Fabio Miretti earns spot on 40-man shortlist for Golden Boy award

You don’t need to go back many months to figure out the meteoric rise that Juventus midfielder Fabio Miretti has been on since the spring. Fact is, all of a year ago Miretti, still very much a teenager, was getting his first taste of professional football in Serie C with Juventus’ Under-23 team.

Now, just a few short months after Miretti made his senior team debut, he’s been included in the running for arguably the most notable award for young football players today.

Miretti has been included in the 40-player shortlist for the Golden Boy award, the noted award handed out by Tuttosport each season to the best youngster of the calendar year, it was announced earlier this week. The 19-year-old Miretti is one of five Serie A-based players who have been included in the field that is dominated by some of the most well-known youngsters in the game. Miretti, despite a limited number of appearances for Juventus’ senior team based solely on when he made his first-ever start last spring and only debuted the December prior to that.

Also of note, Juventus Women striker Nicole Arcangeli, 18, has been named to the shortlist for the Golden Girl award, one that has been previously won by Bianconere attackers Benedetta Glionna (2018) and Asia Bragonzi (2020).

Miretti has very quickly established himself as the best youngster going at Juventus these days. He impressed during his late-season stint in the starting lineup to wrap up the 2021-22 campaign, which was apparently all Juventus’ management team needed to decide to keep the Italian teenager around this season rather than send him out on loan like they have done with other youngsters in recent years.

Miretti’s class is obvious to anybody who watches him play even if his experience level isn’t anywhere close to those of his fellow midfielders at Juventus. And with the more he plays, the more you have to believe that he will develop and give Juve the chance to have a homegrown midfielder in the starting lineup on a regular basis for the first time since Claudio Marchisio was making us all swoon during his debut season in 2006-07 and then once he became a regular in the late 2000s.

This is just the latest piece of recognition in which Miretti has been bestowed with. He may not end up winning it compared to who else is on the shortlist, but just being there amongst some of those names has shown just how far young Fabio has come in 2022.