FIFA World Cup Awards - Best Young Player Award

Best Young Player Award

The Best Young Player award was awarded for the first time at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany and given to Germany's Lukas Podolski. The award is given to the best player in the tournament who is at most 21 years old. For the 2006 FIFA World Cup this meant that the player had to have been born on or after 1 January 1985. The election took place on FIFA's official World Cup website with the help of The FIFA Technical Study Group.

FIFA organized a survey on the Internet for users to choose the "best young player" of the World Cup, between 1958 and 2002, named the best young player of each tournament. With 61% of the overall vote, the winner was Pelé, who finished ahead of the Peruvian Teófilo Cubillas, the best young player at Mexico 1970, and England's Michael Owen, who reached similar heights at France 98.

World Cup Young Player Age
1958 Sweden Pelé 17
1962 Chile Flórián Albert 20
1966 England Franz Beckenbauer 20
1970 Mexico Teófilo Cubillas 21
1974 West Germany Władysław Żmuda 20
1978 Argentina Antonio Cabrini 20
1982 Spain Manuel Amoros 21
1986 Mexico Enzo Scifo 20
1990 Italy Robert Prosinečki 21
1994 United States Marc Overmars 21
1998 France Michael Owen 18
2002 Korea/Japan Landon Donovan 20

The Best Young Player Award was first awarded in 2006.

World Cup Best Young Player Award Age
2006 Germany Lukas Podolski 21
2010 South Africa Thomas Müller 20

Read more about this topic:  FIFA World Cup Awards

Famous quotes containing the words young, player and/or award:

    The young are just as opinionated as the old, but have more exciting things to do than sit around airing their opinions all day.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window.
    Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)

    The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
    Robert Graves (1895–1985)