Mathis Eboue has been named among the eight nominees for the 2025/26 Premier League Under-18 Player of the Season award, the league confirmed as it prepares to pick a winner at the Premier League Youth Development Conference on Tuesday 12 May.
Eboue signed his first professional contract in February this year, immediately after his 17th birthday, and finished the season credited with 11 goals and five assists for Chelsea's Under-18s, figures that sit behind his inclusion on the shortlist drawn up by the Premier League Football Development Panel.
The raw numbers that underline Eboue's nomination are hard to miss: Chelsea's Under-18 side won 20 of its 27 fixtures and was crowned Under-18 Premier League South champions with one match remaining, and Chelsea placed four players across the Premier League Academy Awards nominations, including another academy forward, Chizaram Ezenwata, on the same Under-18 Player shortlist.
The eight nominees were selected by the Premier League Football Development Panel, which will also decide the eventual winner at the conference on Tuesday 12 May, when the award for the season will be presented and the development pathway for the shortlisted players will receive renewed scrutiny.
Official club figures and league summaries offer slightly different portraits of Eboue's output, a gap that matters because the award vote will be watched closely as a marker of how youth performance is measured. Chelsea's official site records Eboue as having made 24 league appearances with 10 goals and six assists; the Premier League's shortlist description credits him with 11 goals and five assists. Both accounts agree on the broad fact of a high-impact season, but they differ on how that impact is broken down.
That discrepancy—10 goals and six assists in one accounting, 11 and five in another—exposes a broader tension in youth awards: which statistics count, and which competitions or appearances are included when panels weigh one candidate against another. The Football Development Panel named eight nominees; it will now choose a single winner from that group, balancing club-reported totals, league statistics and the eye test the panel applies to young players’ influence across a season.
Chelsea's decision to offer Eboue a first professional contract immediately after his 17th birthday in February this year was a clear signal of the club's assessment of his potential, and the Under-18 team's domestic record—20 victories from 27 matches—is the strongest context for his candidacy. The club also had four players nominated across Premier League 2 and Under-18 Premier League academy awards, a reminder that Eboue's season was part of a broader youth campaign that delivered a title with one match still to play.
For Eboue, the shortlist confirms a rapid rise; for the panel, the choice will test whether it prioritizes the totals that appear on the Premier League list or the breakdown on club records. The single most consequential question left—one the announcement on Tuesday 12 May will answer—is whether the panel will side with the league's accounting crediting Eboue with 11 goals and five assists or with Chelsea's own tally of 10 goals and six assists when it decides who deserves the Under-18 Player of the Season award.
