Eighteen months ago, Yan Diomande was a teenager making his way in the Bundesliga and Endrick was a Real Madrid squad player looking for minutes anywhere he could find them. On Monday, both turned up on the same list as Lamine Yamal. Real Madrid have three players among the 100 candidates for the Golden Boy 2026, and two of them are already inside the top ten.
The award, run by the Italian daily Tuttosport in collaboration with Transfermarkt, goes to the outstanding footballer registered in one of the 25 strongest first divisions in Europe and born on or after 1 January 2006. As Managing Madrid report via the club’s own channels, Yan Diomande, Endrick and Thiago Pitarch have all made the initial 100. Tuttosport will update the ranking every month until October, at which point it is cut to 20 and an international jury picks the winner.
Where the three Madrid names sit
Bernabéu Digital, reporting the standings as they were published, place Diomande third, behind only Pau Cubarsí and Lamine Yamal. Endrick is eighth, with Warren Zaïre-Emery, Ayyoub Bouaddi, Froholdt and Rayan also ahead of him. Thiago Pitarch is 41st.
Third is a striking position for a player who has been a Real Madrid footballer for a matter of weeks. The Ivorian arrived this summer from RB Leipzig on the back of a strong season in Germany, made his first appearance in white at Valdebebas earlier this month and was registered for LaLiga shortly afterwards. On the evidence of pre-season, the ranking is not flattering him.
Endrick’s eighth place is the more interesting entry, because it is built on a season spent away from the Bernabéu. His loan at Lyon delivered the run of games he could not get in Madrid, and he has come back into a first-team squad rather than a waiting room. Pitarch, meanwhile, is 41st on the back of a late-season breakthrough at Madrid that made him a genuinely important piece of the side — the same player who came back through Castilla and kept climbing.
Cubarsí is the favourite, and it is not close
Nobody at the Bernabéu should be planning a trophy presentation. Managing Madrid describe Pau Cubarsí as the odds-on favourite after he led Spain’s defensive line at the 2026 World Cup, and Bernabéu Digital reach the same conclusion about the top two: shifting Cubarsí and Yamal, both world champions and both league winners with Barcelona last season, looks difficult from where the list currently stands.
That is the honest reading. The value of the shortlist for Madridistas is not the trophy; it is the confirmation that the club’s recruitment and its academy are producing names that the rest of Europe is already ranking. Three players in the top 100 of an award restricted to footballers born in 2006 or later is a decent audit of where the next cycle is coming from.
What the Golden Boy list means for the season ahead
There is a practical edge to all this. Diomande and Endrick are both competing for minutes in the most crowded department of José Mourinho’s squad, behind Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior, and monthly updates to a public ranking are a reminder of how quickly reputations move at this age. Pitarch’s situation is more delicate still, with the club open to a move that gets him regular football.
The list will be trimmed twice before a winner is chosen in the autumn. Whether any of the three survive the cut to 20 will depend on what they do between now and October — which, conveniently, is exactly the stretch of season that starts at Espanyol on Saturday. It is a nice problem for a club that spent last season being told it had run out of young players.
