The American playwright and author David Mamet used to say: “Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”
Soccer’s transfer market doesn’t quite value seniority to the same extent. Every player’s price tag takes a dip once they creep the wrong side of 30 while the shiny new thing has never been in higher demand. “You are young, you score 10 goals in six months and some club will pay 60 or 70 million,” a 37-year-old Robert Lewandowski scoffed last year. “Before, you had to achieve something.”
Transfer fees for players of every age have never been higher and that lust for young talent is why the most valuable 18-year-olds in soccer history have all come in the past decade.
Transfermarkt’s crowd-sourced estimations, which have been cited in official documentation by some top-flight clubs, are not claiming that Ansu Fati at 18 was better than a World Cup-winning Pelé. It’s just that the world record transfer fee in 1958 was the equivalent of £91,000 ($123,000).
Taking into consideration how much a player would be expected to fetch on the open market on the day of their 18th birthday, here are the most valuable freshly turned adults ever to grace the modern game.
10. Estêvão—€55 million
Chelsea committed an initial €34 million to sign Estêvão from Palmeiras when he was only 17 in 2024. By the time he was finally allowed to join the Blues after turning 18, his swollen valuation suggested that Chelsea had already turned a handsome profit.
The Brazilian teenager has only boosted his glittering reputation since belatedly arriving in west London, impressing his teammates and coaches with a level of talent, determination and humility far beyond his years.
The only issue for Estêvão is meteorological. “The hardest challenge has been the weather,” he laughed midway through his first season in England. And that was before winter even kicked in.
9. Ethan Nwaneri—€55 million
When Ethan Nwaneri became the youngest player in Premier League history, coming on for the closing stages of a comfortable Arsenal win at Brentford aged just 15, the boisterous away fans chanted: “He’s got school in the morning.”
Mikel Arteta has been at pains to not rush Nwaneri’s footballing education, likening the gradual process to construction. “I am responsible for building a career for him. You have to do that brick by brick,” the Arsenal boss warned before the teen had even turned 18. “Now we have to put some cement, make sure it doesn’t get dry so we can put another one and that will stick. Then we put one more layer, one more layer.
“If you want to put five bricks in a row, believe me, it won’t work.”
It can seem as though this approach has been a bit too tentative at times, but it certainly hasn’t hurt his market value.
8. Jude Bellingham—€55 million
“With someone like him, I don’t look at the date of birth,” Jude Bellingham’s Borussia Dortmund manager Lucien Favre beamed. “It’s easy for me to work with such a talent.”
Favre was hardly alone in finding it straightforward to fit a teenage Bellingham into his team.
Rated at €55 million as an 18-year-old, the England international had improved so much over the following year that he convinced Real Madrid to splash €103 million in the summer of 2023. Considering his first year yielded 23 goals, 13 assists, the La Liga title and the Champions League, it was money well spent.
7. Endrick—€60 million
If Bellingham was an obvious success story, Endrick offers a natural counterpoint.
The Brazilian striker was signed from Palmeiras for €47.5 million a year before Estêvão as part of Real Madrid’s drive to avoid ever missing out on a talent like Neymar again. That expensive manifestation of FOMO has seen the likes of Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo snapped up, but also convinced Madrid to part ways with €30 million for Reinier. If your reaction to that name is who? Don’t worry, you wouldn’t be alone.
Endrick is closer to Reinier on the spectrum than his other compatriots after one La Liga goal across his first 18 months in Spain, but there is plenty of time for the teenager to live up to his lofty valuation (and price tag).
6. Warren Zaïre-Emery—€60 million
It doesn’t get much tougher than competing for a spot in midfield with three players who were all nominated for the Ballon d’Or in the same year. Yet, the fact that Warren Zaïre-Emery still managed to start more than half of Paris Saint-Germain’s league games at 18 while faced with this battle is a testament to his quality.
As his agent, Jorge Mendes is naturally biased. But few would argue with the brash Portuguese advisor’s prediction that his client could become a Ballon d’Or winner.
5. Gavi—€60 million
Gavi was only 17 when he made his senior international debut for Spain and hadn’t quite broken through onto the public sphere. Italy’s Emerson Palmieri admitted: “I didn’t know him.”
He, and the rest of the world, would soon learn the name. By the time he was 18, he was one of the most valuable midfielders on the planet.
4. Lennart Karl—€60 million
Seemingly blessed with the decision-making ability of a player with a decade more experience, the only sign of Lennart Karl’s youth has come from some unwise comments during a Bayern Munich supporters group event during his breakthrough season.
“FC Bayern is a very big club. It’s a dream to play there. But at some point I definitely want to go to Real Madrid,” he naïvely told a cluster of fans. “That [Madrid] is my dream club, but let’s keep that between us.”
Naturally that news leaked. But if Real Madrid were to entertain the prospect of making Karl’s childhood dreams come true, he wouldn’t be cheap.
3. Pau Cubarsí—€70 million
Pau Cubarsí has always had a mature head on his ever widening shoulders. The latest in a long line of carpenters resisted the urge to sulk or strop when he was sent off during an Under-11s match, simply walking to the side of the pitch to calmly see how his teammates fared without him.
After being thrust into Hansi Flick’s high-wire act of a daring offside trap, Cubarsí has continued to keep his cool and his spot in the side. The teenager was still only 18 when he racked up his 100th appearance for Barcelona.
2. Ansu Fati
Some prodigies fade over time but Ansu Fati’s staggeringly sharp decline can be pinpointed to one precise point in time—which feels more cruel. Barcelona’s next great hope had only turned 18 one week earlier when he felt something in his knee during a routine win over Real Betis in November 2020.
It turned out that Fati had ruptured his meniscus and would not feature against for 10 months. The precocious forward had sat out just two games through injury across a prolific start to his career as Lionel Messi’s fleet-footed protégé but would never again be the same player.
|
Ansu Fati Statistic (Barcelona) |
Before First Injury |
After First Injury |
|---|---|---|
|
Games |
43 |
80 |
|
Goals |
13 |
16 |
|
Assists |
5 |
5 |
|
Minutes per G/A |
109.7 |
159.1 |
|
Matches Missed Through Injury |
2 |
137 |
1. Lamine Yamal—€200 million
By the time Lamine Yamal turned 18, he had already played 106 times for Barcelona, scored 25 goals, won La Liga twice, the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Super Cup and lifted the European Championship for Spain after scoring the goal of the tournament in the semifinal.
The only wonder about his valuation is that it’s not higher.
