Best Young Player Award

The Best Young Player (commercially termed "Gillette 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.

As a way to grant the recognized of retroactive form, 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. "O Rei" (The King) finished ahead of the Peruvian Teofilo 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	Pele	17
1962 Chile	Florian Albert	20
1966 England	Franz Beckenbauer	20
1970 Mexico	Teofilo 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 USA	Marc Overmars	21
1998 France	Michael Owen	18
2002 Korea/Japan	Landon Donovan	20

The Gillette Best Young Player Award was first awarded in 2006

World Cup	Gillette Best Young Player Award	Age
2006 Germany	Lukas Podolski	21