The 10 most valuable U21 players in the Bundesliga, ranked by our model
Our model prices every player's current output weekly — a model estimate, not a market price. These are the ten most valuable U21 players at Bundesliga clubs, in the window that sold the would-be No 1 to Real Madrid for €125m.
12 August 2026 · Oddsivio — Football, explained.
Every week, Oddsivio recomputes an estimated value for thousands of players: a model estimate built from recent performance data — minutes, output, squad importance, age, level of competition. It is not a market price, not a transfer prediction, and not what a club would actually pay. Think of it as an honest, data-only answer to the question: how much footballing value is this player producing right now, for his age? The full recipe is public — all 87 signals, the age curve, the confidence tiers: how our player-value model works.
For this list we took every player at a Bundesliga club in our data and kept those aged 21 or younger on 12 August 2026 — born after 12 August 2004 — the same U21 definition you'll see on our own player pages. Then we checked every name against the real world, and the real world had been busy: the player who would have topped this list was sold six days before publish, for a fee more than double his model value, and three more of the top twelve left for England. All four are named below — values are a dated snapshot, taken 10 August, and we don't quietly re-cut a list. The complete list, refreshed weekly, is always at U21 player values in the Bundesliga. The hardest cut among the players actually staying: RB Leipzig's Andrija Maksimović, at €22.7m, one big season away from making this read very silly.
How do these players compare across leagues? Our most valuable U21 players, explained uses a 21 September 2026 snapshot across 16 leagues. The Bundesliga list below preserves its August snapshot.
Counted down, #10 to #1 — every number from our live player pages, 2025/26 season, club and country combined.
10. Said El Mala — 1. FC Köln · €25m
The breakout star of the whole Bundesliga season — and, as we publish, its liveliest transfer story. El Mala scored 13 league goals for newly promoted Köln, four of them in his first nine top-flight appearances, mostly as a substitute, earned a first senior Germany call-up in November at 19, and was then left out of the World Cup squad in a call Nagelsmann had to explain publicly. His card is pure menace: top 1% shot volume, goals per 90 and dribbles in his position group. Now the saga: on 11 August Dortmund submitted a package worth around €55m, Köln's leadership says it is "firmly convinced" he stays, and a decision is expected within days. Either way El Mala remains what this list says he is: a Bundesliga player, at €25m the model's bargain of the ten.
9. Christian Kofane — Bayer Leverkusen · €25m
The gap between #10 and #9 is about €32,000 — the price of a mid-range hatchback, separating two very different stories. Kofane arrived from Spanish second-division Albacete at 18 and quietly produced 7 goals and 6 assists across club and country. The country part is the story: he declined his first Cameroon call-ups to concentrate on winning a Leverkusen starting spot, then finally said yes and scored twice in his first three senior caps — including the header that put Cameroon in the AFCON quarter-finals, at 19. Everton, Arsenal and Newcastle are all reported circling; sporting director Simon Rolfes' answer: "We are planning with him for next season. We don't sign players just to sell them immediately again." Kofane's €25m is the model catching up to what scouts already priced.
8. Eliesse Ben Seghir — Bayer Leverkusen · €28m
The model's biggest leap of faith on this list, and we'll say so plainly. Ben Seghir's first Bundesliga season after the €30m move from Monaco was lean — 653 minutes across 20 appearances in our data, without a goal or assist — and he starts 2026/27 sidelined with a right-thigh muscle injury. So why €28m? Because underneath the thin sample the traits survived: top-7% pass accuracy and top-12% dribbles per 90 among forwards, at 21, from a player rated one of Monaco's best academy products before injuries and a crowded Leverkusen front line got in the way. He won the Arab Cup with Morocco in December but was left out of the World Cup squad. Ben Seghir at €28m is a projection with a prove-it year attached.
7. Assan Ouédraogo — RB Leipzig · €32m
Nobody on this list packs more event into fewer minutes. Ouédraogo's 999 minutes produced 5 goals and 3 assists — top-2% goals per 90 among midfielders — plus the best international debut you'll read this year: called up as an injury replacement, on for Florian Wirtz in the 77th minute against Slovakia, scoring within two minutes. In June the injury luck finally flipped his way — he went to the World Cup as the replacement for the injured Lennart Karl, the man one spot below whom he now sits in Germany's pecking order and six spots above on this list. The catch is the reason the sample is thin: a knee problem ate his winter, and he begins this season with a shoulder-capsule injury that may cost him the opening weeks. Ouédraogo is the ten's highest ceiling wrapped in its most fragile body.
6. Antonio Nusa — RB Leipzig · €34m
The summer's soundtrack in Leipzig: everyone wanted Nusa, and Nusa wanted none of it — "I never made any request to leave Leipzig," he told Sky, after weeks of Roma, Tottenham and Arsenal links. You can see why the queue formed. His 2025/26 card: 47 games, 3,087 minutes, 8 goals, top-2% dribbles per 90 among forwards, "important player" grade at 21. And then the World Cup, where he scored a curling stunner against Côte d'Ivoire to send Norway through — part of the run where Norway, at their first World Cup in 28 years, beat Brazil in the round of 16 to reach a first-ever quarter-final. Leipzig paid Club Brugge about €21m in 2024 and now reportedly values him at €55-60m. Our €34m for Nusa sits exactly between those two numbers — which feels right for one more season of proof.
5. Can Uzun — Eintracht Frankfurt · €36m
The purest goalscoring profile on the list: 11 goals in 1,679 minutes across club and country — 0.59 per 90, top 1% among forwards, on top-1% shot volume. Uzun followed a two-goal, two-assist opening fortnight of the league season with 8 Bundesliga goals plus two more in his first Champions League campaign, then made Türkiye's squad for their first World Cup in 24 years, where he set up the stoppage-time winner against the USA — Türkiye's only win of the tournament. Frankfurt's response to the inevitable attention is reportedly an internal "stop sign": he's a designated key player for 2026/27, and only a top offer from a top club even opens a conversation. After watching Marmoush and Ekitiké monetised in consecutive summers, Uzun is the one Frankfurt wants to keep long enough to headline.
4. Tom Bischof — Bayern München · €42m
The free transfer that keeps compounding. Bayern signed Bischof from Hoffenheim for nothing in summer 2025, and a year later he owns a Meisterschale — lifted at 20, as Bayern sealed title number 34 with four games to spare — and Leon Goretzka's vacated No. 8 shirt. His card is a passer's: top-2% pass accuracy among midfielders across 38 appearances, 1,690 minutes of exactly the tidy, positionally flexible work he described to Kompany — "I'm open for everything". Like two others here, he was a named, explained omission from Germany's World Cup squad — which tells you how deep Germany's midfield pool runs, not how far Bischof is from it. €42m, high confidence, for a player who cost zero: the model's quiet argument that Bayern did the business of the decade.
3. Jobe Bellingham — Borussia Dortmund · €42m
Eighty-seven thousandths of a million euros separate Bellingham from Bischof — call it a rounding error with a famous surname. Dortmund beat Real Madrid to sign him from Sunderland for €30.5m plus add-ons in June 2025, and year one was a grafter's apprenticeship: 2,681 minutes across 45 games in our data, top-8% interceptions among midfielders, and a self-assessment from the club's Japan tour that doubles as a mission statement — "I'm not a young kid anymore". The comparison he can't escape had a loud summer: Jude was England's top scorer at the World Cup and made FIFA's team of the tournament while Jobe stayed England U21. Our model doesn't price surnames: Bellingham's €42m is built on volume, availability and defensive work at 20 — the profile that historically explodes in year two at Dortmund.
2. Ibrahim Maza — Bayer Leverkusen · €47m
A €12m signing from relegated Hertha who needed one season to become the player Leverkusen reportedly won't discuss below €45m — with a €50m Manchester City bid already rejected. The league saw 49 appearances, 3,353 minutes and top-3% dribbles per 90; the planet saw the World Cup, where Maza was the most successful dribbler of the entire group stage — ahead of Lamine Yamal and Jamal Musiala — as Algeria came through a group containing Argentina. One correction to our own card while we're here: it lists Germany, his country of birth — he chose Algeria in 2024, and carried it into that World Cup run. Atlético Madrid opened at €35m this window and were told it wasn't a conversation. Maza at €47m, high confidence, is the model agreeing with Leverkusen's asking price — almost to the million.
1. Lennart Karl — Bayern München · €60m
The most valuable U21 in Germany is 18, and his season reads like folklore. Karl became Germany's youngest-ever Champions League goalscorer at 17 years and 242 days — taking the record from Jamal Musiala — with his first senior Bayern goal, then the youngest player in the competition's history to score in three consecutive matches. Across club level he logged 9 goals and 8 assists in 2,003 minutes — top-1% shot volume, top-2% assists per 90, top-3% goals per 90 among midfielders — before the cruelest cut of the summer: a torn thigh muscle ruled him out of the World Cup, with his own teammate-in-waiting Ouédraogo flying in his place. He has resumed running at Säbener Strasse and reportedly targets the Supercup against Dortmund on 22 August. Karl at €60m is the 13th most valuable U21 in our entire model — and the youngest name in Germany's top ten by six months. The record book should be nervous.
What the list says
Three patterns. The Bundesliga is Europe's U21 supermarket: the would-be #1, Yan Diomande, went to Real Madrid on 6 August for a reported €125m guaranteed — a record sale — and Johan Manzambi (a club-record £59.5m to Aston Villa), Bazoumana Touré (a record £42m to Newcastle) and Luka Vušković (up to £50m to Brighton as his Hamburg loan ended) followed him out — roughly a quarter of a billion euros of U21 talent exported in one window. Leverkusen restocks faster than anyone: three of the ten (Maza, Ben Seghir, Kofane) — total outlay about €42m — are together valued near €100m by our model already. And the World Cup was the shop window: seven of the ten were involved in a World Cup squad story this summer, from Maza's dribbling crown to the Karl-for-Ouédraogo substitution that connected two names on this very list.
Every number in this piece — value, confidence, squad importance, percentiles — comes from our live player pages, refreshed weekly. Browse every player's estimated value →
Methodology: players at Bundesliga clubs in our data, aged 21 or younger on 12 August 2026 (born after 12 August 2004) — the same U21 definition as our player-values browse filter — ranked by Oddsivio estimated value (point estimate) as of 10 August 2026. Values are model estimates from performance data, not market prices; confidence tiers reflect how much playing time the estimate rests on. Card stats are 2025/26, club and country combined. Excluded as no longer at Bundesliga clubs for 2026/27: Yan Diomande (RB Leipzig to Real Madrid, 6 August), Johan Manzambi (Freiburg to Aston Villa), Bazoumana Touré (Hoffenheim to Newcastle), Luka Vušković (Hamburg loan from Tottenham ended; sold to Brighton). Said El Mala remains listed at Köln while a reported Dortmund move is decided; either outcome keeps him in the Bundesliga. Ibrahim Maza's card lists Germany (birthplace in our data); he is an Algeria international. Values for Karl and Ouédraogo pre-date any effect of their current injuries. Ages as of 12 August 2026.