5 Golden Boy award winners who are struggling to live up to their hype
The Golden Boy award is a prestigious award given by sports journalists to a young player playing in any of Europe top tier leagues and aged 21 or below, in recognition of the player’s performance over the course of a season. The award was established by Italian newspaper Tuttosport in 2003. Since its induction, the award has gone to players like Wayne Rooney, Cesc Fabregas, Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero – players who tasted phenomenal success after receiving the honour. But that hasn’t been the case with many other players who received the award. Some of them have faded away after making a big money switch or due to other reasons. We look at five such winners who struggled to live up to the initial hype.
#1 Anderson
The Brazilian started his European career with Porto in 2007 before signing for Manchester United a year later for a huge fee of €30m and it was with the Red Devils that he won the award in 2008. He started his career in England brightly and bagged several honours with the club in his first two seasons.
However, trouble started brewing in his third season as he was first fined by the club for returning to Brazil with the club’s permission and later a severe ligament injury ended his season prematurely. He returned to action with decent effect in the following two seasons, but further injuries in the 2011/12 season made life difficult for him and he was gaining a significant amount of weight during his injury layoffs.
By the time Sir Alex Ferguson left the club, Anderson was already on the first team fringes and under David Moyes he was shipped off to Fiorentina on loan, where he played only seven times during his five month stay. He was not in the first team picture under Louis van Gaal and in January 2015 he left United to join Internacional in Brazil on a free transfer.
His involvement with Inter during his first few months was quite eventful as he missed a penalty in a 3-1 defeat to The Strongest, had to be taken off after 36 minutes and needed oxygen mask due to the location’s elevation and was sent off in another game.
The Brazilian was extremely talented, but his injury problems and his poor fitness played a huge role in his downfall. Many talented players have bounced back from severe injuries, but Anderson seemed to be happy in Manchester as long as he got paid.