Feel old yet? Harvey Elliott and football's youngest ever players | OneFootball

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OneFootball

Dan Burke·26 September 2018

Feel old yet? Harvey Elliott and football's youngest ever players

Article image:Feel old yet? Harvey Elliott and football's youngest ever players

The midfielder made his professional debut aged just 15 years and 174 days and beat the record set by Leicester’s Ashley Chambers, who was 15 years and 203 days old when he played against Blackpool back in 2005.

Elliott was born on 4 April 2003 and incredibly, on the afternoon of the Millwall game, he was studying for his GCSEs.


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In fact, the youngster was snapped on the train home after the game, and his dad assured fellow passengers that he’d be back in school the following morning.

Two days before Elliott was born, an 18-year-old Wayne Rooney made his first ever England start.

The day after, Manchester United beat Liverpool 4-0 at Old Trafford to seize the initiative in the Premier League title race.

Room 5 were top of the UK singles chart with ‘Make Luv’ …

And the FIFA video game franchise still looked like this …

But while Elliott has made everyone at Onefootball towers feel pretty old this week, where does he rank in terms of football’s youngest ever debutants?

The youngest player to appear in an English Football League game is still Reuben Noble-Lazarus, who played for Barnsley in 2008 at the age of 15 years and 45 days – breaking a record set by Albert Geldard all the way back in 1929.

Elsewhere in the world, some players have been handed their debuts so young that they make Elliott and Noble-Lazarus look like seasoned veterans.

Remember Freddy Adu?

Article image:Feel old yet? Harvey Elliott and football's youngest ever players

The young American who was supposed to be the next big thing. Now plays for a team called Las Vegas Lights, having previously represented such giants as Serbian side Jagodina and Finland’s KuFu-98? Adu made his Major League Soccer debut for DC United back in 2004 when he was still only 14, making him the youngest player ever to appear in United States professional sports.

Manchester United once had a player on their books called Souleymane Mamam, who was supposedly 13 years and 310 days when he played for Togo in a World Cup qualifier against Zambia in May 2001.

We say “supposedly” because when Mamam played for Royal Antwerp in 2003, the Belgian club listed his date of birth as 1985, which means he would actually have been the ripe old age of 16 at the time of that Togo-Zambia game.

Peru’s Fernando Garcia was once thought to hold the record for being the youngest ever player when he played for Juan Aurich in 2001 aged 13.

But that record was smashed by Bolivian midfielder Mauricio Baldivieso who, in July 2009, came on as a substitute for Aurora when he was still only 12-years-old.

God only knows what sort of jam you’d have to find yourself in whereby your only option off the bench is a literal child, but it may have had something to do with the fact Aurora were coached by Baldivieso’s dad Julio Cesar at the time, who was a former Bolivian international himself.

Apparently the youngster left the field in tears after being bullied by the opposition’s defenders that day, but he went on to play for Bolivia’s U20s and is apparently still turning out for Club San José aged 22.

The worrying thing from Harvey Elliott’s point of view is that these child prodigies historically have a tendency to fade into obscurity pretty quickly. He’ll be hoping he turns out more like Sergio Agüero, who became the youngest player to play in the Argentine Primera División when he made his debut for Independiente aged 15 years and 35 days.