Portugal arrive in Poland for their first FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup with a squad that already feels rather more senior than the competition’s age bracket suggests.
There are players with Liga BPI seasons behind them, European football in their legs, and, in Carolina Santiago’s case, goals for the senior Portugal team already on their CVs That does not necessarily make Portugal contenders, of course. Youth tournaments have a habit of taking tidy assumptions and feeding them to Godzilla.
But it does make them interesting.
Érica Cancelinha: Sporting’s increasingly difficult defender to leave out
Érica Cancelinha is 19 years old. Last season, she made 31 league appearances for Sporting CP and scored four goals.
Those two sentences do quite a lot of work.
Youth football produces plenty of highly rated defenders, but senior managers tend to be rather less interested in potential than supporters are. They have matches to win. Cancelinha has consequently reached an interesting point in her development where the evidence is no longer limited to what she might become.
Sporting are already using her.
Cancelinha made her senior debut during the 2023/24 season at 17, having joined Sporting in 2021 after previously spending part of her development at Benfica. By 2025/26, she was regularly involved with the first team and trusted in matches that required rather more than gentle exposure to senior football.
There was the 3-0 victory over Rosengård in Europe. More impressively, she played all 120 minutes as Sporting defeated Hammarby 1-0 in the UEFA Women’s Europa Cup.
A teenage defender surviving two hours of knockout European football without conceding feels substantially more useful as evidence than another collection of youth-level highlights.
It is particularly relevant because defending remains Cancelinha’s most obvious attraction.
She describes herself as physically strong and uses that strength aggressively in duels, but there is more subtlety to her game than simply overpowering forwards. Her positioning allows her to close central spaces and remove shooting opportunities, while she possesses enough acceleration to recover when attackers attempt to exploit space behind her.
Then there is the versatility.
Nominally a left-back or central defender, Cancelinha can operate on either side of central defence and has also played at right-back. For a tournament squad, where injuries, suspensions and tactical changes can rapidly rearrange a manager’s plans, that is an unusually useful piece to carry around.
Portugal evidently recognise it. Cancelinha is among the captains of this U20 side after previously collecting five U17 appearances and 15 at U19 level. More significantly, she has already entered the senior Portugal picture, earning call-ups for matches against the Netherlands and Brazil and collecting her first senior cap.
At this moment, one can only assume there will be considerably more of those.
Sporting have already offered their own judgement. Cancelinha has renewed her contract until 2028 and describes the club as her “second home”. She cites Sporting and Portugal veteran Ana Borges as one of her major influences.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about watching Cancelinha in Poland, then, is that this World Cup does not feel like an introduction.
It feels more like checking how far along she already is.
Anna Marques: Can Bochum’s fast starter keep running?
Anna Marques has started the 2026/27 season with three goals from her opening five appearances for VfL Bochum across league and cup.
For Portugal, the timing is excellent.
For Marques, there is a slightly more interesting question attached.
The Portuguese-German forward has shown an ability to begin seasons brightly before her production quietens. That makes her early Bochum form worth watching rather than merely celebrating. Five matches are five matches. The U20 World Cup provides an immediate opportunity to see whether this particular burst becomes something more substantial.
The early evidence has certainly been encouraging.
Marques scored inside eight minutes during Bochum’s 6-0 cup victory over Hansa Rostock and has added two goals from her opening four league appearances. Shortly before leaving Germany to join Portugal in Poland, she came from the bench against SC Sand and scored in the 81st minute with a crisp right-footed finish.
There are worse ways to pack your suitcase for a World Cup.
Her club situation also distinguishes her from much of Portugal’s squad. While Cancelinha and Santiago have developed within Sporting’s system, Marques has been learning her football in Germany with Bochum, giving Portugal a forward accustomed to a different domestic environment and style.
Her international development, meanwhile, has been distinctly Portuguese.
Marques has scored at practically every stage of the pathway: one goal in five U16 appearances, four in 16 at U17 level, two in two for the U18S and four in 11 for the U19S.
That consistency is probably more revealing than any isolated scoring run.
She is not simply a penalty-box passenger either. Marques combines particularly well down the left, using short exchanges and movement to create openings before arriving in shooting positions. When those positions appear, her right foot is the obvious weapon.
It is easy to see how that could become valuable for Portugal.
U20 tournaments rarely provide attackers with ample time. Defences are young, but so are the forwards trying to dismantle them. Decision-making becomes compressed. A player comfortable combining quickly and then striking decisively can suddenly become enormously troublesome.
Marques arrives with confidence, minutes and goals.
The caution is thatthe September form tells us very little about where a footballer will be in November, let alone several years from now. Early-season statistics can be flattering, particularly when cup matches and small samples are involved.
But that uncertainty is precisely why Marques belongs here.
Portugal are not taking a hypothetical goalscorer to Poland. They are taking somebody who scored immediately before boarding the plane and has accumulated goals throughout the national youth system.
Now comes the more difficult part.
Can she keep doing it?
Carolina Santiago: The prospect who is becoming something else
Carolina Santiago scored 16 goals in 40 senior appearances during 2025/26.
She did it across 2,444 minutes, roughly one goal every 153 minutes, while playing across seven competitions. She was subsequently named Liga BPI Best Young Player.
That would be enough to make a 20-year-old interesting at a U20 World Cup.
Santiago has complicated matters by beginning to score for Portugal’s senior team as well.
She has already collected nine senior caps and four goals, including strikes during Portugal’s 2027 World Cup qualifying campaign against Slovakia, Finland and Latvia. Against Slovakia, she reacted quickest after a blocked attempt and converted the rebound during a 2-1 comeback victory.
It was not necessarily the sort of goal that dominates highlight reels.
It might be more revealing because of that.
Santiago’s game is built around recognising where something is about to happen. She makes runs beyond defensive lines, drifts into unoccupied areas and reacts quickly inside the penalty box. During Sporting’s 3-0 victory over SF Damaiense, she came from the bench and scored a hat-trick, repeatedly exploiting space around the back post.
There is also considerably more range available when required. Against Roma in the Champions League, she demonstrated it with an excellent left-footed strike.
This has not appeared from nowhere.
Santiago spent 2024/25 on loan at Valadares Gaia and scored 12 goals. Rather than remaining within Sporting’s youth structure collecting comfortable numbers, she went elsewhere for senior minutes and returned ready to occupy a considerably larger role.
There is a case to be made that this is exactly what productive development is supposed to look like.
Go somewhere. Play. Make mistakes against adults. Score goals. Come back better.
Her route into football itself was slightly unconventional. Santiago began in athletics but found herself abandoning running sessions whenever a football appeared nearby. Eventually, she persuaded her mother to allow the switch. At 15, she moved away from home to pursue football with Sporting.
The club have now tied her down until 2029.
None of this guarantees domination in Poland. In fact, Santiago’s senior achievements create a different sort of pressure. She is no longer merely a talented youth international arriving anonymously at a development tournament.
People should expect something.
Portugal have never previously played at a U20 Women’s World Cup, which makes predicting their ceiling particularly difficult. Santiago provides one of the clearest reference points available.
Sixteen goals last season. Liga BPI’s leading young player. Senior international goals. Champions League experience.
For most players here, Poland is an opportunity to introduce themselves.
Santiago has already started doing that elsewhere.
Luana Bessa: Braga’s number nine is moving ahead of schedule
Luana Bessa is the youngest player on this list.
She might also be the most traditional striker among them.
The 18-year-old Braga forward operates as a proper number nine: occupying central defenders, finding useful positions inside the penalty area, attacking aerial deliveries and attempting to turn limited touches into goals.
There is something rather refreshing about that.
Young forwards are increasingly described through a fog of positional terminology. They are inverted this, hybrid that, half-space occupying something-or-other. Occasionally it is perfectly acceptable to be a striker whose principal concern is putting the football into the net.
Bessa has been doing plenty of it.
Braga’s figures credit her with three goals in 16 appearances during 2024/25 and nine from 23 during 2025/26, giving her 12 across those two campaigns. Her progression has also carried her towards senior football, including a goal on her first-team debut in a Taça da Liga victory over Vitória SC.
Braga responded by offering her a first professional contract that runs until 2030.
That is a substantial commitment to an 18-year-old.
Bessa described signing it as both a “huge pride” and the realisation of a dream, but the length of the deal tells another story. Braga are not simply rewarding what she has already accomplished. They appear to believe there is considerably more coming.
Portugal have been watching the same development.
Bessa has represented the country at youth levels, including U17 and U19 football, scoring in a 10-0 U17 victory over Slovenia in October 2024. Poland now pushes her into an older age group at a global tournament.
That is where things become interesting.
Bessa will encounter defenders with greater physical maturity and tactical awareness than much of the opposition she has faced while climbing through youth football. Her positioning and aerial ability therefore become particularly important. She cannot simply wait for chances to materialise. She will need to manufacture advantages against centre-backs who are themselves approaching senior football.
The early senior evidence suggests she is capable of making that adjustment.
Her penalty-box movement has already translated into goals at Braga. In contrast, her reputation for scoring important late goals at youth level suggests a striker comfortable remaining involved even when opportunities are scarce.
And opportunities may occasionally be scarce for Portugal.
This is the country’s first U20 World Cup. Nobody quite knows how their level will translate against the strongest youth programmes on the planet. There will almost certainly be stretches where Portugal cannot control possession or manufacture chances at will.
That makes a number nine capable of surviving on scraps rather useful.
Cancelinha brings senior defensive security. Marques arrives in form. Santiago brings perhaps the strongest established senior pedigree.
Bessa brings something slightly different.
She is still moving from prospect to senior football, and Poland offers us a chance to watch that transition unfold rather than read about it afterwards.
For Portugal, this tournament is historic simply because they are here.
For these four, it may prove more interesting to ask where they are going next.
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