Thanks mate, I really enjoy doing this and it’s really gratifying to see others enjoying it and finding it interesting. 

I am personally hoping Niewenhof, Dukuly and the Toure brothers really do well. I also like that we seem to have some skilful bigger lads. I can’t wait until we unearth another Viduka, someone with skill to match size and power!

@sportaddict, before I fully absorb the list I just want to say thank you, great post. 

Armiento was born in 1999 - he is too old for this list. 

Big weekend of news for many of these. Armiento doesn't appear to be on the list. 

Peupion scores again for Brighton. That's 7 goals & 1 assist (maybe 1 or 2 today?) from 11 games & at least one of those games he played Right Back, but mostly CAM. 

Let see how quick the domestic transfer system gets implemented and how much the clubs embrace it.

Marquee players are not bad but as long they make an impact, I do think there is a place for both if the clubs invest.

Someone who I may have overlooked wrongly is Thymos ‘Tim’ Caroutas who has been in first team squads consistently for Spanish third tier side UE Cornella, has made his pro debut and was on the bench this morning in the Copa Del Rey vs. Barcelona. Called up to a Joeys squad in mid 2019, he spent 14 months sidelined with injuries and missed out subsequently on the 2019 U17 World Cup. He’s a quick forward. 

Thank you. 

Outstanding thread

Absolutely you cannot force clubs to become development clubs, however we need to accept that as a league we are a development league. So there may be a club like City who want to be up there with the biggest clubs in Asia, which is fine. But the league as a whole will still be a development league. Denying that in the short to medium term the league is anything different will just result in more stagnation imo. 

We basically at the moment are trying to be a big league in Asia but the owners dont want to spend money to facilitate this. We are sorting just waiting for it to happen. An example is, big name players. CSL, MLS and more recently J league every season continually make big name signing after big name signing. This has a flow on effect of more players being interested because of perceived prestige, which flows on to more media exposure, sponsorship doillars, etc. We have had Dwight Yorke then no massive signings for 7 years, then we had Heskey ADP, Ono then nothing for 4 years where we got cahill. Then 18 months later we get (albeit a good attempt) in Honda, but his profile was never big enough to carry it on his own.

Developing talent (which this list shows their is plenty) and on selling is a better league model for fans and football. So unless clubs want to spend big every season this is a more realistic model

Personally I dont think you could force the clubs to become development clubs, after all its based on thier business model but it does make sense for Australian clubs to developer of talent as the markets overseas in Europe and Asia are quite tempting on a financial perspective.

To me it all starts with the salary cap, and introduce the domestic transfer system and think we will see clubs business models change and it might encourage more player development.

The salary cap brings in a safety net financially but it isnt sustainable for squad development, the foreign quota I think he been overdone and has allowed clubs to recruit in a lazy manner.

I agree, i was more saying we are pretending that we will be the biggest league in Asia (along the lines of the CSL), but realistically we wont be. I see the A league as having the potential to be the Dutch equivalent of Asia. A great development league which is competitive at champions league level but realistically never has any tournament favourites

The A-League should be on the whole a development league. But this is not as black and white as people make it out to be. CR at WSW is developing players: Tass, Natta, Aquilina, Baccus, Margush, Russell - in two years time with a lot of football under their belts if a Wanderers team with those players, now in Socceroos contention and ready to move to Europe, and surrounded by experienced imports and Aussies, were to play in the Asian Champions League, then they should be very competitive against Asian opposition and could make a run for the trophy. 

We would not sadly. I would like to hope the AL now has proof of what kind of league it is. Which is a development league to give senior football to talented youngsters. We can pretend we will be the biggest in Asia, but the reality is for the next decade development should be priority.

Its easy to look at it like that but the truth is the pathways and overall in developing players in the last 15 years is the reason why we haven't seen the talent from previous generations especially the 2006 team.

The reality is the biggest bottleneck in youth development in Australian, has been a lack of opportunities through mainly not enough teams or not enough spots to start games and when they are not in first team football the youth leagues are not strong enough to create long and consistent football compared to our overseas counterparts in Europe and Asia.

A 8 NYL season and a 22 NPL season is not enough football if they not at aleague level.

So basically not enough opportunities and not enough games has been the biggest problems to put it short, also ive witnessed the lack of international exposure has been a problem more and more in the last few years.

Some former coaches and players say we lack in football talent if anything but, in fact largely to the FFA NC implemented a decade we are starting to see fruits of that labour where a large breed of Aussie footballers who are technically more efficient and not relying on the speed and strength which Australian football has being known for, alot of these names reflect this.

If it wasnt for Covid would we see these young players get the amount of game time we are seeing? Not sure but as they say any crisis presents opportunity this perfectly describes the current situation.

Top job SA some great assessments. 

While this is true to an extent, and the A-League has improved a lot in that most of the players above 19 on this list who are based in Australia are playing regularly, many more at least than last year, if I had to find 50 more they would be players who have never really got first team football. That’s not really that surprising and a function more than anything of the paucity of professional teams in this country, if there were 16, there’d be more choice, 20 the same etc etc. The only really regular players who weren’t included were Najjar, Akbari, Casella and Anderson. 

"First team football"??... What first team football?? 🤔

So everyone going on about our development being shite shouldn't be so quick to criticise? With all of the u21 talent playing every week in the A League, moving up from the academy teams & all of the young kids OS, there's probably a hundred players who could make this list. Obviously not all will kick on, but it's looking pretty promising for the NT squads 

Thanks a lot. The majority of 2018 have done well. Admittedly I didn't know so many at the time but they're certainly present now. 

Nicholas Pennington is now Serie C. That young City winger who assisted Maclaren will hopefully play more. 

Thanks for the feedback mate. Next year I’ll have a look at doing that. 
The reason I stop at 50 is that was the number of Neanderthal’s original and pioneering list. But in reality imo I don’t think Australian football has enough talent depth yet to really go further. I can try and find the long list I started off with but I’m pretty sure I’ve named most of the ones I left out in a comment a bit further up. 

People who were close but just missed out include Murray Miller, Zak Gilsenan, Oliver Kalac, Jaimie Cogman, Akiel Raffie, Anton Mlinaric, Lewis Miller, Charlie Miller, Luke Ivanovic, Moudi Najjar, Luis Lawrie Lattanzio, Jay Barnett, Jerry Skotadis, Anthony Lesiotis, Kai Trewin, Doni Grdic, Lachlan Sepping, Michael Ruhs, Isaac Danzo, Jacob Chapman

Always love a good speculation thread, only to check on them years later and realise none of the ‘next big thing’ ever made it.
Great work here nonetheless.

Very good, thanks for posting.

Also I love how you’ve split out the list by position. Makes it far easier to digest. Maybe a personal preference but an even stronger iteration for next time could be updating the categories to specific position e.g ‘Left Back’ instead of ‘Defender’. 

Who else could be added?
Marlee Francois (younger bro of Tyrese) - supposedly impressing at Bristol City
Aydin Hammond (younger bro of Tristan) - remember him playing quite well in u/16 joeys team
Zak Gilsenan - scoring a lot for Blackburn u/18s and regularly playing for u/23s
Isaac Danzo in Spain is only 20

Without wanting to sound greedy, why stop at Top 50?

I’d personally love an extended list with no limit on numbers if you happened to have an interest in expanding it :)

Holy fuck people stop quoting the entire OP, no shit your responding to that use the + button and not the reply button.

Probably in terms of power rankings from all of those I wonder who would be first? Maybe Robertson or Watts? Arzani and McGree naturally are up there based on first team football.

In terms of other talent you could add in the likes of Oliveira, Segecic, Lopane, Yull and Musa Toure.

I wonder who else could be on the list?