Chris Rigg is delivering on his teenage sensation status as Sunderland strive for promotion and there are hopes he can become ‘Messi Mark II’ –  but the battle to keep hold of the 17-year-old is on as Europe’s top clubs circle, writes DAVID COVERDALE

Chris Rigg had played less than 15 minutes of senior football when the first resounding verdict came in from Sunderland’s club captain.

Brought off the bench with the Black Cats trailing against League One Shrewsbury in the FA Cup in January 2023, the 15-year-old schoolboy helped inspire his side to a dramatic 2-1 victory. 

Then, moments after the final whistle, Luke O’Nien – who had just scored the 94th-minute winner – turned to the camera on the pitch, pointed to debutant Rigg and declared: ‘What a player’.

It is a three-word remark now being repeated by everyone who sees the teenage sensation in action for the first time.

Rigg only turned 17 in the summer but he is already the lynchpin of a resurgent Sunderland side sitting top of the Championship ahead of Friday night’s visit of promotion rivals Leeds.

He is considered the best outfield player to come through the Academy of Light since fellow central midfielder Jordan Henderson, who went on to lead Liverpool to Premier League and Champions League glory and captain his country. 

Now Rigg is being tipped to go on to scale similar – or even greater – heights, with some of the biggest clubs in Europe monitoring him.

And to think he is only just learning to drive (he has failed his theory test twice) and was awarded chocolates rather than champagne following his man-of-the-match display against Middlesbrough last month because he is too young to drink.

‘He is miles beyond his age,’ said Chris Mepham, Sunderland’s on-loan Welsh international defender. ‘He carries himself like he’s been around for years. He’ll have an amazing career.’

Dan Neil, Rigg’s midfield partner, added: ‘His ceiling is whatever he wants it to be. From the minute he first trained with us, everyone’s eyebrows lifted and were like, “We’ve got a player on our hands here”.’

Rigg captains England Under-18s, having also led them at U16 and U17 level, with one scout likening him to Captain Marvel himself, Bryan Robson, given his leadership qualities, bravery and engine.

Tony Mowbray, the Sunderland boss who gave Rigg his debut, compared him to another legendary Manchester United skipper. ‘He has that Roy Keane-esque type of nastiness,’ said Mowbray. ‘He is this warrior-like character. He wants to win every tackle, every five-a-side, every contest he’s in.’

Other observers in the North-East have told Mail Sport that Rigg has traits of two current stars from the blue half of Manchester, Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva, given his relatively slight 5ft 9in frame, sublime close control and wand of a left foot.

Rigg himself admits to admiring Luka Modric and watching clips of Zinedine Zidane, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. ‘But I don’t want to be Steven Gerrard, I want to be Chris Rigg,’ he emphatically announced last month. 

‘I’m just a traditional midfielder. I love to attack, I love to defend, I love a tackle as well. Kind of a box-to-box midfielder.’ In other words, the boy has got the lot.

Having mainly been deployed out wide last season, Rigg has been used more centrally as a No8 this term under new boss Regis Le Bris, whose midfield also contains Jobe Bellingham – the 19-year-old younger brother of Jude who scored a stunning winner against Derby on Tuesday.

‘He is one of those players that gets the fans on the edge of their seat every time he gets it,’ former Sunderland striker Marco Gabbiadini, a long-serving pundit for BBC Radio Newcastle, told Mail Sport.

‘He is very quick with his passing. He gets it out of his feet quickly and moves it. His balance is incredible. He reminds me a little bit of Jack Grealish, the way he carries the ball, sort of stuck to his toe.

‘He is also quite tenacious. He doesn’t shirk out of tackles or challenges. That has been one of the features of his game.

‘He has been a revelation. It is not very often you get a lad of 17 playing so many matches. There are not many players who have made a breakthrough at that age in the league and carried it through, other than Bellingham when he was at Birmingham.’

Born in Hebburn, South Tyneside, Rigg hails from a Newcastle-supporting family but has been on Sunderland’s books since the age of five, first playing at the Stadium of Light when his Under-9 team entertained the crowd at half time of a first-team match.

‘When Sunderland came calling, I had no hesitation, being a fan myself,’ Tony Watson, the headteacher of Rigg’s old school Hebburn Lakes who had to authorise his move, told fanzine A Love Supreme. ‘There were other clubs interested, but I did the visits to the academy and we got him started on a programme at Sunderland. I’m so glad I signed those documents. I hope he ends up as Messi Mark 2.’

When Rigg became the youngest outfield player in Sunderland’s history at Shrewsbury, he was still studying for his GCSEs at Hebburn Comprehensive. His secondary school let him miss two days a week to train at the Academy of Light.

In the next round of the FA Cup at Fulham later in January 2023, Rigg looked to have become the competition’s youngest scorer and won the tie for Sunderland when he netted in injury time, only for his strike to be ruled out for offside. However, he was not to be denied history at the start of last season, when he equalised against Crewe in the Carabao Cup, becoming Sunderland’s youngest scorer and the competition’s youngest at the age of 16.

The following month, in September 2023, Rigg scored a header on his league debut against Southampton to become the Championship’s second youngest scorer – behind only a certain Jude Bellingham. No wonder the England superstar’s current and former clubs, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, are said to be among those interested in Rigg, as well as – whisper it quietly – Sunderland’s noisy neighbours Newcastle.

‘You can sort of see the path for him already,’ added Gabbiadini. ‘He will probably go to one of the German teams, play there for a year or two, then go to one of the top teams in Europe, a bit like Bellingham. But the other choice is that he stays here, plays every week and if we got promoted, then what would happen?’

Rigg wearing red and white in the Premier League is the dream scenario for Sunderland fans, who have been starved of top-flight football for more than seven years. But Black Cats chiefs are realistic and consider it a coup that they have even kept hold of their prized asset for this long.

After Rigg signed his first professional contract – a three-year-deal – with the club in July, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman confirmed there had been interest in his player and spoke of ‘how difficult it can be to retain top talent’. Certainly, that contract was the Black Cats’ best bit of business of the summer.

When Rigg netted his audacious backheel winner in the Wear-Tees derby against Boro last month, boss Le Bris let his guard down and hailed him as the new ‘symbol’ of the club.

Chris Rigg: Sunderland’s very own Angel of the North. Supporters better worship him while they can.