Football Manager 2020 Wonderkids: Best and Cheapest Young Players

Football Manager has always been a game that consumes its players over many years, even when a new version comes out. There are even plenty of fans out there playing Football Manager games from the turn of the decade still. One of the reasons behind the game’s longevity? Finding the best wonderkids each year and cultivating them into world-beating machines.

With Football Manager 2020, the best and cheapest young players are dominated by French youth players, owing to the country’s recent boom and World Cup win. Countries like England and Italy are also well represented, but in the eyes of Football Manager’s legendary scouts, France is the future.

For our guide to the best wonderkids in Football Manager 2020, we made sure we selected from a certain criteria. Firstly, they must have high potential to see their value and talent skyrocket over the years with the right training. Speaking of value, we’re also only including players that are under £10m so that they can be snapped up by mid-tier teams looking to build for the future. There’s not a lot of fun in selecting Real Madrid when you can lead Falkirk to Champions League glory instead.

On top of that, our Football Manager 2020 wonderkids selection has excluded the majority of promising South American youngsters, owing to the inevitable work permit problems their transfers run into. As a final thing, we are considering wonderkids as footballers aged 21 years and under, so Jesse Lingard just misses out. What? He’s 26?

We will be updating our list of the best wonderkids in Football Manager 2020 the deeper into the game we get.

 

Football Manager 2020 Wonderkids

Position	Name	Club	Age	Value	Nationality
GK	Alessandro Plizzari	AC Milan	19	£570k	Italian
GK	Ivan Martinez	Atletico Pamplona	17	£150k	Spanish
DC	William Saliba	Arsenal	18	£5.8m	French
DC	Thomas Basila	Nantes	20	£1.5m	French
DC	Loic Mbe Soh	PSG	18	£500k	French
DC	Jonathan Panzo	Monaco	19	£400k	English
DC	Reece Oxford	FC Augsburg	20	£2.4m	English
DC	Benoit Badiashile	Monaco	18	£600k	French
DC	Lee O'Connor	Celtic	19	£100k	Irish
DC	Timothee Pembele	PSG	17	£240k	French
DL	Lewis Gibson	Everton	19	£340k	English
DL	Brandon Williams	Manchester Untied	19	£2.7m	English
DR	Ki-Jana Hoever	Liverpool	17	£300k	Dutch
DR	Kayne Ramsay	Southampton	19	£700k	English
DR	Sergino Dest	Ajax	19	£1.3m	American
DM	Adrian Fein	Bayern Munich	20	£3.8m	German
CM	Yacine Adli	Bordeaux	19	£1.5m	French
CM	Eduardo Camavinga	Rennes	17	£3.5m	French
CM	Tyler Adams	RB Leipzig	20	£5.5m	American
CM	Jude Bellingham	Birmingham	16	£4m	English
CM	Jamie Shackleton	Leeds United	20	£4.6m	English
CM	Kenneth Taylor	Ajax	17	£400k	Dutch
LW	Rayan Cherki	Lyon	16	£180k	French
LW	Timothy Weah	Lille	19	£1.3m	American
LW	Naci Unuvar	Ajax	16	£180k	Dutch
LW	Curtis Jones	Liverpool	18	£540k	English
RW	Emanuel Vignato	Chievo	19	£600k	Italian
RW	Harvey Elliott	Liverpool	16	£600k	English
RW	Tete	Shakhtar Donetsk	19	£4.4m	Brazilian
RW	Ferran Torres	Valencia	19	£2.4m	Spanish
AM	Brahim Diaz	Real Madrid	20	£3.4m	Spanish
AM	Josh McPake	Rangers	18	£30k	Scottish
AM	Sontje Hansen	Ajax	17	£180k	Dutch
AM	Nathan Young-Coombes	Rangers	16	£20k	English
AM	Giovanni Reyna	Borussia Dortmund	17	£70k	American
ST	Fiete Arp	Bayern Munich	19	£2.9m	German
ST	Fabio Silva	FC Porto	17	£1.4m	Portugese
ST	Sebastiano Esposito	Inter Milan	17	£1.6m	Italian
ST	Troy Parrott	Tottenham Hotspur	17	£500k	English
ST	Erling Braut Haaland	RB Salzburg	19	£5.1m	Norwegian
ST	Joshua Zirkzee	Bayern Munich	18	£400k	Dutch
ST	Abel Ruiz	Barcelona	19	£800k	Spanish

One thing we’ve noticed this year is that there aren’t really that many promising young goalkeepers in the game, as well as wing-backs — at least ones that are somewhat affordable. There’s an absolute bevy of central defenders, though.

As is always the case, you need to make sure you look after these promising young players if you really want to see them bloom properly. That means including them in the first-team semi-regularly, sending them out on worthwhile loans, or making sure they get the adequate training. As talented as the likes of Brahim Diaz may be, leaving them on the bench may stunt their growth in the long-term.

Football Manager 2020 is out now for PC and *checks notes* Stadia? What’s that?

MORE FOOTBALL:
– FIFA 20 Wonderkids: Best & Cheapest Young Defenders
– FIFA 20 Wonderkids: Best and Cheapest Young Players
– Making A Monster In FIFA 20’s Player Creator