For all the eye-watering numbers we regularly see on football rich-lists, none compare to the wealth of former Chelsea youngster Faiq Bolkiah.

A May list of the richest sportspeople in Britain found a number of current footballers have fortunes north of £50m. This is a drop in the ocean compared to Bolkiah, though, who is worth an estimated £13bn.

If that sounds like a big leap, it's because the bulk of his fortune is nothing to do with his football career. The 24-year-old is the nephew of the Sultan of Brunei, while his father is a prince in the southeast Asian country, but he decided to go his own way and pursue a career as a professional athlete.

Born in the United States, Bolkiah grew up in England and was educated at Bradfield College, a boarding school in Berkshire which these days charges fees north of £40,000 per year. After spells on the books of AFC Newbury and Southampton, the latter when the Saints were still outside the Premier League, he later joined Chelsea's academy as a teenager.

“You would never ever have thought he was something like the 12th in line to the throne,” former teammate and one-time Blues youngster Ruben Sammut told The Athletic in 2020. "We didn’t realise who he was and nobody at Chelsea initially knew what his background was.”

The attacking midfielder has also been looked at by Reading and Arsenal before moving to west London. He trained with the appropriately-nicknamed Royals, and also scored for the Gunners in a trial stint, netting against a Singapore as part of a squad which also contained England youth internationals Chris Willock and Tolaji Bola.