Lamine Yamal collected the Lamine Yamal AFE award for the best player in La Liga for the second season running on Tuesday night — and used the stage to state the only thing he says he wants from 2026/27. “My objective is to win the Champions League,” the 19-year-old said as he took the trophy from AFE president David Aganzo at the fifth edition of the Spanish players’ union awards at Florida Park in Madrid.
It is a prize with a particular weight to it. The AFE awards are voted for by the professionals themselves, and Barça’s winger was chosen by his fellow first-division players as the outstanding footballer of the 2025/26 campaign, repeating the honour he won a year earlier.
What Lamine Yamal said as he collected the AFE award
He arrived in Madrid roughly 24 hours after a brace against Rayo Vallecano in a 5-2 win, his first La Liga goals of the new season, and a night that also took him past 50 goals for the club.
“It meant a lot to score again for the club of my life, I’m very happy,” he told Mundo Deportivo. “Any award is welcome, and all the more so from a players’ association, because in the end they are the ones who know. There is always a lot of talk about everything that happens to me, but I’m very happy.”
Asked about the striker Barcelona did not sign, he was pointedly relaxed. “Right now we’re in a very good place and you can see it. We’re not short of goals,” he said of the collapsed Julian Alvarez deal. “Obviously he’s a great player, but I’m very happy with the squad we have.”
And on the tired question of whether Barça or Real Madrid have the better front three, he refused the bait entirely: “We want to win everything, that’s what matters.”
A Blaugrana sweep in Madrid
Lamine was not the only one leaving with silverware. Patri Guijarro was voted the best player in Liga F, taking over from her Barça team-mate Ewa Pajor, who won it last year. Barcelona were named club of the year in both the men’s and women’s categories, again repeating from the previous edition.
Ainoa Gomez, currently on loan at Deportivo, shared the Primera Federacion FUTFEM award with Villarreal’s Aixa Salvador. Across 46 prizes handed out by Spain’s largest players’ union, the career achievement award went to two national teams: the senior side that beat Argentina in New York on 19 July to win the World Cup, with eight Barcelona players on the pitch that day, and the Under-19s who won the European Championship with Xavi Espart prominent. Lamine attended as a representative of the world champions.
Espart’s summer has carried straight into the league season — he is one of three Barça names, alongside Raphinha and Hansi Flick, nominated for La Liga’s August awards.
The bigger prize on the horizon
There is a heavier trophy in view. France Football is expected to name its 30 Ballon d’Or candidates imminently, with the gala set for 26 October in London rather than Paris, per Mundo Deportivo. In a World Cup year the tournament tends to dominate the voting, which is why Spain’s internationals are expected to feature heavily — Rodri, now a Barcelona player, was rated the outstanding performer of the final itself.
Lamine’s own claim is built on a different kind of consistency: two consecutive years as the player his peers rate above everyone else in Spain, at an age when most footballers are still trying to establish themselves. What he has not won is the trophy he named on Tuesday. Barcelona have not lifted the European Cup since 2015, and the Blaugrana’s most decorated teenager has now said out loud that ending that wait is the point of his season.
Flick’s side return to league duty at Mestalla against Valencia after the international break, in what is expected to be Barcelona’s final visit to the old ground.
