The winner of Flashscore's Young Player of the Year award for 2025 is, unsurprisingly, the exceptional Lamine Yamal of Barcelona.
Awarding him these gongs is, by now, almost an exercise in understatement. Lamine Yamal has long since outgrown these age-based 'secondary' awards: his is a talent that belongs to the present, not just a promise for the future.
The Ballon d'Or and our own Flashscore award for men's Player of the Year went to Ousmane Dembele, but that doesn't change the fact that, when you look back on this season, it feels as though such accolades are simply no longer enough to capture Lamine's true impact.
He didn't win a second Golden Boy award only because the rules don't allow it. However, he did claim the Kopa Trophy for the second year running, the first player ever to do so. That detail alone says a lot about the scale of the phenomenon we are lucky enough to witness 'every blessed Sunday'.
More than just numbers
Statistics certainly help to frame his impact, but they can never fully describe the impact he has had on the world's most loved sport. With Barcelona, his rise has been meteoric: from seven goals and nine assists in 50 appearances in the 2023/24 season, to 18 goals and 25 assists in 55 matches last campaign.
And this season, he’s raised the bar even higher: in his first 20 games alone, Lamine has already notched up nine goals and 11 assists.
All this, despite having been hampered for some time by a persistent groin injury, which will likely continue to trouble the Catalan star for a while yet, but which, for now, has done nothing to dim his brilliance. If anything, it has only enhanced the sense of greatness around him.
A sensory experience
But to reduce Lamine Yamal to a string of statistics would be a betrayal before football’s highest court. His true measure is the impact he has on emotions, the feelings of the fans.
It’s in his left foot seeking the top corner as if it were fate, in the dribbles that make defenders’ legs tremble, in the electric silence that sweeps across Camp Nou when he receives the ball and the crowd holds their breath, not wanting to disturb the genius at work, and enjoying his artistry not just with their eyes, but with all their senses.
Yes, Lamine is a sensory experience, a three-Michelin-star player, whose presence on the pitch alone is worth the price of admission.
The prodigy also embodies the fear that grips opposition stands when he gets the ball, that uneasy feeling that something unstoppable is about to happen. And woe betide anyone who tries to provoke him.
Heir to Messi's throne
We saw it at last year’s Euros, when, still underage, he lit up Spain: just one goal, yes, but five assists and a dazzling presence, capped by the perfect response to Adrien Rabiot - that stunning goal scored right in front of the player who had criticised him the day before, which became the symbol of the tournament.
We saw it in the Clasicos, in his goals against Real Madrid ("he’s the most overrated footballer in the world," they said of him in the capital), which are more than just goals - they feel like symbolic handovers.
Almost as if the baton is being passed directly by Lionel Messi himself, whose No. 10 shirt he now wears. And while comparisons are always tricky, it’s hard to imagine a more worthy heir to the Pulga.
And we saw it, finally, on the biggest stage of all: yes, even in the dramatic (at least for the Blaugrana) two-legged tie against Inter, when only a miraculous Yann Sommer and a last-gasp goal from Francesco Acerbi denied him the chance to launch a full-on challenge to that same Dembele who would go on to snatch both the Champions League and the Ballon d'Or from him.
The legend of Lamine
But Lamine still has time to win, and win again, everything there is. What’s certain is that this generation of Barca fans (and not only them) will one day tell stories of his exploits, just as they were once told about Laszlo Kubala, Johan Cruyff, Ronaldinho and Messi.
And when they do, much to the dismay of statisticians, only a small part of the tale will be about goals scored or trophies won. Because some players cannot be measured by numbers alone, their stories are told and passed down through words and, above all, the emotions they have managed to evoke.
And, barring the unexpected, Lamine Yamal won’t spend long chasing the legends of this sport - he’ll soon be sitting at the very table where legends are made.
