Lamine Yamal: A Season of Triumph and Change

Lamine Yamal began the season with a coronation and ended it carrying a cause.

On the opening night of 2025-26, Barcelona’s new No 10 – the teenager handed 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. Arms spread, chest out, he conducted his own ceremony. La Liga’s title race opened with a kid who’d been described by Luis de la Fuente as “touched by God’s wand” acting like he believed it.

Nine months later, with the title run and won, the bus rolled through Barcelona and that same kid stood on the top deck holding a Palestine flag. Lamine Yamal was 18 now. Old enough, Hansi Flick said, to make his own choices. Old enough, too, to admit there had been an “internal abyss” along the way. But he had his third league title. Flick, the coach who called this squad his “other family” on the day his own father died, had his second.

“Have you ever felt so much love?” he was asked. “No, never,” he replied.

A clásico that ended a league

Barcelona had effectively finished the job weeks earlier, shredding Espanyol with seven games left, Lamine Yamal sprinting towards the line, arms out like Usain Bolt. They formally sealed it in week 35, in a clásico that carried a weight the fixture hadn’t had for 94 years: the night it decided the league.

Three days after a dressing-room fight between Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni that sent Real Madrid’s vice‑captain to hospital with “craniofacial trauma”, it was Marcus Rashford who landed the decisive punch. Barcelona, nomads all year, had played in three different homes and won every single game in all of them. This clásico was their 11th straight victory, their 23rd win in 25 league matches since the previous meeting 600km to the west.

The contrast with autumn was brutal. Back in late October, when Flick warned that “ego kills success”, Barcelona looked fragile. Rayo had exposed what they called The Flick Line, Sevilla had sliced through them, and Madrid had won 2-1 at the Bernabéu to go five points clear. That night Jude Bellingham dismissed Lamine Yamal’s words as “cheap”, backing the jibe with Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation”. Dani Carvajal waved the classic jibber-jabber gesture at the teenager.

Madrid, though, had their own noise to silence. Vinícius Júnior stomped off with 18 minutes left that same evening. Xabi Alonso tried to steer the debate back to football. It turned out the storm around him was the football. The dressing room cracked, then split. The authority he thought had come too early deserted him just as quickly.

Barcelona’s Super Cup win in the next clásico snapped Madrid’s sense of control. Alonso trudged to the Club World Cup unhappy and came back without his job. Álvaro Arbeloa walked in, talking about unity, empathy and his grey sofa for players to open up on. He brought doughnuts as rewards. The performances never sweetened.

“I’m not Gandalf,” he said. He was right.

By the time the two giants met again in May, Madrid were out of Europe, out of the Copa del Rey, and almost out of their minds. A squad divided, a fanbase exhausted, a club just wanting the season to end. Ninety minutes later, they were out of the title race as well, trailing by 12 points with only nine left and staring at a second straight year without a major trophy.

Kylian Mbappé? He was simply out. Off to Sicily, posting “Let’s go Madrid!” when they were already 2-0 down.

Two days on, Florentino Pérez appeared in front of the media for the first time in more than a decade and delivered a rambling, angry performance that answered nothing and somehow explained everything. He did at least identify the culprit: the ABC newspaper. His solution was to cancel his subscription.

Champions without the cup they craved

Barcelona’s trophy was handed over on the night they actually won it, a rare piece of logistical sanity in Spanish football. They rode it around the city, the Super Cup tucked alongside it. The European Cup, the one they wanted most, never made it on board.

Madrid’s didn’t either. Their best nights still belonged to Europe, but that wasn’t enough. Villarreal and Athletic didn’t even escape the league phase, although champions PSG failed to score only once – at San Mamés. Atlético Madrid went furthest, knocking Barcelona out of both domestic cups and abandoning the league long before the run-in. They reached a first Champions League semi-final in a decade, only for Arsenal to throw them out. In their first Copa final for 13 years, they were “Matarazzoed”: Real Sociedad took them to penalties, a backup goalkeeper made the decisive save, kissed a former ballboy on the cheek and watched him score the winner. Álvaro Odriozola, who did not play a minute, said he wouldn’t swap it for “anything in humanity”.

Barcelona, Madrid, Atlético and Villarreal – who finished third – will all return to the Champions League, joined by Betis, who grabbed Spain’s new fifth spot. Behind them, Copa winners Real Sociedad head back into Europe with Celta Vigo and Getafe.

Getafe’s story belonged in the small-print and on the front page at the same time. They started the season with 13 senior players, two of them goalkeepers. By halfway, they were in the relegation zone and desperate enough to push full-back Allan Nyom up front. Pepe Bordalás, a man who has inflicted plenty of suffering on others, insisted: “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” In January, they brought in four little-known loanees. By May, they were seventh.

Survival by iPad and prayer

As Getafe’s players and fans swarmed the pitch on the final day, a dozen red shirts lingered in the chaos. Osasuna’s squad stayed out there, eyes fixed on phones, iPads and radios, waiting for other results to decide their fate. The captain called it “agonising, the worst feeling I’ve ever had”. When safety finally came, they jumped around with the Getafe fans and with Nyom, who said he wanted to make sure Osasuna were safe before he disappeared into the dressing room.

“It’s been … weird,” admitted their coach, Alesio Lisci. It had. A month earlier they had celebrated survival after a 99th-minute winner against Sevilla. They never thought they’d have to escape again. In the end, others saved them.

It was that sort of season. The top remained familiar, the same five or six clubs circling the summit. Below, the ground kept moving. Only Real Oviedo dropped early. Back in the top flight after 24 years, they finally gave Santi Cazorla his primera debut for the club he joined at eight and rejoined at 38 on the minimum wage. Romance didn’t last. Oviedo scored nine home goals all year and finished with more managers (three) than away wins (two).

Everywhere else, the fight was savage. In a league where good teams turned bad overnight and the bad ones suddenly looked brilliant, the line between Europe and oblivion shrank to a few points. Nine teams went into the penultimate round trying to avoid the last two relegation places. Espanyol, Sevilla, Alavés and Valencia escaped that weekend. Five teams remained trapped on the final day.

Elche and Girona met at Montilivi in a straight shootout. All or nothing. A late Thomas Lemar shot crashed off the bar, the difference between Girona standing and falling. Four points from their last eight games dragged them into the drop. A side that had challenged for the title two years ago and played in the Champions League last season went down with 41 points – a total that would have saved them in every other year this decade.

Mallorca joined them, bottom of a three-team mini-league with Osasuna and Levante after all three finished on 42. They went despite a striker who scored 23 league goals, a mark not reached in 26 seasons.

“This hurts,” said their coach, Martín Demichelis. “Football has been cruel,” Míchel Sánchez, Girona’s manager, added. “This league was really crazy,” Elche’s Eder Sarabia concluded. His team survived. Barely.

Rayo’s defeat that felt like victory

One last story remained, saved for the end. Rayo Vallecano, the club that went from little Rayo to Rayo effing Vallecano, reached their first European final in the Conference League. They went to Germany and came home without the trophy. In a way, that felt exactly right. Rayo are the club that never quite fit, and that is the point.

At the end in Leipzig, a banner stretched across their end said what a cup never could: “I have known no greater victory than being with you in defeat.” For them, that was enough. Almost.

The season’s cast of characters

There were awards, of a sort.

Rayo’s president, Raúl Martín Presa, claimed the title of most charming president by calling his own fans “drunk, brainless and idle”. Oviedo’s owner Jesús Martínez won most optimistic, sacking the coach who had them safe and demanding talk of Europe, not survival. Two days later, Oviedo dropped into the bottom three and never climbed out.

San Mamés delivered the best atmosphere, and Athletic weren’t even playing. Euskadi faced Palestine and the stadium roared. Atlético fans finally found a use for all that leftover pandemic toilet roll, turning the Metropolitano into something resembling the Monumental with a bog-roll shower that Sevilla fans soon copied. Uefa and La Liga responded the only way they know: with fines.

Rayo again provided the best post‑match singalong, belting out “A Pirate’s Life” with the CD Yuncos players they had just beaten. The best party – and worst hangover – belonged to Copa del Rey winners Real Sociedad. A 10pm kick-off, extra time, penalties, leaving the stadium at 2am, hotel disco at 2.39am, taxis to a club at 4.45am, a bus to the airport at 10.15am, duty-free cracked open on the plane. Then a bus parade under a brutal sun, beers flowing, hundreds of thousands on the streets. At some point, the liveliest of the lot shouted: “This is the best day of my life and we’re going to have a fucking great time.” They did. For days. Until they stumbled into the next match, barely conscious. The opponent? Getafe, of course.

Lionel Messi slipped into the Camp Nou alone one cold Sunday night in November, the most nostalgic fan of all. Somewhere else, a Betis supporter chasing Cédric Bakambu’s shirt tumbled over a barrier and landed at the striker’s feet, only to watch him walk away bemused. No shirt, just bruises. Sergio Herrera, Osasuna’s goalkeeper, showed how it should be done in Palma, gathering the entire team’s kit and hand‑delivering it to the stands.

Real Oviedo arranged for stranded supporters in Valencia to fly back on the team charter after torrential rain postponed their game at Mestalla. It was a lovely gesture until a mum in Asturias saw a photo and recognised her son. He was supposed to be at his gran’s. “I’ll be having a word with him when he gets home,” she wrote.

Celta fans painted their nails in solidarity with Borja Iglesias after he received homophobic abuse for doing the same. In Zaragoza, the local paper went straight to the point with the bluntest headline of the year: “Zaragoza are going to shit.” They weren’t wrong.

Down in the Copa del Rey, tiny Inter de Valdemoro, from the ninth tier, found themselves 8-0 down against Getafe. On came Borja Mayoral, finally with the chance to punish his big brother Kity in the opposition midfield. He scored twice more in an 11-0 rout. Their goalkeeper, Busy, at least left with the season’s best name.

Granada’s Jorge Pascual delivered the best red card, dismissed for calling the linesman “fucking moustache-face” and, as the referee’s report helpfully clarified, for “pointing to his upper lip to simulate said moustache”. Robert Navarro met his toughest opponent when he was tackled by tinfoil. Dani Cárdenas won the handiest goalkeeper award for saving a Kike García penalty and the Vallecas nets in the same game.

Sevilla claimed best-dressed team, their coach Matías Almeyda describing their hand‑me‑down look with the story of a kid offered his grandad’s trousers and cousin’s T-shirt and gratefully accepting both. Real Betis produced the smelliest shirt, a scratch‑and‑sniff jersey made of oranges that smelled of fruit. At least before kick-off.

Cucho Hernández offered the best apology, scoring for Betis against Levante and immediately saying sorry to his “former club”. He had never played for Levante. He had played for Huesca, who wear the same colours.

Managers with catapults, pencils and miracles

On the touchline, Luis Castro literally fell at the first hurdle, slipping as he kicked the ball back on his debut, then rose to oversee a miracle at Levante. Real Sociedad’s president, Jokin Aperribay, asked ChatGPT if Rino Matarazzo was a good coach for his club and got a “no”. Four months later, they had a historic Copa del Rey.

Bordalás described his Getafe side as a pencil sharpened to nothing. “You sharpen it and sharpen it, and keep sharpening it, and in the end there’s no pencil left,” he said. Somehow, with just a stub and the rubbery bit, he took them into Europe. At Sevilla, the sporting director complained “it’s like a funeral in here” the day he presented Luis García. Six weeks later, the coach had resurrected them.

Eder Sarabia summed up Elche’s season with one image: “Some teams have bazookas and tanks, and we’re there fighting with a catapult.” They stayed up, and did it playing. Claudio Giráldez and Manuel Pellegrini impressed again. Flick, of course, finished as champion once more.

But the manager of the year was Iñigo Pérez, now Villarreal-bound, who led Rayo Vallecano through a campaign of chaos: no pitch, no proper training ground, no hot water. He still took them to their highest-ever finish and a first final, and did it with rare dignity.

“It’s easier to reach success through love,” he said. His team proved him right.

The season of Lamine Yamal

On the pitch, the argument for player of the year ran deep. Carlos Espí scored 10 goals in Levante’s last 14 games – the only matches he started all season – and might have been the single most significant footballer of the campaign. When fans called for him to win the Ballon d’Or, Vedat Muriqi twirled his finger beside his temple and called them crazy. One more point and Muriqi might have taken this award along with survival. Joan García produced the season’s “science fiction” save against Espanyol, leaving Lamine Yamal to exclaim: “Mother of God almighty, what a goalkeeper!”

Yet the season always seemed to bend back towards the teenager in the No 10 shirt. Lamine Yamal finished with 24 goals and 11 assists in all competitions, driving Barcelona’s surge to the line with a spell of football that left everyone else trailing.

“I would like to be everything everyone wants me to be,” he said. It sounded like a burden. It looked like destiny.

By the end, he stood on a bus, league medal around his neck, flag in his hands, and the future of a club – and maybe a league – on his shoulders. The question now is not whether he can carry it. It’s how far he intends to go.