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Topics: Football Manager, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo
Ryan Smart
Topics: Football Manager, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo
As with every game in the popular series, Football Manager 2006 named a number of future wonderkids in its database - and some of them were scarily accurate.
Back when the game was released in October 2005, Lionel Messi was only just breaking through into the Barcelona first team on a more regular basis, while Cristiano Ronaldo had started to find his scoring boots at Manchester United.
Lamine Yamal, meanwhile, was 18 months away from even being born, while 2024 Ballon d'Or runner-up Vinicius Junior was five.
While the wonderkid term is used loosely nowadays, back in 2005 it was much more rarely seen.
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Freddy Adu was perhaps football's first worldwide wonderkid, although FM and Championship Manager fans will fondly remember wonderkids from the earlier games, such as Cherno Samba, To Madeira (sadly, as it turned out, not a real player) and Maxim Tsigalko.
But how many wonderkids from FM2006 actually went on to reach their potential?
There were undoubtedly a few that FM got spot on - although many of us would at the time - including Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie, Sergio Aguero and Sergio Ramos. Messi and Ronaldo are both there too.
But others aged extremely well with time. Vincent Kompany and Joao Moutinho were hardly household names in 2005 but all went on to have lengthy careers at the top level.
Carlos Tevez was another, with the Argentinian still a year away from starting his highly controversial six-month spell at West Ham by that time.
Sergio Ramos, meanwhile, had just joined Real Madrid from Sevilla and, aged 19, was tipped for a big future.
There were other less successful wonderkids who still managed to enjoy careers at the top level. Stewart Downing, Nuri Sahin and Nico Kranjcar were all tipped for stardom by FM, while Darijo Srna and Igor Akinfeev both became cult heroes at Shakhtar Donetsk and CSKA Moscow respectively. Giampaolo Pazzini found major success in Italian football for a range of clubs.
A few names, though, didn't quite make the grade at the elite level. Adu was one, while ex-Manchester City striker Valeri Bojinov was another.
From outside of the 25 we've included, former Arsenal striker Arturo Lupoli can be added to that list, while Fabio Paim - who once claimed he could have been better than Ronaldo - had a journeyman career across Europe and recently shot an adult film.
Here is the list of 25 wonderkids from Football Manager 2006:
