The Highest Scoring Under-21 Players in Europe’s Top 5 Leagues

Goals remain the cleanest currency for judging young attackers, but they do not tell the whole story when playing time is uneven and some under-21s start every week while others score in shorter bursts. That imbalance is especially visible across Europe’s top five leagues, where a player’s total goals can reflect both finishing and opportunity, while minutes per goal reveals who is turning smaller windows into output at the fastest rate.

This week, Winsportsonline analysed the highest-scoring under-21 players across Europe’s top five leagues by comparing league goals, matches and minutes played, then ranking them on both total goals and minutes per goal. The standout at the top is 18-year-old Lamine Yamal of Barcelona, who leads the list with 10 league goals in 19 matches, scoring every 159 minutes, while Bournemouth’s 19-year-old Eli Kroupi is the most efficient finisher in the dataset at one goal every 128 minutes. League distribution shows that the Bundesliga supplies four of the 10 players in the ranking, Serie A three, and the Premier League, Ligue 1 and La Liga contribute one each.

Key Takeaways:

• 18-year-old Lamine Yamal of Barcelona leads the under-21 ranking on 10 league goals, while 21-year-olds Nico Paz of Como and 20-year-old Kenan Yildiz of Juventus sit next on eight
• 19-year-old Eli Kroupi of Bournemouth is the most efficient scorer in the dataset, averaging one goal every 128 minutes, ahead of 20-year-old Can Uzun of Eintracht Frankfurt (133) and 19-year-old Said El Mala of Koln (146)
• The goals list is led by a teenager in Yamal, while the minutes-per-goal table is driven by 19-year-old Kroupi (1,024 minutes) and 20-year-old Uzun (799), showing how efficiency at this age is often shaped by shorter minute totals
• The Bundesliga supplies four of the 10 players in the ranking, followed by Serie A with three, while La Liga, the Premier League and Ligue 1 contribute one each
• Argentina, Germany and Turkiye each have two players in the top 10, while Spain, France, Ivory Coast and Portugal have one apiece

Highest Scoring U21 Players in Europe’s Top 5 Leagues

By pure output, 18-year-old Lamine Yamal of Barcelona sets the pace with 10 league goals, separating himself from a tightly packed chasing group. Nico Paz of Como and Kenan Yildiz of Juventus both have eight, but they arrive there through different workloads: 21-year-old Paz has played 1,950 minutes across 23 matches, while 20-year-old Yildiz totals 1,883 minutes from the same number of games. The next tier sits one goal back and is led by two 19-year-olds. Yan Diomande of RB Leipzig scores seven in 20 matches and 1,359 minutes, while Said El Mala of Koln also has seven, doing it in 21 matches but just 1,024 minutes.

From there, the six-goal group is defined by two 20-year-olds and a 21-year-old. Can Uzun of Eintracht Frankfurt is the lowest-match scorer in the sample, with six goals in just 14 league appearances and 799 minutes at the age of 20. Santiago Castro of Bologna, 21, matches him on six but across 21 matches and a larger minute base of 1,325, while the gap between those profiles shows how quickly scoring context can change within the same age bracket. The list is rounded out by two more 20-year-olds and another 21-year-old: Dzenan Prejcinovic of Wolfsburg posts five goals from 18 matches and 793 minutes at 20, while Joao Neves of PSG, 21, also has five, scoring every 181 minutes across 904 minutes.

Minutes per Goal for the Highest Scoring U21 Players in Europe’s Top 5 Leagues

Minutes per goal: Kroupi and Uzun set the efficiency bar

When the lens shifts from totals to efficiency, Bournemouth’s Eli Kroupi becomes the key name. At 19, his 128 minutes per goal is the best rate in the dataset, and it comes with a high enough goal count (eight) to make it more than a cameo statistic. Can Uzun of Eintracht Frankfurt, 20, is the next most efficient at 133 minutes per goal, reaching six goals from 799 minutes, while Said El Mala of Koln, 19, follows at 146 minutes per goal with seven goals from 1,024 minutes.

The rest of the efficiency table shows how quickly the picture changes once playing time rises. Lamine Yamal of Barcelona, still only 18, maintains a strong scoring rhythm at 159 minutes per goal despite leading on total goals, while 20-year-old Dzenan Prejcinovic of Wolfsburg matches that 159-minute figure with five goals from 793 minutes. Yan Diomande of RB Leipzig sits at 194 minutes per goal at 19, and 21-year-old Joao Neves of PSG at 181, both combining mid-range efficiency with steady match involvement rather than pure bursts.

At the other end, the players carrying the heaviest minutes tend to post the least efficient rates in this group. Nico Paz of Como, 21, averages 244 minutes per goal despite scoring eight times, the slowest conversion rate among the 10 names, while Santiago Castro of Bologna, also 21, sits at 221 minutes per goal on six goals. Kenan Yildiz of Juventus, 20, is more balanced at 235 minutes per goal, staying closer to the middle despite a similar match count and a large minutes total.