Best Young Player Award

Wouldn’t it be entirely great to be as young as sixteen or seventeen and be a part of a football World Cup squad, but how much greater would it be to also be presented with the FIFA Best Young Player Award. Well, that’s exactly how Germany’s Lukas Podolski might have felt after being presented with the Best Young Player Award right after the 2006 FIFA World Cup tournament.

The Best Young Player Award is handed out to a youngster who ‘executes’ beyond all expectations. Only a youngster who is blessed with a rare dosage of deftness and talent is honored with the award.  There is an age limit for this award; the award is only given to a player who has not crossed 21 years of age.

Although the award was introduced in 2006, a unique process initiated by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) helped recognize the best youngsters from previous tournaments. The organization conducted a survey on the internet and asked users and fans to choose the ‘Best Young Player’ of the World Cup between the years 1958 and 2002. The election for this award was carried out on the official FIFA World Cup website and under the watchful eye of the FIFA Technical Study Group.

The results however were not too much of a surprise with 61% of the overall votes finding themselves against the name ‘Pele’, Brazil’s and the world’s football legend. Edison Arantes do Nascimento or Pele scored his first goal for Brazil as a teenager, he was sixteen back then. The rest of his career saw him scoring 77 goals for his country. As a sixteen year old his performances on the field justified the need for a ‘Best Young Player’ award, but there was none back then. The lack of an award to recognize and honor the talents of young geniuses prompted FIFA in 2006 to introduce the ‘Best Young Player Award’.

In 2006, German striker actually became the first recipient of the Best Young Player Award, no mere feat that. Will another prodigy ‘pocket’ this award at the 2010 FIFA World Cup? Who will it be? You have no choice but to wait to arrive at the answer for the same.

Football World Cup Best Young Player Award Recipients