Sunderland teenager is delivering on his sensation status and there are hopes he can be ‘Messi Mark II’-  but the battle to keep hold of 17-year-old is on as Europe’s top clubs circle

Chris Rigg had not even played fifteen minutes of senior football when the first resounding assessment came in from the Sunderland captain.

The 15-year-old schoolboy was brought off the bench with the Black Cats trailing against League One Shrewsbury in the FA Cup in January 2023 and inspired his side to a dramatic 2-1 win.

Moments after the final whistle, Luke O’Nien – who had just scored the 94th-minute winner – turned to the on-field camera, pointed to debutant Rigg and declared: ‘What a player’.

It’s a three-word statement now echoed by anyone seeing the teen sensation in action for the first time.

Rigg only turned 17 in the summer but he is already the lynchpin of a resurgent Sunderland team at the top of the Championship ahead of the visit of promotion rivals Leeds on Friday evening.

He is considered the best outfield player to come through the Academy of Light since fellow central midfielder Jordan Henderson, who led Liverpool to Premier League and Champions League glory and captained his country.

Now Rigg is tipped to reach similar – or even greater – heights, with some of the biggest clubs in Europe keeping an eye on him.

And to think he’s only just learning to drive (he failed his theory test twice) and was given chocolates instead of champagne after his man-of-the-match display against Middlesbrough last month because he was too young is for drinking.

“He’s miles beyond his years,” says Chris Mepham, the Wales international defender on loan from Sunderland. ‘He acts like he’s been there for years. He’ll have a great career.’

Dan Neil, Riggs midfield partner, added: “His ceiling is whatever he wants. From the moment he first trained with us, everyone’s eyebrows went up and they said, ‘We’ve got a player here.’

Rigg is the England Under-18 captain and has also managed them at U16 and U17 level, with one scout comparing him to Captain Marvel himself, Bryan Robson, given his leadership qualities, courage and motor skills.

Tony Mowbray, the Sunderland boss who gave Rigg his debut, compared him to another legendary Manchester United captain. “He’s got that Roy Keane-esque kind of unpleasantness,” Mowbray said. “He’s a warrior-like character. He wants to win every tackle, every five-a-side, every game he’s in.”

Other observers in the North East have told Mail Sport that Rigg has characteristics of two current stars from the blue half of Manchester, Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva, given his relatively small 6ft 4in frame, sublime control and left foot.

Rigg himself admits he admires Luka Modric and watches clips of Zinedine Zidane, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. “But I don’t want to be Steven Gerrard, I want to be Chris Rigg,” he emphatically announced last month.

‘I’m just a traditional midfielder. I like to attack, I like to defend, I also like to tackle. A kind of box-to-box midfielder.’ In other words, the boy has everything.

After being deployed mainly out wide last season, Rigg has been deployed more centrally as a No.8 this season under new boss Regis Le Bris, whose midfield also includes Jobe Bellingham – Jude’s 19-year-old younger brother who scored a stunning winner against Derby on Tuesday .

“He’s one of those players who gets the fans on the edge of their seats every time,” former Sunderland striker Marco Gabbiadini, a former BBC Radio Newcastle pundit, told Mail Sport.

‘He is very fast with his passing. He quickly removes it from his feet and moves it. His poise is incredible. He reminds me a bit of Jack Grealish, the way he carries the ball, a bit stuck to his toe.

‘He’s also quite persistent. He doesn’t shy away from tackles or challenges. That has been one of the hallmarks of his game.

“He’s been a revelation. It doesn’t happen often that a 17-year-old boy plays so many matches. There aren’t many players who have made a breakthrough in the league at that age and gone on to do so, apart from Bellingham when he was at Birmingham.”

Born in Hebburn, South Tyneside, Rigg comes from a Newcastle-supporting family but has been on Sunderland’s books since the age of five. He played at the Stadium of Light for the first time when his Under-9 team entertained the crowd at half-time of a first match. team competition.

“When Sunderland called I didn’t hesitate because I was a fan myself,” Tony Watson, the headteacher of Rigg’s old school Hebburn Lakes, who had to approve his move, told fanzine A Love Supreme. “There were other clubs interested but I made the academy visits and we got him started on a program at Sunderland. I’m so glad I signed those documents. I hope he ends up like Messi Mark 2.”

When Rigg became the youngest outfielder in Sunderland history at Shrewsbury, he was still studying for his GCSEs at Hebburn Comprehensive. His high school made him miss two days a week to train at the Academy of Light.

In the next round of the FA Cup at Fulham later in January 2023, Rigg appeared to have become the competition’s youngest goalscorer and won the draw for Sunderland when he scored in stoppage time, but his goal was disallowed for offside. However, history was not to be denied him at the start of last season when he equalized against Crewe in the Carabao Cup to become Sunderland’s youngest goalscorer and the youngest in the competition at the age of 16.

The following month, in September 2023, Rigg scored a header on his competitive debut against Southampton to become the Championship’s second-youngest goalscorer, behind only a certain Jude Bellingham. No wonder the English superstar’s current and former clubs, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, are among those interested in Rigg, as well as – whisper it softly – Sunderland’s rowdy neighbors Newcastle.

“You can already see the path ahead of him,” Gabbiadini added. ‘He’ll probably go to one of the German teams, play there for a year or two and then go to one of the top teams in Europe, a bit like Bellingham. But the other choice is for him to stay here, play every week and if we get promoted, what would happen?’

Rigg wearing red and white in the Premier League is the dream scenario for Sunderland fans, who have been starved for top-flight football for more than seven years. But the leaders of the Black Cats are realistic and consider it a coup that they have even retained their valuable property for so long.

After Rigg signed his first professional contract – a three-year contract – with the club in July, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman confirmed there was interest in his player and spoke about ‘how difficult it can be to retain top talent’. Certainly, that contract was the Black Cats’ best deal this summer.

When Rigg scored his audacious backheel winner in the Wear-Tees derby against Boro last month, boss Le Bris let down his guard and hailed him as the club’s new ‘symbol’.

Chris Rigg: Sunderland’s very own Angel of the North. Supporters better worship him while they can.