cOther paths are rarely easy, whether in football or any other area of life. Circumstances change often. Injuries and illnesses occur, there are often changes in leadership that impact the individual, while personal lives also play a role.
Career paths are therefore very difficult to predict. Looking at our 2019 Next Generation list, which we’ve been following for five years now, there were no guarantees that any of the players would become a household name. OK, Alex Holiga, who covers the Balkans for us, was confident that Josko Gvardiol would make it big – which he did – but apart from him, and maybe Ansu Fati, Eduardo Camavinga and Jérémy Doku, there were no certainties .
However, one name that already attracted a lot of interest when we published the list was Giovanni Reyna. He had a good reputation – his father, Claudio, was USA captain and played for Manchester City, Rangers and Bayer Leverkusen – and he was already playing for Borussia Dortmund, which at the time felt like a guaranteed route to bigger things.
In contrast, the other US player on that list of 60 players was Gianluca Busio. Not a famous dad and he was still at Sporting Kansas City when we profiled him. Indeed, he had become the second-youngest player to ever sign for an MLS team at 15 years and 89 days old, but if anyone had predicted who would have the best career, many would have tipped Reyna.
Five years later and that is not an obvious outcome, despite the fact that Reyna was initially well ahead of his compatriot. In 2020 we posted the following update about him:
A remarkable year for the young pigeon. Made his Bundesliga debut on January 18 and hasn’t looked back since. He has now made 23 first-team appearances and 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 have to learn the most.
Busio, meanwhile, was making progress, but still in Kansas City, with several Italian clubs keeping tabs on his performance. But then things started to change somewhat. Reyna was hit by a series of serious injuries, which limited him to just ten Bundesliga appearances in the 2021-22 season, while Busio joined Venezia.
While Busio slowly got used to life in Italy – both on and off the field – Reyna suffered more and more injuries. And then there was a huge backlash 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, playing just 52 minutes of the four American matches. Injuries have hampered him again, but he is now fully fit again and a return to the US also seems likely after talks with Berhalter.
That brings us to this year’s updates, with Reyna back on the fringes of Dortmund’s squad after a failed loan spell at Nottingham Forest and Busio a regular starter for Venezia in Serie A.
This does not mean that Busio is suddenly a better player. After all, Reyna has 31 caps, while Busio has 13 and none since 2023, although he was included in Mauricio Pochettino’s first squad. It just goes to show that you can never predict which direction a career will take; there are simply too many unknowns.
This is clear from the table below, which shows the players who have played for their country’s senior teams. Twenty-nine of the sixty from the 2019 list have now donned the national team’s most prestigious jersey and interestingly, there are now four American players on the list, compared to originally only two. Since we published our list in 2019, two players, Yunus Musah and Malik Tillman, have switched allegiances, from England and Germany respectively.
The number of people who have already represented their country’s senior team at the age of 22 (about 21) is a new record since we had our first graduates four years ago. At the time, only 16 players had achieved this feat. That number increased to 18 in 2021 and then to 22 (2022) and 21 (2023).
So there is a clear trend towards players reaching a high international level earlier and earlier, which is impressive, but perhaps also a concern with the increasing workload.
The second part of our Next Generation features the best first-year players from each Premier League club. Here again there is a mix of those who have achieved their goals at the highest level in England, but also some who have dropped down the divisions or stopped playing altogether.
The thing to remember is that these were 20 of the absolute best in the country at the time and the success rate shows how difficult it is to make it in professional football. This season, 20% of the players on the initial list will play for Premier League clubs.
Newcastle’s Tino Livramento is the most top-experienced player of our Premier League squads, with 62 at the time of writing, more than 40 ahead of everyone else. What’s particularly impressive about Livramento’s career stats is that he missed a year after tearing his ACL with Southampton in April 2022.
It has taken a lot of hard work to get back to full fitness and Eddie Howe has been full of praise for the full-back. “Physically he is in a good place. He has completed most of the preparation without any problems. He had an ankle injury at the end of last year, but we really believe in him,” Howe told the Chronicle in August. ‘He has serious competition in Kieran [Trippier] and it will be fascinating to see how these two compete. Two top talents, great characters – so that will be interesting to see.”
It will be fascinating to see how the 80 players we picked five years ago continue to develop. The US has a home World Cup in less than two years and who knows – maybe Reyna and Busio will both be part of a team enjoying success. As the ad says, “Nothing is impossible.”