Whatever the state of the senior U.S. men’s national team, the talent in the youth national team pool is intensifying and diversifying. Noticeably.

Any objective analysis reveals players the U.S. wasn’t producing even six or seven years ago: skilled creative midfielders and raiding fullbacks and pass-first center backs and speed-burning wide players. Whether we can entrust their further development to the pro system is one question, but the youth apparatus is doing its job. The diversity and skill of the players bubbling up through the nation’s developmental cracks is notable.

Today, we start an eight-part series examining the best and brightest in the boys and girls youth national team setups. For the next eight days, I’ll go through every position and rank my top five prospects at each spot. The only criteria is that each player has to be of current U.S. YNT age, so at least eligible to play for the U23 MNT right now. The ranking is based as much on their prospects as a professional player as anything else. Each of these ratings takes into account their projected trajectory as a pro player far more than where they are now.

We start with the boys, and our back-to-front analysis begins today with the goalkeepers. As usual, the future looks bright between the posts.