Barcelona teenager Lamine Yamal was passed over for the 2026 Ballon d’Or, football’s most prestigious individual award, but still walked away with the Kopa Trophy as the game’s best young player for the second straight year.
The Ballon d’Or itself went to Ousmane Dembele, Yamal’s former Barcelona teammate now at Paris Saint-Germain, whose decisive performances in the Champions League knockout rounds were widely credited with carrying his club to the title, according to reports of the ceremony. Yamal’s camp had hoped his season, which included match-winning displays for club and country, might make him the youngest winner in the award’s history.
Instead, voters rewarded Dembele’s end-of-season surge, while Yamal collected the Kopa for the second consecutive year, an acknowledgement that, at his age, he remains the standard against which young players are measured. The winger has spoken in the past about wanting to win multiple Ballon d’Or awards before he turns 22, a target he set publicly during his breakthrough season.
Elsewhere in European football, Marc Cucurella has pushed back at critics of his performances, arguing that detractors “recycle the same three clips” rather than judging his overall game. The defender’s comments, reported this week, reflect the scrutiny that follows high-profile transfers and the speed with which short video excerpts shape opinion.
Attention now returns to the club calendar, with national leagues resuming after the international break and the Champions League league phase set to continue. For Yamal, the wait for the biggest individual prize goes on, though few in the game doubt that his name will be near the top of the ballot again next year.
The Ballon d’Or is decided by a panel of journalists, one from each of the top-ranked footballing nations, who rank their five choices from lists drawn up on the season’s performances. Organisers have in recent years tried to place greater weight on decisive contributions in the biggest matches, a shift that many observers say favoured Dembele’s late-season heroics this time.
