He has a 39% lead
The vote for the Golden Boy award appears to have been hijacked giving a huge lead to a player that almost nobody has heard of.
The award which is given to the best young player under the age of 21 is a prestigious accolade for any player and was won by England’s Jude Bellingham last year.
Other notable winners of the award include Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas and Wayne Rooney.
With such notorious past winners it may come as a surprise to many to hear the name of the front runner of this year’s Golden Boy award.
Playing in the Bundesliga, Max Finkgräfe is a 20-year old left-back plying his trade at FC Köln.
The German has impressed in his native country this season making 24 appearances with 18 starts, scoring one goal.
He was the shining light in a team that struggled last year, ultimately being relegated from the Bundesliga, making his lead all the more surprising.
After 64,000 votes so far, Finkgräfe leads the polls with a 39.2% share of the votes.
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As appreciated as the the full-back may be, this comes as a shock to many with so much incredible talent all over the world who probably think they have a better claim to the award than Finkgräfe.
This can be seen just in the players the German leads in the polls which include 16-year-old Lamine Yamal, Manchester United duo Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho as well as Real Madrid starlet Arda Guler.
The Golden Boy award is organised by Italian sport newspaper, Tuttosport, first established in 2003 when Rafael van der Vaart was the first winner.
The winner is decided by a mix of journalist votes and fan votes with the later being done through a bare bones website which can often lead to easy manipulation of results.
This was exemplified last year as Bellingham won the award after initially trailing Alejandro Balde by 13% until the Barcelona full-back said in an interview he does not like Taylor Swift’s music, at which point a huge swing towards Bellingham occurred.
The Golden Boy winner will be declared in December.
