Sergej Milinkovic-Savic     21     Midfielder     Lazio     Serbia

Skinny

In a word; phwoar.

A central midfielder who, please Lord forgive us for we are about to cliché, has wonderful feet for a big man, brilliant acceleration and great anticipation already. His eye for a pass comes naturally, he’s as comfortable on the back foot as he is pushing on, and he’s versatile enough to dovetail within a midfield when required to. We love Napoli’s #IBWM100 CM entrant Piotr Zielinski an awful lot, here’s a player we’re putting on a par with him in what is, we would argue, a slightly weaker midfield. Special, and learning fast too.

2016 has been…

…good and this season he’s playing his best football ever (for us, Clive).

There’s a real elegance to seeing this young man on the ball. Classy, fantastically mature for his age and with that little bit of something else in his boots, we bloody love watching him play. When following players for the 100 there are a number you know you’ll follow throughout their career. Bizarrely it’s the handful that are crap for twelve months (you just want to see something from them, anything in truth that’s justified the time spent) and then the ones who you just know are going to make you smile at some point in any given 90 minutes. Here’s a footballer in the latter category, and we hope he really does push on now.

Stats don’t always tell a full story but here’s all you need to know in this instance; everything is up. Big old smiley faces all round, and he’s even got a bit of devil in him too. Seal of approval on this one, will go for big, big money at some point.

What’s next?

Doesn’t need to change a thing for the minute. He’s at a club who are putting faith in him, he’s repaying that handsomely, don’t rock the boat.

It’s no exaggeration to say if he continues to learn, grow and improve the little things that only come with experience, here you have a player who might well be at a Champions League last four club in the not too distant future. Your reviewer here has been doing the 100 since the very first year we launched it and realised that the players who get to the very top just have a whiff of something extra. Paul Pogba had it, Marco Reus had it, Eden Hazard had it, David De Gea had it, and genuinely here’s another who feels like he could get there. There’s a lot can go wrong on the way and he shouldn’t look beyond Lazio at the moment, but he’s got a chance and we’re telling you now so you can look cool in front of your friends when it happens.

So keep going and fine tune - add a few more assists and goals for the headlines, keep working on that passing range for the bricks and mortar. He occasionally falls into the Paul Scholes-envelope tackling wise, but do you know what? He can keep that, Scholes himself will tell you how useful it is to spend a career getting away with one as everyone knows you “can’t” tackle.

B     Just yes to everything. Could be on a FIFA box one day