Chelsea Duo Shortlisted for PFA Young Player of the Year

Chelsea’s rebuild keeps throwing up new pillars. Now two of them stand on the brink of national recognition.

Blues duo Isa Buurman and Alyssa Thompson have been shortlisted for the PFA’s Young Player of the Year award, voted for by their fellow professionals, after eye-catching debut campaigns in west London.

Isa Buurman

For Buurman, this season felt like a delayed unveiling. Chelsea signed her in September 2024 and immediately sent her back to PSV on loan, a move that parked the hype but sharpened her game. When she finally stepped into the first-team squad last summer, she looked as if she had been there for years.

Twenty-four appearances across all competitions underlined the trust placed in her. One moment, though, cut through the noise of a busy season: her first Chelsea goal, thumped home in an FA Cup quarter-final win over Tottenham Hotspur. It was not just a milestone, it was a statement — a young player seizing a big stage in a high-stakes derby.

Alyssa Thompson

Thompson’s route to the shortlist carried a different rhythm but the same authority. Signed from Angel City last summer, the 21-year-old wasted no time becoming a central figure. She racked up 33 appearances in the 2025/26 campaign, the joint-highest total in the squad alongside Erin Cuthbert, an iron-woman benchmark that says everything about her reliability.

She did more than just show up. Thompson struck nine goals in all competitions, finishing as Chelsea’s second-top scorer behind Sam Kerr. In a squad brimming with attacking options, that kind of end product is hard to ignore, especially for players casting their votes inside dressing rooms up and down the country.

The scale of Chelsea’s impact on this year’s award is clear in the numbers. Six players made the final shortlist; a full third of them wear blue. Alongside Buurman and Thompson, the field is completed by Laura Blindkilde Brown of Manchester City, Freya Godfrey of London Lionesses, Tottenham Hotspur’s Toko Koga, and Arsenal’s Olivia Smith.

Each brings a different profile, a different storyline, but the presence of two Chelsea names in such a tight field underlines how quickly the club’s younger generation has imposed itself on the English game.

The verdict now lies with the players who have faced them, chased them, tried to stop them.

The winner will be announced at the PFA’s annual awards ceremony at the Manchester Opera House on Tuesday 25 August, a night when one rising star’s season will gain a permanent place in the record books — and when Chelsea might discover that their future has already arrived.