Lamine Yamal: From Teen Sensation to Barcelona Champion

Lamine Yamal began the season with a crown on his head and ended it with a flag in his hands.

On the very first night of 2025-26, Barcelona’s new No 10 – the teenager entrusted with the shirt of Ladislao Kubala, Luis Suárez, Diego Maradona, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi – took the last kick against Mallorca and buried it. His first goal as an adult. His own coronation. La Liga was under way and the kid “touched by God’s wand”, as Luis de la Fuente had put it, stepped straight into the light.

Nine months later, as Barcelona’s title bus crawled through the city, that same teenager stood on the top deck, league medal on his chest, a Palestine flag in his hands. Hansi Flick, who had guided him and a young team through a complicated year, didn’t hide behind platitudes.

“This is something I don’t normally like but I spoke to him and if he wants to it’s his decision,” he said. “He’s old enough: he’s 18.”

Eighteen, and already carrying a club, a number, a cause. It hadn’t been simple. Injuries, scrutiny, what Lamine Yamal would later call an “internal abyss”. But he finished with his third league title. Flick, the father figure whose own dad died on the morning Barcelona clinched the championship – a loss he chose to share with his “other family” – had his second.

Asked if he had ever felt so much love, the coach didn’t hesitate. “No, never.”

Barcelona run away, Madrid fall apart

Barcelona effectively ended the title race with seven games left, dismantling city rivals Espanyol as Lamine Yamal stretched his arms wide on the run-in, a Usain Bolt pose in blaugrana. They made it official in week 35, in a clásico that carried history: the first time in 94 years that a league title had been sealed in that fixture.

By then, Real Madrid were already a club at war with themselves. Three days after a dressing-room fight between Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni – a clash that sent Madrid’s vice-captain to hospital with “craniofacial trauma” and stitches – it was Marcus Rashford who delivered the sporting knockout. Barcelona’s clásico win was their 11th victory in a row, their 23rd in 25 league games since the previous meeting 600km away. They had played in three different “homes” and won in all of them.

That dominance felt a long way from late October. Back then, Flick had warned that “ego kills success”. Rayo Vallecano had drawn a line through Barcelona’s structure, Sevilla had sliced them open, and Madrid took a 2-1 win at the Santiago Bernabéu to go five points clear. Jude Bellingham mocked Lamine Yamal’s words as “cheap”, soundtracked by Elvis’s A Little Less Conversation. Dani Carvajal waved the jibber-jabber gesture in his direction.

Madrid, though, had their own noise. Vinícius Júnior stormed off with 18 minutes left that night, Xabi Alonso insisted he wanted to focus on “what really mattered” – only for that to turn out to be the very thing that shook his team. The coach found himself abandoned, the cracks widening.

Barcelona’s Super Cup win in the next clásico closed the brief spell when Alonso had felt “in charge”. He went unhappily to the Club World Cup and left even more unhappily. His replacement, Álvaro Arbeloa, talked about empathy, grey sofas and doughnuts for good performances. The speeches sounded right but landed wrong. “I’m not Gandalf,” he joked, and he wasn’t. By the time the great rivals met again in May, Madrid were out of Europe, out of the Copa del Rey and almost out of their minds. The dressing room was split, the squad exhausted, the season reduced to a plea for it all to end.

Ninety minutes later, it had. Barcelona beat them, Madrid fell 12 points back with nine to play, and they finished empty-handed for the second straight year. Kylian Mbappé, courted for so long, had already slipped away to Sicily. When Madrid were 2-0 down, he posted: “Let’s go Madrid!” from afar. It felt like a punchline.

Two days on, Florentino Pérez stepped in front of the cameras for the first time in more than a decade and delivered an incoherent, Trumpian press conference that clarified nothing and somehow explained everything. He did at least locate a culprit: the newspaper ABC. He cancelled his subscription.

Titles, trophies and the ones that got away

Barcelona were champions again, the trophy handed over on the night they actually won it, then paraded through the city. The Super Cup rode the bus with them. The European Cup did not. They wanted that one more than any other, and they were not alone in failing to get it.

Madrid’s better performances came in Europe but still fell short. Villarreal and Athletic Club didn’t make it out of the league phase, although San Mamés was the only ground where eventual champions PSG failed to score. Atlético Madrid, who had knocked Barcelona out of both domestic cups and had long since given up on the league, came closest of all the Spanish sides. Arsenal removed them in their first Champions League semi-final for a decade. In their first Copa del Rey final for 13 years, they were “Matarazzoed”: Real Sociedad won on penalties.

The decisive moment belonged to a backup goalkeeper, who saved the final spot-kick and then planted a kiss on the cheek of a former ballboy who ran up and scored the winner. Álvaro Odriozola, who didn’t even play, said he wouldn’t swap it “for anything in humanity”.

Next season’s Champions League will again feature Barcelona, Madrid, Atlético and Villarreal, who finished third, joined by Betis, the beneficiaries of the new fifth spot. Below them, Copa del Rey winners Real Sociedad head into Europe alongside Celta Vigo and Getafe.

Getafe’s story bordered on the absurd. They started the season with 13 first‑team players, two of them goalkeepers. At halfway they were in the relegation zone and so desperate they used full-back Allan Nyom as a makeshift striker. Pepe Bordalás, a man who has inflicted some grim evenings on many opponents, admitted: “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” In January, they signed four largely unknown loanees. By June, they were seventh.

They did it their way: second fewest goals scored, lowest possession, fewest shots, most fouls. Bordalás called it a miracle. History might not, but it will remember the numbers.

Chaos at the bottom, miracles and cruelty

On the final day, Getafe’s pitch became a meeting point of joy and dread. Their fans invaded to celebrate Europe, and scattered among the blue shirts were a dozen or so in red, Osasuna players waiting for results elsewhere. Phones, iPads, radios, heads bowed. Their captain called those minutes “agonising, the worst feeling I’ve ever had”.

When safety finally came, they leapt with the Getafe supporters and Nyom, who stayed on the pitch to make sure Osasuna were safe before heading inside. “It’s been … weird,” said coach Alesio Lisci. His side had already celebrated survival once, after a 99th‑minute winner against Sevilla a month earlier. They never imagined they would have to climb out again. In the end, others pulled them clear.

It was that kind of year. The top five or six held their positions, but the bottom turned feral. Teams rose and crashed in weeks. Europe and relegation sat barely a stride apart.

Only Real Oviedo slipped without drama. Back in the top flight after 24 years, they finally saw Santi Cazorla make his Primera debut for the club he had joined at eight and rejoined at 38 on the minimum wage. Romance met reality. Oviedo scored nine home goals all season and went through more managers (three) than away wins (two). They were gone early.

Everyone else clung on. The fight to avoid the other two relegation spots was savage. In a league where good sides suddenly collapsed and poor ones became brilliant, the gap between Europe and the abyss stayed tiny.

Nine teams went into the penultimate round trying to avoid those last two places. Espanyol, Sevilla, Alavés and Valencia scrambled free. Five remained trapped on the final day, their fates tangled.

Elche and Girona met at Montilivi in a direct shootout. All or nothing. A late Thomas Lemar shot crashed off the bar – the sliver of metal between Girona’s survival and their fall. Four points from their last eight games dragged down the team that had challenged for the title two years earlier and played in the Champions League last season. They went down with 41 points, a total that would have guaranteed safety in any other campaign this decade.

Mallorca joined them, sunk by a three-way tie-breaker mini-league with Osasuna and Levante after all three finished on 42. They fell despite having a striker who scored 23 league goals, a mark no one had hit in 26 seasons.

“This hurts,” said coach Martín Demichelis. “Football has been cruel,” added Girona’s Míchel Sánchez. “This league was really crazy,” Elche’s Eder Sarabia concluded. He was right, and his team had lived to tell the tale.

Rayo, romance and the ones who made it beautiful

Spain’s season still had one more story to tell. Rayo Vallecano, the club that went from little Rayo to Rayo effing Vallecano, walked into their first European final, a Conference League date in Germany that felt like a collision between a barrio and the boardroom of UEFA. They couldn’t bring the trophy home.

It didn’t really matter. Not to them. Not to the fans who unfurled a banner in Leipzig that captured the essence of the club better than silver ever could: “I have known no greater victory than being with you in defeat.”

There were other snapshots that defined the year.

Rayo’s president, Raúl Martín Presa, managed to insult his own supporters, calling them “drunk, brainless and idle”. Jesús Martínez, Oviedo’s owner, demanded talk of “European places” in week eight, two days before his team dropped into the bottom three and never climbed out again.

San Mamés delivered the best atmosphere, and Athletic weren’t even playing. Euskadi and Palestine were. Atlético fans turned the Metropolitano into a paper storm, a toilet-roll shower so spectacular it finally made use of the pandemic hoarding. Sevilla copied them. UEFA and La Liga responded with fines.

Rayo players belted out A Pirate’s Life with CD Yuncos after a cup tie. Real Sociedad’s Copa del Rey party rolled from a 10pm kick-off to extra-time, penalties, a 2am exit from the stadium, a 2.39am hotel disco, 4.45am taxis to a club, a sleepless 10.15am bus to the airport and duty-free booze on the flight. They arrived home, stumbled into preparation for the next game, and discovered the fixture list had a sense of humour. Their opponents: Getafe.

Lionel Messi slipped quietly into the Camp Nou one cold Sunday night in November, just to watch. Somewhere between nostalgia and longing, the old king walked back into his palace and sat anonymously in the stands.

A Betis fan, desperate for Cédric Bakambu’s shirt, launched himself down the stand after a 3-0 win over Mallorca, misjudged the leap, and crashed at the striker’s feet. Bakambu stared, bemused, and walked away with his shirt still on. Sergio Herrera, the Osasuna goalkeeper, went the other way in Palma, gathering his team’s entire kit and hand-delivering it to the stands.

Real Oviedo tried to fly stranded supporters home on the team charter after a rain-delayed game at Mestalla. One mother in Asturias recognised her son in the photo. “Please tell my son I’ll be having a word with him when he gets home,” she wrote. He was supposed to be at his gran’s.

When Celta’s Borja Iglesias suffered homophobic abuse for painting his nails, his teammates and fans responded by painting theirs too, terraces and training pitches suddenly full of colour.

El Periodico de Aragon delivered the bluntest headline: “Zaragoza are going to shit.” Few argued.

The best, the oddest, the unforgettable

The season produced a gallery of characters and moments.

Inter de Valdemoro, from the ninth tier, faced Getafe in the Copa del Rey. Eight down with half an hour to go, they watched Borja Mayoral come on and score twice more, an 11-0 battering with a family subplot: a little brother finally given the chance to stick it to big brother Kity in the opposition midfield.

Granada’s Jorge Pascual collected the year’s most memorable red card for calling the linesman “fucking moustache-face” and, as the referee’s report helpfully noted, “pointing to his upper lip to simulate said moustache”.

Sevilla embraced “hand‑me‑down chic”. Coach Matías Almeyda described it perfectly: “You haven’t got any trainers, you lack the clothes you need, and someone from your family says: ‘Would you like your grandad’s trousers?’ ‘Yes please, I could use them.’ ‘Would you like your cousin’s T-shirt?’ ‘Sure, give it to me’.”

Real Betis released a scratch‑and‑sniff shirt made of oranges that smelled of oranges. At least before kick-off. Madonna ended up with the most sought-after jersey of the year.

Dani Cárdenas saved a Kike García penalty and the actual Vallecas nets. Hugo Hard accepted a place on the bench with a shrug and praise for Umar Sadiq: “If I’m not a starter any more, it’s because Sadiq is playing like Pelé.”

Vedat Muriqi, seeing Barcelona hype Mallorca’s visit as Robert Lewandowski versus Muriqi, cut through the noise: “There are few strikers that compete with Lewy … and I’m not one of them. Thanks, though.” Cucho Hernández apologised to Levante after scoring against them, a nice gesture except he had never played for them – only for Huesca, who share their colours.

Luis Castro slipped over on his debut at Levante, literally falling on his backside as he tried to return the ball. He didn’t fall again, leading a miracle escape. At Real Sociedad, president Jokin Aperribay asked ChatGPT if Rino Matarazzo was a good coach for the club and got a “no”. Four months later, Matarazzo had delivered a historic Copa del Rey.

Bordalás, forever sharpening a pencil that was down to the rubber, still dragged Getafe into Europe. Luis Garcia walked into a funereal Sevilla and resurrected them in six weeks. Eder Sarabia, at Elche, talked about fighting with a catapult against teams with “bazookas and tanks” and still stayed up playing good football.

Hansi Flick won the league again. Claudio Giráldez and Manuel Pellegrini impressed again. But the manager of the year was Iñigo Pérez, bound for Villarreal, who guided Rayo Vallecano to their highest-ever finish and a first final despite not always having a pitch to play on, a place to train or hot water to wash with. “It’s easier to reach success through love,” he said. Rayo proved him right.

On the pitch, Carlos Espí might have been the single most decisive player of the season: 10 goals in the last 14 games, the only matches he started for Levante. Fans shouted for the Ballon d’Or. Vedat Muriqi twirled his finger at his temple and called them crazy, but one more point and Muriqi might have taken both survival and this award himself.

Joan García produced a “science fiction” save in a Barcelona shirt against Espanyol, a stop so outrageous Lamine Yamal could only gasp: “Mother of God almighty, what a goalkeeper!”

Yet the player of the year still had to be Lamine Yamal. Twenty-four goals, 11 assists in all competitions, and a run of form that dragged Barcelona clear when the race threatened to tighten. “I would like to be everything everyone wants me to be,” he said. The line revealed the weight on his shoulders. His football shrugged it off.

By the end, the team of the season wrote itself: Joan García in goal; Marcos Llorente, Florian Lejeune, David Affengruber and Carlos Romero across the back; Fermín López, Luis Milla and Pablo Fornals in midfield; Lamine Yamal, Vedat Muriqi and Alberto Moleiro up front. A bench full of names – Pedri, Oyarzabal, Mbappé, Griezmann, Espí and more – underlined the depth of talent scattered across Spain.

A season that began with a teenager in a No 10 shirt announcing himself to the league ended with that same teenager lifting a trophy, clutching a flag and carrying a club. The question now is not whether he belongs among the names on that shirt. It’s how far he can drag Barcelona – and La Liga – in the years to come.