In 2021 the Next Generation series picked out 80 players from around the world who had a chance of making it in world football: 20 from the Premier League and 60 from the rest of the world. Most were 17 years old, a few were 16. Five years on, following that group shows how difficult it is to predict who will last — even a talent as obvious as Lamine Yamal, picked in 2024, prompted only an inkling that he might do rather well.
Two entries from the class of 2021 illustrate how differently those journeys can run. One, on a Brighton youngster, was notably understated. Jack Hinshelwood was described as a ball-playing central midfielder from a footballing family, with academy staff believing his tactical awareness came from growing up around the game. His father, Adam, played for Brighton and now manages Worthing FC along the coast, while his great uncle Martin, grandfather Paul and great grandfather Wally all enjoyed careers as players.
The entry for Borussia Dortmund’s Youssoufa Moukoko was a good deal louder. He was the youngest player to appear in the Bundesliga at 16 years and one day, the youngest to appear in the Champions League 17 days later, and the youngest scorer in the Bundesliga 11 days after that. He was also both the youngest player and the youngest scorer for Germany’s under-21 team before he had turned 17. Moukoko went on to play for Germany at the World Cup the following year, at the same time as Hinshelwood was promoted to Brighton’s under-21s. Different trajectories, different pressures. Moukoko was already known around the world and tipped for a long career at the top, with a carefree style that recalled a young Michael Owen.
Then life interfered. Moukoko sustained injuries and struggled to make the Dortmund starting XI, having also faced serious competition up front after Erling Haaland arrived in 2020. He had a really good spell at the start of the 2022-23 season once Haaland had joined Manchester City, but sustained an ankle ligament tear and never quite got his starting place back.
These days Moukoko is playing in the Turkish top flight with Corum, on loan from Copenhagen, where he moved in 2025. His switch to the newly promoted side was low key, with the club welcoming him to the “family” in a short statement. He is yet to start a game, but his cameos off the bench have offered flashes of his quality, most notably a sharp assist on his home debut in a 3-0 win over Eyüpspor. His market value is put at €5m (£4m).
Hinshelwood, by contrast, is going the other way. He has made 67 Premier League appearances and was included on Thomas Tuchel’s 55-man longlist for the 2026 World Cup. A frustrating ankle injury has hampered him at the start of this campaign, but his star is rising and he is valued at €28m (£24m). Not that Brighton are about to sell him.
Neither player chose his path, or whether he broke through early. They simply developed at a different pace. Hinshelwood was not ready to play top-flight football at 17; Moukoko was. Whether that early exposure had a negative impact on Moukoko is impossible to say. Nor has it been straightforward for Hinshelwood, as his father explained to Sky this year. “It is definitely not just a straight line,” Adam Hinshelwood said. “There were lots of bumps and ups and downs along the way.” One moment stood out: as an under-15, Jack was set a challenge to play with an older age group, something his father believes made him as a footballer. “It was a big catalyst for Jack,” Adam said. “He rolled up his sleeves and became a proper footballer.”
The wider picture of the class of 2021 is one of dispersal. Of the 60 world talents, 24 have gone on to represent their countries. Moukoko stands on two caps, some distance behind players such as Julio Enciso and Gavi, while others have had to swap allegiances: Livano Comenencia started out with the Netherlands age-group teams but has more than 20 caps for Curaçao and played at this summer’s World Cup. Among the Premier League picks, astonishingly few are with the same club — Hinshelwood and Liverpool’s Kaide Gordon are the only two, with the other 18 playing around the globe, including in the US, Qatar and Hong Kong. Between them the 20 have played 145 top-flight games, and Hinshelwood accounts for almost half of those.
Adrian Blake, who was with Watford in 2021, has carved out a very successful career in the Netherlands after joining Utrecht in 2023, but he too struggled in the beginning. “It hasn’t been easy and a lots of ups and downs,” he told Football-oranje.com in 2025. “But now I am getting my rewards and showing why I made the right decision by moving here.” Blake moved to the Netherlands at 17, a huge gamble for someone so young, and says he chose the Eredivisie “because it is a great league for young players”, offering opportunities that often do not exist in England. “For me it was a no-brainer,” he said.
Blake is 21. He has almost his whole career in front of him, as do Moukoko and Hinshelwood, and yet all three have experienced so much already. What the next five years bring is anyone’s guess.