Matteo Guendouzi has been nominated for another young footballer award, the Kopa Trophy, as well as the Golden Boy award.

France Football, who run the Ballon d’Or award, also organise a youth version of the accolade in parallel. It’s called the “Kopa Trophy”, eligible to under-21 players, and Matteo Guendouzi is one of the 10 nominees this year.

Guendouzi joins Jadon Sancho, Joao Felix, Moise Kean, Samuel Chukwueze, Kang-in Lee, Matthijs de Ligt, Vinicius Jr, Kai Havertz and Andriy Lunin.

Realistically, Sancho and de Ligt are probably the front-runners for the award, but it’s nice to see Guendouzi recognised on the top-10 list.

Guendouzi is also in the running for the Golden Boy award, run by Tuttosport, making the final shortlist of 20. Again, it’s probably unlikely to see him lifting the actual award, given some strong competition, but the nomination is still a good confidence booster.

Given he’s still just 20, Guendouzi could be nominated again next year, so if he doesn’t win it this time around he has another chance. Arsenal’s Player of the Month for September just has to keep his head down and work as he has been.