi Colwill – the lone Englishman alongside Evan Ferguson (44th), Julio Enciso (48th) and Facundo Buonanotte (86th) – has now returned to Chelsea.
There were 13 Prem-based players in the list compiled for the Italian sports newspaper TuttoSport, the highest number from any domestic league.
Manchester City’s Rico Lewis, who was also in the top 20 at No17, and Chelsea duo Lewis Hall (95th) and Carney Chukwuemeka (98th) completed the English contingent.
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Meanwhile Liverpool hotshot Stefan Bajcetic came in 21st while Man Utd star Alejandro Garnacho was ranked 32nd.
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Bellingham would be the third English winner of the award, won by Wayne Rooney in 2004 and Raheem Sterling 10 years later.
Other winners include Lionel Messi in 2005, followed by Cesc Fabregas and then Sergio Aguero, Paul Pogba in 2013, Kylian Mbappe in 2017 and Erling Haaland in 2020.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
