The 15 most valuable teenage soccer players on the planet right now

A prominent think tank in Switzerland has released a power ranking of the most valuable youngsters in world soccer.To produce the list, the CIES Football Observatory monitored soccer transactions for almost a decade, spoke to market actors, and studied other factors to determine a player's worth if he was bought today.The most valuable teenager in world soccer right now is worth more than $150 million.Read all of Business Insider's coverage for the 2018-19 soccer season here.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.Some of the most valuable assets in all of sport play on a soccer pitch, and even the next generation of superstars are commanding extraordinary valuations.Identifying a player's transfer value is not easy, but a prominent research group in Switzerland — the CIES Football Observatory — has done just that by publishing a ranking of the most valuable under-20 soccer players in Europe's best leagues according to its own algorithm.The Observatory only considers athletes competing in England's Premier League, Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, Germany's Bundesliga, and France's Ligue 1, but says it has been able to calculate a player's value by monitoring soccer transactions since 2010, speaking to market actors (club executives operating in elite soccer), and studying factors like playing activity, the club the athlete plays for, the athlete's age, playing position, and economic level of the releasing club.Read more: A 19-year-old broke down in tears after he showed the world why Europe's top soccer clubs want to sign him after one incredible performanceWhile the Observatory's list includes a number of players aged 20, Business Insider has omitted these to only look at world soccer's most valuable teenagers — and the most expensive would cost more than $150 million if he was bought today.