4 days ago
Harvey Elliott and Xavi Simons show how English and foreign players are viewed differently
There was a time when winning player of the tournament at the Uefa Under-21 European Championship would automatically qualify one as an individual of interest to Premier League clubs seeking the next great talent. The difference is that for the last two editions the winner has been an Englishman already playing for a Premier League club.
In the victorious England team of 2023 that was Anthony Gordon, who had joined Newcastle the previous January. This summer it was Harvey Elliott, already an experienced 22-year-old at Liverpool and a Premier League title winner. If he was not already in the Premier League – or English – then one could safely assume one of the big clubs would sign him. But Elliott's career is at something of a crossroads and once again, the choice that one of the leading young English players takes will be intriguing.
Harvey Elliott named 2025 Under-21 EURO Player of the Tournament 👏 #U21EURO
— UEFA Men's Youth (@UEFAMensYouth) June 28, 2025
The suggestion is that he will have to leave one of Europe's biggest clubs, where he is not first choice, to get himself back to that level as one of the main men. There has been interest from West Ham and Fulham, where he played as a teenager – and also from RB Leipzig. One of the great incubators of global talent in the world game, it can feel that Elliott, with a Premier League medal, has already passed the point where he needs to join the Red Bull group. Or has he? He scored some crucial goals for Liverpool during their final charge to the title but, with injuries contributing, he did not start a Premier League game until the title was won.
The roll call for the Under-21 Euros player of the tournament is a gilded list. Not every name on it has made good on the early promise but the likes of Gordon, Fabián Ruiz, Thiago Alcantara and Juan Mata certainly did. Going further back Andrea Pirlo, Petr Cech and Rudi Völler all did the same. It puts a player in a certain category. If Elliott's aim is one day to return to Liverpool, the team he has always supported, then he will need to be strategic.
It is also about the way a player is perceived. Elliott's data is almost identical to another 2003-born talent, the Dutch attacker Xavi Simons. Elliott has made more senior appearances, 190 to Simons' 130 – with 94 of Elliott's in the Premier League. Elliott has 22 goals and more than 35 assists (Simons 37 goals, more than 30 assists). Over the 90 minutes, Elliott averages slightly more highly in the metrics that clubs notice – goal contributions (0.7 to Simons' 0.65), expected assists (0.5 to 0.3), progressive carries (eight to four).
Simons is attracting interest from all over Europe. His advantage is that he is one of the key players of the Leipzig team, originally on loan and now on a long-term deal. It was not a good season by their standards but establishing oneself as a first-team player can be transformative. Leipzig now value him at €80m (£69m) having paid €50m (£43m) for him in January.
Elliott would have some takers in the Premier League should he decide that is the way to go but look what just six months has done to Simons' standing. There is something to be said for taking that plunge and becoming a first-team player elsewhere. Simons has accumulated an impressive set of data, albeit in leagues that do not score as highly as the Premier League for the difficulty it poses to attackers.
Leaving the English game to come back has not worked for everyone. It got Jadon Sancho the move to Manchester United if not the career that followed. For the likes of Noni Madueke and now Jamie Gittens it has been effective in coming back as a first-team player at a major club. Others, like Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori and Ruben Loftus-Cheek are still abroad.
Other traditional routes seem less feasible for players moving up. There has been scarcely any movement between the Championship and the Premier League so far this summer. Sunderland, themselves promoted, have sold Romelle Donovan to Brentford and Tom Watson to Brighton. Liam Delap left relegated Ipswich Town for Chelsea, a departure that was on the cards whatever Ipswich's fate. Only two years ago, Viktor Gyokeres was available for £16m having starred in the Championship for Coventry City. There were no takers in spite of him being a full Sweden international and many Premier League clubs looking for a centre-forward that summer.
Now Gyokeres is a £55m player at Arsenal and many will wonder if they called it wrong. But the experience of first-team football in decent European leagues is the test that Premier League clubs seem to want to apply. If the departure and return of Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah in the previous decade proved that point, it still seems to hold strong today.
Other English players are doing the same – among them Elliott's former Liverpool team-mates Jarrell Quansah and Tyler Morton. Jonathan Rowe has now made last season's loan into a permanent move to Marseille.
While with England over the summer, Elliott hinted that he may yet have to move on. 'I don't really want to be wasting years of my career because it's a short career,' he said. Yet once an impact is made in Europe, minds seem to be changed in the Premier League – and they do so very swiftly.
