The winner of the Young Player of the Year award is Barcelona star Lamine Yamal with an almost unanimous 92.3% of votes from our panel of football experts.
Are there any superlatives strong enough to describe the start of Lamine Yamal's career? At just 17, the Catalan has established himself at Barca and with Spain at a breathtaking pace, with both the candour of his age and a healthy dose of maturity in his game. He is thus the logical winner of the Young Player of the Year award.
In Barcelona, it's impossible not to come across Lamine Yamal at least once a day. At least, in a Barca shirt emblazoned with the number 19. Lamine-mania has hit Catalonia with full force, and the whirlwind has accelerated since the Selección won the European Championship last summer.
Maturity beyond his years
First and foremost, this is a compound name. He accepts being called either Lamine or Lamine Yamal, but never Yamal. So much for semantics.
On the pitch, the teenager from Mataro doesn't need any help to express himself. Ever since he was picked by Xavi Hernandez against Betis on April 29th 2023, when he was still only 16, Lamine Yamal has put in a string of top-class performances.
In addition to his dribbling skills, his ability to beat opponents with ease and to score goals and notch assists, it is his great maturity when it comes to handling the ball that is astonishing.
The left-footer doesn't force the ball. He doesn't systematically try to play one-on-one; he knows when to stall and when to play back while still providing a passing option for his teammates, who, as we all know, are increasingly looking to him to help them solve problems.
His tactical mastery and training at La Masia have rubbed off on Jules Kounde, who has been transformed offensively with his club, a far cry from what he can bring to Didier Deschamps' France. And when Lamine Yamal is absent, the right-back's performances suffer, as do that of Barca as a whole.
Indeed, it will have escaped no one's notice that the Catalans' poor start to the league campaign began when their young star was injured.
17 and soon to be a centurion
Climbing Montjuic Hill is no picnic, but every spectator now enters the Olympic Stadium with the feeling that they are witnessing the construction of a future legend. The start has been phenomenal, but there is still a long way to go.
When it comes to comparing Lamine Yamal with the best of the best, Lionel Messi, the facts are striking. At the same age, the Argentinian was barely a supporting player. In the 2004/05 season, he made just seven appearances in LaLiga (one goal), one in the Champions League and one in the Copa del Rey.
Lamine Yamal has already racked up some incredible statistics: 16 league appearances, including 14 starts, and 14 goal contributions (five goals, nine assists) this season. His ability to deliver the goods is astonishing. In his first full season, he handed out five assists, along with scoring five goals.
Eighteen months after his professional debut, Lamine can already match the numbers of LaLiga's best players and that's without mentioning his record in the Champions League (five matches, one goal, two assists).
If injuries don't hold him back, which they might as he is so much in demand, he will have made well over 100 professional appearances, including for his national team, before reaching 18! He now has 89 appearances to his name, with 16 goals and 29 assists.
Those numbers are quite simply prodigious for a young man who was also awarded the Kopa Trophy and Golden Boy in 2024. The future belongs to Lamine Yamal and we can't wait to see him lead the way.