Golden Boy winners ranked by likeliness of joining Boehly’s crazy Chelsea project

Chelsea have reportedly decided they want to sign two or three of the best under-23 players in every position. That feels…ambitious.

Signing the best young player in the world would cost a fortune and is hardly an easy task when you ignore the finances involved. Not every Golden Boy winner is a Renato Sanches who will inevitably move on to bigger and better things. There are also players like Kylian Mbappe, who is too expensive and only attainable for a top-five club in world football, not Chelsea with Todd Boehly’s bat-s**t project.

With that in mind, we have ranked every Golden Boy winner by how likely they would be to join this Chelsea team in the year they won the award. We are talking ridiculously lengthy contracts, silly wages here, and any FFP loopholes.

21) Lionel Messi (2005)
The GOAT would have gone nowhere near the madness at Stamford Bridge.

20) Kylian Mbappe (2017)
Mbappe is one of the best Golden Boy winners of all time. He would have laughed off interest from Chelsea and only Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Manchester City could afford him anyway.

19) Cesc Fabregas (2006)
Fabregas might have made the move to Chelsea later down the line but it feels extremely unlikely that he would have wanted to leave Arsenal for their London rivals, and that the Gunners would be open to allowing that sale. Even Boehly would not have been able to summon the cheek.

18) Anderson (2008)
Sir Alex Ferguson was convinced he had a sure thing in Anderson and would have told Boehly exactly where to go.

17) Pedri (2021)
You get the impression that both Pedri and Gavi want to be the new Xavi and Iniesta. The former has been involved in fewer transfer stories during his career, so he is less likely than the latter.

16) Gavi (2022)
Like Pedri, he is a Barca boy through and through.

READ: Welcome back Barcelona, built from La Masia and ready to take on Real Galacticos

15) Jude Bellingham (2023)
A generational talent, Bellingham would not have given Chelsea the time of day.

14) Matthijs de Ligt (2018)
Boehly buying a centre-back who does not come from France? Not happening.

13) Isco (2012)
Malaga were a pretty ambitious team during Isco’s time on the south coast of Spain, so a move to Chelsea would not have been financially influenced. The club’s project fell apart rather quickly in fairness, so we cannot rule this one out, but it feels pretty unlikely.

12) Alexandre Pato (2009)
Leaving a very good AC Milan side for Boehly’s Chelsea would have been a mistake. Saying that, Pato does strike us as the sort of marquee signing the American billionaire would have been all over, especially when you consider how desperately this team needs a No. 9.

11) Mario Gotze (2011)
Three years before scoring the winner in a World Cup final, Gotze was named the best young player in world football having shone at Borussia Dortmund. The competition for his signature with Bayern would have made things extremely tough, but this one is not beyond the realms of possibility.

10) Joao Felix (2019)
Only Atletico Madrid were crazy enough to meet Benfica’s demands for Felix…we think.

9) Paul Pogba (2013)
Snubbing a return to Manchester United would have denied us the amusement involved in leaving for nothing, joining for a world-record fee, disappointing us all, and then leaving for nothing again.

Pogba looked like a generational midfielder at Juventus and his performances helped him win the 2013 Golden Boy, 18 months after leaving Old Trafford. Signing him when he won the award might have been cheaper than the £89.3m United ended up paying to re-sign their former youth star in August 2016, and we feel like Boehly would have been very interested.

READ: Ranking all the Man Utd signings since Sir Alex Ferguson retired

8) Mario Balotelli (2010)
Part of Boehly’s project will surely centre around finding the right characters to bring in. We are not sure a 20-year-old Balotelli would have fit the bill. Cracking player, mind.

7) Raheem Sterling (2014)
Currently at Chelsea, where he is massively struggling as a Todd Boehly signing, Sterling burst onto the scene at Liverpool before forcing a move to Manchester City, which shows there would have been a willingness from Liverpool to sell to a Premier League rival like the Blues.

But this signing becomes a little less likely when you consider the current state of this Chelsea team. Would Sterling have been as eager to leave Anfield if it was them and not City calling? And if he had a choice between the two, it is very obvious who he would have chosen.

6) Rafael van der Vaart (2003)
The inaugural winner of the Golden Boy, Van der Vaart would end up leaving Ajax for Hamburg in Germany a couple of years after winning the award.

This would not have been an overly ambitious signing in comparison to the majority of his fellow Golden Boy winners but it would have been a great one.

5) Sergio Aguero (2007)
Unsurprisingly, anyone who knows how to find the back of the net is going to rank high here. Aguero made a name for himself at Atletico Madrid and if Boehly was around in the late 2000s, the greatest moment in Premier League history may well have been taken from us.

4) Erling Haaland (2020)
While everyone else was doing nish, waiting for Haaland’s £51m release clause, Boehly would have been out there making moves, bringing the Nordic robot to the Premier League to fill the goalscoring void at the Bridge.

3) Anthony Martial (2015)
Boehly would have been all over Martial like a rash.

2) Wayne Rooney (2004)
There is an Evan Ferguson feeling to this one. Chelsea are reportedly fans of the Irishman so they would have been head over heels for Everton wonderkid Rooney.

Rooney was ready to hit the ground running at a big club and was obviously attracting interest from Manchester United and pretty much everyone with functioning eyes. It would not have been easy but Boehly would have promised Wazza everything and more. He might have picked the Blues over Sir Alex Ferguson.

READ MORE: Dear Evan Ferguson, common sense here. Don’t leave Brighton for Chelsea…

1) Renato Sanches (2016)
We are being a bit cheeky and saying that Chelsea would have signed Sanches from Benfica, not Bayern Munich, for whom he was employed when handed the Golden Boy trophy. He won the award because of how he played for Benfica and the Portuguese national team, so we are going with it. Don’t like it? Well you have already got this far and we did the same with Martial, Rooney, Mbappe, Bellingham and Balotelli.

Perhaps it is the Enzo Fernandez transfer playing games with our sick little minds, but this transfer feels very plausible. It would have worked out a lot better for Sanches as well, having come to regret joining Bayern Munich in May 2016. It is also more possible because he is probably the worst player on the list.

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