Career paths are rarely straightforward, whether in football or any other area of life. Circumstances often change. Injuries and illnesses happen, there are often changes in leadership which have an impact on the individual while personal lives also play a part.
Career paths are therefore very difficult to predict. Looking down the list of our 2019 Next Generation, which we have now followed for five years, there were no guarantees any of the players would become household names. OK, Alex Holiga, who covers the Balkans for us, was confident that Josko Gvardiol would make it big – which he has – but apart from him, and perhaps Ansu Fati, Eduardo Camavinga and Jérémy Doku, there were no certainties.
One name, however, that was already attracting a lot of interest when we published the list was Giovanni Reyna. He had pedigree – his father, Claudio, captained USA and played for Manchester City, Rangers and Bayer Leverkusen – and he was already at Borussia Dortmund, which at the time felt like a guaranteed success route to bigger things.
In contrast, the other player from the US on that list of 60 players, was Gianluca Busio. No famous dad and he was still at Sporting Kansas City when we profiled him. He had, indeed, become the second-youngest player to ever sign for an MLS team at 15 years and 89 days old, but if anyone would have predicted who would go on to have the best career many would have tipped Reyna.
Five years on and that is not an obvious outcome despite Reyna initially being well ahead of his compatriot. In 2020 we posted the following update on him:
A remarkable year for the youngster. Made his Bundesliga debut on 18 January and has not looked back since. He now has 23 first-team appearances and has established himself as a starter and one of the most talented young players in Europe. “I’m still learning a lot tactically,” he said in August. “There is a very big difference between youth and professional football. Making the right movements and creating space for myself and others is what I still need to learn the most.
Busio, meanwhile, was making progress but still at Kansas City with several Italian clubs monitoring his performances. But then things started to slightly turn. Reyna was hit by a bad run of injuries, which restricted him to 10 Bundesliga appearances in 2021-22 while Busio joined Venezia.
As Busio slowly got used to life in Italy – on and off the pitch – Reyna suffered more injuries. And then there was a huge fallout at the 2022 World Cup, after which we wrote:
A tumultuous year for the young American who was caught in the crossfire of a feud between his own family and the USMNT coach, Gregg Berhalter, after the World Cup, during which he played a mere 52 minutes of the US’s four games. Injuries have once again hampered him but he is back to full fitness now and a US return seems likely too after talks with Berhalter.
Which brings us to this year’s updates, which show Reyna on the periphery of the Dortmund squad again after a failed loan spell at Nottingham Forest and Busio a regular starter for Venezia in Serie A.
This is not to say that Busio, suddenly, is a better player. Reyna, after all, has 31 caps while Busio has 13 and none since 2023, although he was included in Mauricio Pochettino’s first selection. It just shows you never can never predict which way a career will go; there are simply too many unknowns.
That is evident from the table below, which shows the players who have gone on to feature for their countries’ senior teams. Twenty-nine of the 60 from the 2019 list have now pulled on the most prestigious national team jersey and, interestingly, there are now four USA players on the list when there were only two originally. Since we published our list in 2019 two players, Yunus Musah and Malik Tillman, have changed allegiance, from England and Germany, respectively.
The number who have already represented their countries’ senior team at the age of 22 (some 21) is a new record since we had our first graduates four years ago. Then, only 16 players had achieved that feat. That number rose to 18 in 2021 and then 22 (2022) and 21 (2023).
There is therefore a clear trend that players are reaching a high international level earlier and earlier, which is impressive but perhaps also a concern with increasing workloads.
The second part of our Next Generation lists the best player at first-year scholar age at each Premier League club. Again, there is a mix of those who have achieved their goals at the highest level in England but also several that have dropped down the divisions or stopped playing altogether.
The thing to remember is these were 20 of the absolute best in the country at the time and the success rate just shows how hard it is to make it in professional football. This season 20% of the players on the initial list are with Premier League clubs.
Newcastle’s Tino Livramento is the player with most top-flight experience of our Premier League picks, with 62 at the time of writing, more than 40 ahead of anyone else. What is particularly impressive with Livramento’s career stats is that he missed a year after tearing his cruciate ligament in April 2022 while at Southampton.
It has taken a lot of hard work to get back to full fitness and Eddie Howe is full of praise for the full-back. “Physically he’s in a good place. He’s had the majority of pre-season with no issues. He had an ankle injury at the back end of last year but we really believe in him,” Howe told the Chronicle in August. “He’s got serious competition in Kieran [Trippier] and it’s going to be fascinating to see how those two compete. Two top talents, amazing characters – so that will be an interesting thing to see.”
It will be fascinating to see how the 80 players we picked five years ago continue to progress. The USA have a home World Cup coming up in less than two years’ time and who knows – perhaps Reyna and Busio will both be part of a team that enjoys success. As the ad says: “Nothing is impossible.”