Football Manager 27 Guide | Release Nov. 10, 2026

Players win trophies, not formations. There are a thousand ways to tinker with your tactical shape and systems in Football Manager 27, but unless you stumble upon the second coming of the infamous Diablo tactic, you're still going to need elite talent in each position if you want to win matches.

To that end, we’ve been through the database and searched players by potential ability, reputation, and asking price to identify the best young players and the biggest bargains in the game. Note that they're not all cheap, and they don’t all have the outright highest PA. This list is a blend of options that caters to managers in different league tiers, and with varying transfer budgets.

Remember, though: these asking prices are the minimum a team will sell them for. A ton of variables informs the final transfer fee you’ll be able to negotiate in your save, so it’s worth keeping that in mind when you’re budgeting your elite XI of the future.

Théodore Pizarro - Freiburg II

The standout frugal option among FM27’s young goalkeeping talent, Pizarro can be obtained for between £600k and £1.2m. Another factor that makes him easy to sign is that he hasn’t yet broken into the first team, so he will spend his time making appearances for Freiburg’s under-19 squad and reserves during the first season. If you can promise him first-team appearances right away, he’s likely to sign. Be aware that his stats aren’t immediately good enough to slot into a title-contender-calibre side yet, though. He’ll need one or two seasons before he makes the number one shirt his own

Rui Araki - Gamba Osaka

Eighteen-year-old Araki has the highest potential ability range of his generation among goalkeepers, and he’s available for considerably less than similar talents like Stuttgart’s Dennis Seimen and Florian Hellstern, or Chelsea’s Mike Penders. His agent estimates that his transfer fee will be between £3.2m and £6.4m

Although he’s still a teenager and has a sky-high development ceiling, he’s already got values of 16 for Reflexes and One on Ones, and a few other key attributes for the position in the mid-teens. That means he’s practically ready for first-team football right from the start of the game, and could be your very own Donnarumma-like prodigy between the posts.

Matteo Pérez Vinlöf – Dinamo Zagreb

Let’s start with the bargain pick for this position. Yours for between £800k and £4.5m, this 20-year-old Swede has great role versatility and can be played as a sensible stay-at-home left-back or a marauding wing-back who makes overlaps and crosses into the box. His attributes are already well-developed in the summer of 2026, so he can slot into most sides' starting XIs for at least a few games in the first season to gain some experience and help him hit his potential.

Jorrel Hato - Chelsea

Young Dutchman Hato is very much a known quantity, having made a £38m move from Ajax to Chelsea last season and made over 25 appearances for the Blues since then. That’s had a predictable effect on his transfer value, so expect to pay around £61m for him. Even at that preposterous value, he’s worth it. His PA stat is as high as that of anyone at left-back, and he always turns into a world-beater in our saves.

Jorge Domínguez - Atlético de Madrid

Our bargain centre-back is a toss-up between the featured Domínguez and AZ’s Markús Andri Daníelsson Martin (good luck to the kit managers fitting that on the back of his shirt). The latter doesn’t always load in your database, though, depending on how many leagues you’re running and the database size you selected, so Jorge gets the nod.

He’s at a big club, so he won’t easily be persuaded to move elsewhere. However, he’s made a total of one senior club appearance in his career so far, so his reputation is low, keeping his asking price down to between £800k and £1.7m.

Pau Cubarsi - Barcelona

Recommending Pau Cubarsí is easy. His renown is so great that his transfer value is around £279m, but the numbers don’t lie. The 19-year-old Spaniard simply has the best PA in his position, with great physical attributes and incredible development at his age. There isn’t a side in world football he wouldn’t instantly walk into and command in the centre-back position.

Ângelo - São Paulo

There are cheaper right-backs with similar PA in this position. But whereas Yuel Helafu and Dante Headley are sitting pretty at big clubs Man Utd and Man City respectively, 17-year-old Ângelo is still playing in relative obscurity for SPO’s under-20s side. That means he’s a lot easier to sign than his wonderkid contemporaries, for around £140k–£1.4m.

He needs two or three seasons to develop, as his current ability isn’t sufficient for a spot in your first team when the game begins. Loan him out once or twice, then reap the rewards of a potentially elite right-back

Baniel Banjaqui -Benfica

What a natural-born athlete this guy is. His physical stats are already incredible at just 18 years old: 18 Natural Fitness, 16 Pace, and 15 Acceleration. Those are the kind of stats that keep aging Premier League defenders up at night.

Banjaqui has truly elite potential. Benfica won’t let him go for less than £36.5m–£45m.

Ayyoub Bouaddi - Lille

Just in case you ever doubt the accuracy of the Football Manager database, when we featured him in last year’s wonderkids guide he was a well-regarded youngster at Lille. Twelve months and an £81m move to Man City later, he’s one of the most expensive defensive midfielders around.

In the real world, he’s yet to fully demonstrate his potential, but FM’s scouts have clearly seen enough, showering him with attributes over 15 and a potential ability value second to none. Bouaddi can play just as well as a central midfielder or a central defensive midfielder, so he offers, well, not value, exactly, but decent versatility.

Mussa Kabba - Borussia Dortmund

Dortmund has a superpower for identifying and nurturing young talent! Kabba is the latest in a very long line of gifted central midfielders to wear the yellow jersey. Whether his career will rival Jude Bellingham’s is too early to say. However, it’s not too early to snap him up for between £160k and £1.6m.

This deal is only realistic if you’re at a club of roughly equivalent stature to Dortmund; otherwise, Kabba is unlikely to make the move. If you do convince him, you’ll gain exceptional physical and jumping ability in front of your backline.

Halam Loboa - Independiente Medellín

The bargain pick in this position depends on the size of your database. If you can find him, South African free agent Lazola Maku is almost too good to be true—a Taribo West-like signing from the Champ Man days of yore. See also: Vitória de Guimarães’s Zeega (no relation to Christian Ziege), who’s similarly hard to find and doesn’t feature in most database configurations, but can be obtained for £9k. £9k!

We’re picking Loboa, though, as he reliably shows up in database search results and he’s usually open to a move away from his native Medellín to a bigger club. You’ll need to spend between £325k and £3.2m to make that happen.

Alphadjo Cisse - AC Milan (Casciavit)

It’s been too long since the once-mighty AC Milan (or Casciavit, as FM 27 calls the team) brought a truly elite talent up through its youth ranks, but Cissé looks like the real deal.

Equally at home in central or attacking midfield or out on the left wing, he’s a skillful creator with flair and physicality. Not bad for a 19-year-old. Milan want between £31m and £47m for him, but considering he’s among the world’s top talent for PA in his position, that’s a very reasonable figure.

Cavan Sullivan - Philadelphia Union

There’s good news and bad news for managers here. The good news: he’s priced at £0 at the start of the game and has an extremely high PA range. The bad news: Man City have already placed that £0 bid and he’s accepted a contract with them. The silver lining: Man City are stacked with midfield talent, so Sullivan might not break into the first team and could quickly become surplus to requirements. Shortlist him and reassess after season one, because if you can get him, his technical and physical attributes develop at an extraordinary rate.

Luca Williams-Barnett - Tottenham Hotspur

Versatility is Williams-Barnett’s USP. Valued between £12.5m to £18.5m, this Spurs youngster is a natural in four positions: central, left, or right attacking midfield, or upfront. He’s two-footed, possesses great technical ability already, and has uncanny vision for a 17-year-old. Being so young, he’s also malleable enough to adapt to whatever role you require of him.

Like many other players on this list, he’s already at a big club that plays European football, but for how much longer is another matter. Spurs have struggled in the league lately, and if they fail to secure a qualification spot for European competition, Williams-Barnett may jump ship to a club that can offer him experience in the Europa League or Champions League.

Akol Akon - Sydney FC

Like Cavan Sullivan, Akon’s asking price is technically £0 at the start of the game, but annoyingly, another team has already agreed to a free transfer. In this case, it’s Colorado Rapids, which is good news if you’re a European side that can offer top-flight football and European competition. It shouldn’t take too much to turn the young winger’s head after a season or two of MLS football.

His mental and aerial stats are on the low side, but they’re counterbalanced by amazing technical, vision, physical, and pace attributes—all the key areas you’d want a winger to excel in. Although he’s very much a right winger, Akon is fairly two-footed, so he could be trained to adapt to the left wing if you really need him to.

Yan Diomandé - Real Madrid

Diomandé lit up the Bundesliga last season with RB Leipzig, netting 12 goals in 33 appearances while playing out on the wing at just 18. That was sufficient to secure a move to Los Merengues, where it looked like the young Ivorian would struggle for first-team appearances. But with Arda Güler out injured, he stepped up and seized his opportunity, putting in impressive performances.

Diomandé’s well-rounded and developed enough to slot into your starting XI straight away—after all, if he’s good enough for Real Madrid, he’s good enough to walk into any first team. The asking price reflects that: between £123m and £148m will be needed to coax him away from Madrid.

Jun Tabuchi - Shinkjuku

Shinjuku’s Jun Tabuchi is currently on an amateur contract, which means he can be approached for contract negotiations directly without having to agree on a transfer fee with his club. The catch—there’s always a catch, this is FM—is that he’s only just joined his current club at the start of the game and doesn’t want to leave again so soon. Not for anyone.

A bit of patience is required to broker this bargain, then. Tabuchi isn’t going to become the next Ronaldo Nazário, but his PA is good enough to warrant a spot in a mid-table top-flight side’s starting XI. And he can turn a tidy profit when sold a few years later, if you’re of the wheeler-dealer manager mould. Shortlist him, check in again in January, and then once more the following summer if he still doesn’t want to leave

Brian Madjo - Aston Villa

Brian Madjo is a fearsome physical and technical talent for Villa. His PA could send his overall ability higher than the likes of Endrick or Francesco Camarda, and he’s obtainable for considerably less than those two more established names. Between £16m and £24m should be enough to persuade Villa to part ways with him.

Madjo’s an all-round talent in the striker position, but he’s especially good in the air. With strength and jumping reach attributes of 15, 16 Pace, 13 Finishing, and (an admittedly under-developed) 10 Heading, he’s got all the tools to break away from his marker and connect with a cross in the box for a shot or header into the net.

Football Manager 27 is available now on the Epic Games Store.