2019 Golden Boy award shortlist trimmed to 80; Matthijs de Ligt, Jadon Sancho, and Joao Felix in the list

What's the story?

The shortlist for the 2019 Golden Boy award has been trimmed down to 80. Matthijs de Ligt, Jadon Sancho, and Joao Felix are amongst the favourites to win the award.

In case you didn't know

The Golden Boy award is an award given each year to the best young player under the age of 21 playing in European nation's top tier league.

The award was established by Tuttosport and is given based on voting done by 11 newspapers Bild (Germany), Blick (Switzerland), A Bola (Portugal), l'Équipe (France), France Football (France), Marca (Spain), Mundo Deportivo(Spain), Ta Nea (Greece), Sport Express (Russia), De Telegraaf (Netherlands), and The Times (United Kingdom).

The representative of each newspaper is allowed to nominate 5 players for the list and allocate 10 points to their first choice, 7 for their second, 5 for their third, 3 for their fourth and 1 for their last selection.

Some of the previous winners of the award include Rafael van der Vaart, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi, Paul Pogba, Kylian Mbappe and Matthijs De Ligt (who won the award last year).

The heart of the matter

The shortlist for the 2019 Golden Boy award has been announced with the number of players getting reduced to 80.

Liverpool's U-17 World Cup Golden Boot winner Rhian Brewster and Manchester United's Angel Gomez are the big names to miss out on the final 80. Many familiar names including Phil Foden, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Mateo Guendozi, Callum-Hudson Odoi, Moise Kean and Vinicius Junior are still in the list.

Matthijs De Ligt, Jadon Sancho, Joao Felix and Nicolo Zaniolo are amongst the favourites to win the award this year.