Key Highlights
- That tournament can be seen in hindsight as a watershed for the English game, the first indication that the elite player performance plan (EPPP) and the England DNA project – taking youth football seriously – might be beginning to pay off. Youth football is notoriously unpredictable and England’s record in the Under-17 World Cup since shows a failure to qualify and a pair of last-16 exits, but following that 2017 success, England’s senior side have reached two European Championship finals and a World Cup semi-final, while the under-21s have won two European titles.
- Two previous Golden Ball winners from Under-17 World Cups – Cesc Fàbregas and Toni Kroos – have gone on to win the senior World Cup.
- Some, such as Landon Donovan, Anderson and Kelechi Iheanacho have had perfectly decent careers.
- And others have vanished almost entirely: Sani Emmanuel of Nigeria, for instance, won in 2009 then made just 16 senior appearances, 10 of them in the Swiss second tier with Biel-Bienne; while another Nigerian, Kelechi Nwakali, winner in 2015, joined Arsenal but, after a series of loan moves and stints in the lower reaches of the Spanish and Portuguese systems, was kicked out of Barnsley this past summer after returning late for pre-season. Phil Foden arrives at Heathrow after being part of England’s Under-17 World Cup triumph in 2017.
- nthony Upton for FA/ShutterstockThe road from prodigy to glory is a rocky one.
