Lamine Yamal

Lamine Yamal is a Spanish professional footballer, born on 13 July 2007 in Esplugues de Llobregat, in the Barcelona metropolitan area. He plays as a right winger for Barcelona in La Liga and for the Spain national team. He came through the club's La Masia academy and joined the first team in the 2023–24 season while still only 15.

Yamal appears near the very top of every major 2025 ranking in our sources. FourFourTwo placed him No. 1 in its list of the 100 best players in the world, asking whether a teenager had "ever been this good at football". France Football ranked him No. 2 at the 2025 Ballon d'Or, the IFFHS and The Guardian also put him second, Sports Illustrated (Español) had him third and Bleacher Report seventh, calling him "the scariest one-on-one player in the world". He is also on the 30-player shortlist for the 2026 Ballon d'Or.

Under coach Hansi Flick he helped Barcelona win a domestic treble in 2024–25 (La Liga, Copa del Rey and Supercopa de España), and Barcelona kept the league title in 2025–26, when he was named La Liga Player of the Season. He won the Kopa Trophy for the best young player in 2024 and 2025. For Spain he became the youngest senior international at 16, the youngest scorer in European Championship history and the Young Player of Euro 2024, which Spain won; according to Wikipedia he then won the 2026 World Cup with Spain at his first World Cup.

Sources of this text: Wikipedia · FourFourTwo · France Football / L'Équipe · IFFHS · The Guardian · Sports Illustrated (Español) · Bleacher Report