Football’s Next Star: What happened to the winner who earned Inter Milan contract?

Who remembers ‘Football’s Next Star’?

The Sky One reality TV show was a must-watch programme more than 10 years ago in which a group of young footballers would compete to win a professional contract with none other than Inter Milan.

Around two-thousand prospective young talents were whittled down to nine hopefuls that got the chance to travel to Italy and try to impress Inter’s youth coach at the time, Marco Monti.

In the end, the winner was a certain Ben Greenhalgh.

Beating out the competition across weeks of challenges that not only tested each player’s footballing abilities, but also their potential to adapt to life in Italy, Greenhalgh subsequently bagged the opportunity of a lifetime.

However, it’s one thing thing to remember the compulsive viewing that was ‘Football’s Next Star’ and another thing to know what happened to Greenhalgh after earning his contract at Inter.

And that’s exactly what The Sun sought to answer this week as they looked back on the left-winger’s remarkable experience under Jose Mourinho to the quieter footballing habit that he finds himself in now.

But before we get up to date with Greenhalgh’s current circumstances, let’s throw it back to the TV triumph with the then 17-year-old having secured himself a six-month contract at the San Siro.

Greenhalgh subsequently got the chance to train with the Inter first-team during their iconic 2009/10 season, even bagging a Champions League winners medal of his own despite never playing a senior game for the club.

Speaking in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2020, the former starlet reminisced on his time with the Inter squad by saying: “To this day, those memories you can’t compete with.

“I was quite level-headed when training with the first-team, I