Charlton Athletic, Birmingham City will take great pride from Monday night | OneFootball

The League One pair recently saw two former stars feature in the Ballon d'Or top-30 list

The English Football League has enhanced its reputation as a healthy conveyor belt of talent on the world stage in recent years.

From burgeoning academy hotshots to Premier League loanees, a whole host of esteemed global names have spent shares of their formative years cutting their teeth throughout the EFL pyramid.

In particular, we've begun to see an increasing number of players emerge from the ranks of EFL clubs; John Stones started off with Barnsley, Ollie Watkins made a name for himself at Exeter City and then with Brentford, Jarrod Bowen launched his career at Hull City, and it all began for Eberechi Eze at QPR.

All four of those EFL graduates represented England at EURO2024, providing fresh reminders of the talent that exists beneath the Premier League.

At this moment in time, though, Charlton Athletic and Birmingham City will be filled with more pride than most following Monday evening's prestigious Ballon d'Or ceremony in Paris, as both Ademola Lookman and Jude Bellingham made the final 30-man list.

It's somewhat easier to forget than Bellingham's memorable one-season impact at Birmingham - but Lookman initially started off with Charlton nearly 10 years ago now.

A product of the Addicks' academy system, Lookman elevated to the first-team frame and enjoyed a breakout season during the 2015/16 campaign by scoring five goals from 24 Championship appearances for Charlton.

They managed to keep him around in League One following relegation, but Lookman ended up leaving for Everton in January. The versatile forward never quite made the grade at Goodison Park and didn't fare a lot better at Red Bull Leipzig, who loaned him out to both Fulham and Leicester City before cutting their losses by offloading him to Atalanta in the summer of 2022.

Over in Italy, Lookman has gone from strength-to-strength. He made more than 20 goal involvements across all competitions in each of his first two seasons with the club, and marked his crowning moment by scoring a stunning hat-trick in last term's 3-0 UEFA Europa League victory over Bayer Leverkusen.

The former Charlton flyer has started this season in a rich vein of form, returning four goals and four assists apiece from just six Serie A matches. His talents were recognised in the game's grandest ceremony, where he finished 14th in the Ballon d'Or rankings - scoring above the likes of Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer and Antonio Rudiger.

Charlton, then, have every right to be extremely proud of the success which Lookman has somewhat-unexpectedly enjoyed in his career.

And, as the 27-year-old continues to check off more and more milestones in what's been a stunning upwards trajectory over the last few years, Charlton will surely be hoping to strike gold with the emergence of another youngster capable of emulating Lookman.

Jude Bellingham's Ballon d'Or ranking is the latest sign of Birmingham City success

Meanwhile, Blues may not have seen their former prodigy in attendance as Real Madrid boycotted the event after learning that Brazilian forward Vinicus Junior was to lose out on his first Ballon d'Or trophy to Manchester City's Rodri, but they'll nonetheless be glowing with pride.

Bellingham, who enjoyed a stunning year at club level with Los Blancos, finished third in the final rankings and had actually been predicted to win the Ballon d'Or by many. His time will come, though. Make no mistake about it.

For the meantime, his status as one of the very best players in world football at 21-years-old has been underlined even further. Birmingham will be extremely proud to see an academy graduate enjoying such storied success at the highest echelons of the game, and they also deserve credit for kick-starting his career.

That's because many clubs beneath the Category One academy threshold, and particularly those within the EFL, are often susceptible to losing their finest prospects before their graduation to first-team level, but Birmingham were able to retain Bellingham and ended up getting one memorable campaign out of him.

Bellingham, of course, made the step-up to the club's first-team fold at the tender age of 16 and became the youngest player in Blues history when he debuted against Portsmouth in the EFL Cup aged just 16 years and 38 days before going on to make 44 appearances across all competitions during the 2019/20 campaign.

The midfielder played with both confidence and composure far beyond his youthful years and was duly crowned as the EFL's Young Player of the Season.

Bellingham, who famously saw his shirt number retired by Birmingham, soon became the most expensive 17-year-old of all time by earning a £25 million move to Borussia Dortmund that summer after reportedly snubbing advances from Manchester United.

The rest is history as far as Bellingham's career is concerned, with the five-star midfielder going on to play a leading role on all fronts for both club and country. It all started at Birmingham, though, and they'll doubtless accompany Charlton in taking away real pride from Monday.