Discover Football Manager 26’s Hidden Wonderkids Destined for Stardom – Are You Ready to Uncover the Next Big Talent?

After what feels like forever in the making, Football Manager 26 has finally landed—and boy, it’s shaking things up. With a slick, revamped match engine under the hood and, for the very first time, the inclusion of women’s football, FM26 is serving up a fresh playground for us managers to test our mettle. Now that the game’s out there, the hot question on everyone’s lips is: which young guns should you be snapping up to build your dream squad? Dive in as we spotlight this year’s top prospects, the wonderkids ready to transform your save from the ground up. Ready to discover your next star? LEARN MORE

Football Manager 26 wonderkids have dropped, with the new game out now.

It’s been a long road to FM26, with the game two years in the making: there’s a much-improved match engine this time around, and for the first time ever, women’s football has been added to the game, too.

But who should we sign this time around? Let’s dig into the best youngsters in this year’s game…

FourFourTwo’s picks

Picked by

Joe Donnohue

Joe Donnohue is FourFourTwo’s expert on all things youth football, as a former writer of SCOUTED and editor behind FourFourTwo’s The Boy’s A Bit Special.

You’ve probably heard by now that Max Dowman isn’t in FM26 (yet) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t heaps of wonderkids to pump your FM stocks into.

Noah Atubolu may be 23 and not technically a wonderkid but in goalkeeping terms, he’s still a spring chicken. The Freiburg No. 1 is a penalty-saving master, represented Germany at this summer’s Under-21 Euros consummately and could be the cornerstone of your save’s defensive dynasty.

Nathan De Cat is not a goalkeeper, despite what his name may suggest. The 17-year-old midfielder is following the Youri Tielemans pathway at Anderlecht, and that Belgium-to-top-five league pipeline is as strong as ever. He’s starting regularly in real life this season, loves to switch the play with a pinged cross-field pass and works really hard out of possession.

Nico Paz is the star of this bunch, and currently on loan at Cesc Fabregas’ Como from Real Madrid. Good luck prising him from Galactico clutches because he will cost a pretty penny, but he’ll be worth every last one of them. You’d be best off hoping the in-game Santiago Bernabeu chiefs deem that the 20-year-old spends another year out on loan.

Can Can Uzun score goals? You bet he can. The Eintracht Frankfurt teenager has hit the ground running this season with five in his first seven Bundesliga matches. His strike-rate was one every other game in the division below for Nurnberg two seasons ago and there’s no reason he can’t do the same for your save. Eintracht may as well be a striker factory at this point.