Désiré Doué was named Golden Boy on Tuesday. With that, the Paris Saint-Germain winger follows in the footsteps of Lamine Yamal, who won the award last year.
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Désiré Doué’s rise from exciting prospect to award-winning headline act reached a new peak with his coronation as Golden Boy, a prize that has often foreshadowed the careers of football’s brightest stars.
The twenty-year-old winger enjoyed a breakout campaign at the Parc des Princes and sealed his status on the biggest stage with a decisive performance in the Champions League final against Internazionale. In Munich he delivered two goals and added an assist in a display that blended audacity, composure, and end-product, the complete illustration of why so many coaches and scouts have long rated his ceiling among the highest of his generation.
Tuttosport, the Italian newspaper that created and organizes the Golden Boy award, positions it as the definitive recognition for players under 21 competing in Europe’s top tiers. The voting typically draws on a panel of journalists from across the continent who evaluate not only raw numbers but also the context of those contributions. Performances in high-leverage matches, consistency across domestic and European competitions, and the capacity to influence games against elite opposition matter as much as goals and assists. In Doué’s case, the combination of club-level impact with the promise of what he could become made for a compelling case. He has shown the ability to attack on either flank, carry the ball through pressure, and accelerate past defenders from a standing start. His balance and first touch invite pressure so that he can eliminate opponents with a single movement. When the tempo spikes, he often looks most comfortable, which is a hallmark of players who rise to Champions League standards.
This year’s shortlist underlined the breadth of elite young talent spread across Europe. Jorrel Hato has matured rapidly since his move to Chelsea, showing calm distribution and timing in duels. Pau Cubarsí has become a symbol of Barcelona’s renewed emphasis on academy excellence, stepping into a demanding role with unusual composure for his age. Arsenal’s conveyor belt produced Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri, teenagers with high technical floors and the positional flexibility modern football requires. Warren Zaïre-Emery has already established himself as a midfield reference point at Paris Saint-Germain, while Dean Huijsen’s reading of the game continues to attract attention at Real Madrid. Juventus forward Kenan Yildiz brings a blend of work rate and flair in the final third, and Geovany Quenda is emerging as the next exciting attacker to roll off Sporting Portugal’s production line. Within such a field, Doué’s finishing kick in Europe offered the kind of decisive narrative that tends to sway ballots.
The history of the Golden Boy provides useful perspective on what may come next. Rafael van der Vaart inaugurated the award in 2003 with a creative profile that set a template for later winners. Matthijs de Ligt’s 2018 triumph captured a different archetype, the commanding defender whose leadership and game-reading are advanced beyond his years. Other past winners such as Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland demonstrate that the award often lands on players who quickly translate promise into dominance. Last year the spotlight fell on Lamine Yamal, another wide player whose decision-making and technical quality belie his age. The sequence from Yamal to Doué suggests that the winger is again the position of the moment in youth development, shaped by systems that value width, one-on-one ability, and the creation of advantages in transition.
At club level, the award caps a season in which Doué evolved from impact substitute to consistent starter. His minutes carried weight because they often came in games where the margin for error was small. He learned to vary his approach, sometimes holding width to stretch the last line, other times drifting inside to overload midfield zones. The growth is visible in his scanning and in the choices he makes once he reaches the box. He looks for the cutback if a defender closes his shooting angle, he disguises the squared pass when the goalkeeper commits, and he takes snapshots early when the defense is slow to reset. These are habits that come from repetition and from the accelerated education that only top-level knockout matches can provide.
For Paris Saint-Germain, Doué’s development supports a broader effort to balance star power with an academy-informed identity and a more sustainable squad age profile. European campaigns are rarely linear, and the club knows that knockout football can compress or distort narratives, but the emergence of a homegrown or domestically developed leader in the front line changes what the team can be. It offers tactical flexibility and gives the coaching staff another player who can both execute a plan and break a plan when the match demands improvisation.
Internationally, the implications are significant. France has an extraordinary depth chart, yet national teams often turn on the availability of specialist profiles. A winger who can hold width, attack the inside channel, and finish like a forward adds balance to a squad filled with midfield hybrids and multipurpose attackers. Doué’s ability to play on either flank and to combine with fullbacks who overlap or underlap makes him a natural fit for multiple systems. If he carries club form into international windows, he strengthens France’s options in tournaments where one moment of verticality or one clean strike can decide a tie.
The Golden Boy label can be a burden as well as an honor, since it raises expectations and places every performance under a magnifying glass. The path ahead will ask for durability, constant adaptation to opponents who will game-plan specifically to stop him, and continued refinement in decision-making. Many former winners have navigated that scrutiny and converted early promise into sustained excellence. The ones who did so found ways to add layers to their game every season. For Doué, that might mean expanding his creative passing repertoire against deep blocks, adding more variation to his runs without the ball, and developing set-piece value that guarantees contributions when open play tightens.
Even with those caveats, this award arrives as a deserved acknowledgment of a season that felt like a turning point. The Champions League final in Munich provided a frame that supporters and voters will remember, but the body of work across the campaign built the foundation. Consistency in domestic matches, resilience in away legs in Europe, and the sense that he embraces responsibility rather than shying from it have combined to move him from potential to production. If the past two decades of Golden Boy winners are any guide, this moment is more often a beginning than an ending.
Updated: 03:28, 4 Nov 2025
