Lamine Yamal's Remarkable Season: From Crown to Flag

Lamine Yamal began the season with a crown and ended it with a flag.

On the very first night of 2025-26, with the last kick against Mallorca, Barcelona’s new No 10 – the teenager handed the shirt of Ladislao Kubala, Luis Suárez, Diego Maradona, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi – swept in his first goal as an adult. He marked it by conducting his own coronation. A league campaign opened with a ceremony.

Nine months later, the bus crawled through Barcelona’s streets and the same teenager stood on the top deck, this time holding a Palestine flag aloft. “If he wants to it’s his decision,” Hansi Flick said. “He’s old enough: he’s 18.” Old enough to choose, old enough to carry a cause, old enough to admit that somewhere between the adulation and the injuries there had been what he called an “internal abyss”. Old enough to own his third league title.

Flick, the father figure whose own dad died on the morning Barcelona won the league and who chose to share that grief with what he called his other “family”, had his second. Asked if he had ever felt so much love, he didn’t hesitate. “No, never.”

A clásico that closed the book

Barcelona had all but finished the job with seven games left, dismantling Espanyol and stretching out towards the tape. Lamine Yamal ran for the line, arms wide, a sprinter already celebrating, Usain Bolt contemplating Richard Thompson and Walter Dix.

The mathematics came later, in week 35, in the only way that truly made sense in Spain: a clásico. For the first time in 94 years, the league title was sealed in that fixture. Three days after a dressing-room fight between Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni left Real Madrid’s vice-captain in hospital with “craniofacial trauma” and stitches, it was Marcus Rashford who delivered the final blow. Barcelona had roamed across three different home grounds and won in all of them. This clásico made it 11 victories in a row, 23 wins from 25 since the previous meeting, 600km away.

The picture in October had looked nothing like this. Back then, Flick warned that “ego kills success”. Rayo Vallecano had traced the weak points in his side, Sevilla had cut them open, and Madrid’s 2-1 win at the Santiago Bernabéu sent them five points clear. Jude Bellingham dismissed Lamine Yamal’s words as “cheap”, posting Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation” as the soundtrack. Dani Carvajal gave the teenager the old jibber-jabber gesture. Madrid, though, had their own noise to handle. Vinícius Júnior stomped down the tunnel with 18 minutes to go and Xabi Alonso insisted he would focus on “what really mattered”.

It turned out that this was what really mattered. From that moment, Madrid’s season began to fray. The authority Alonso believed had come too soon slipped away just as quickly.

Barcelona’s Super Cup win in the next clásico drew a line under that brief Madrid ascendancy. Alonso headed reluctantly to the Club World Cup and then out of the job. Álvaro Arbeloa arrived, speaking the language of empathy and open doors, telling players they could unburden themselves on his grey sofa and rewarding them with doughnuts. The gestures landed softly; the results did not. “I’m not Gandalf,” he said. He was right.

By the time the great rivals met again in May, Madrid were out of Europe, out of the Copa del Rey and close to out of their minds. The squad was split, the season felt endless, and they simply wanted it over. Ninety minutes later they were out of the title race as well, 12 points behind with nine left to play and, like last season, empty-handed. Kylian Mbappé was gone too, slipping away to Sicily and posting “Let’s go Madrid!” when they were already 2-0 down.

Two days later, Florentino Pérez stepped in front of the cameras for the first time in more than a decade and unravelled. The Real Madrid president delivered an incoherent, sprawling press conference that clarified nothing and somehow explained everything. He did, at least, identify a culprit: the newspaper ABC. His solution was to cancel his subscription.

Champions without the cup they crave

Barcelona’s league trophy was handed over on the very night they secured it, a rare moment of bureaucratic alignment in Spanish football. They took it on a lap of the city, the Super Cup sitting alongside it on the bus. The European Cup, the one they most wanted, stayed out of reach. It did for Madrid too. They reserved their best for that competition and still fell short.

Villarreal and Athletic Club didn’t even escape the new league phase, though champions PSG failed to score only once and that was at San Mamés. Atlético Madrid went furthest of the Spanish sides, eliminating Barcelona from both domestic cups and letting the league drift, only to end up with nothing. Arsenal knocked them out of their first Champions League semi-final in a decade. In their first Copa del Rey final for 13 years, they were “Matarazzoed”, Real Sociedad winning on penalties.

The final scene was pure football folklore. A backup goalkeeper made the decisive save and then planted a kiss on the cheek of a former ballboy, who promptly stepped up and scored the winner. Full-back Álvaro Odriozola, who did not even play, declared he would not swap this for “anything in humanity”.

Barcelona, Madrid, Atlético and third-placed Villarreal will have another go in the Champions League next season, joined by Betis, who claimed Spain’s new fifth spot. Below them, cup winners Real Sociedad will return to Europe with Celta Vigo and Getafe, whose coach Pepe Bordalás claimed qualification would go down in football history.

That was a stretch, but the story was remarkable. Getafe started the season with 13 senior players, two of them goalkeepers. By halfway, they were in the relegation zone and so short of options that full-back Allan Nyom played as a centre-forward. Bordalás, a man who has inflicted his share of suffering on opponents, insisted: “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” In January, four little-known loanees arrived. By May, Getafe were seventh.

They did it in their own image: second fewest goals, lowest possession, fewest shots, most fouls. Brutal, efficient, unapologetic.

A relegation fight with no mercy

Somewhere in the middle of Getafe’s pitch invasion on the final day, a cluster of red shirts tried to stay calm. Osasuna’s players lingered on the grass, waiting for other results to finish, their captain describing the last minutes with iPads, phones and radios as “agonising, the worst feeling I’ve ever had”. When the verdict finally came, they were safe. They bounced around with Getafe’s fans and Nyom, who said he wanted to make sure Osasuna were staying up before disappearing into the dressing room.

“It’s been … weird,” admitted Osasuna coach Alesio Lisci. His team had already celebrated survival once, after a 99th-minute winner against Sevilla a month earlier. They never imagined they would have to claw their way clear again. In the end, others saved them.

It was that kind of season. The top of the table settled into a familiar shape early, the same five or six sides in the same order. The bottom was chaos. Sudden plunges, wild revivals, a table that never quite sat still.

Only Real Oviedo slipped away early. Back in the first division after 24 years, with Santi Cazorla finally making his primera debut for the club he joined at eight and rejoined at 38 on the minimum wage, they had no room for romance. They scored nine home goals all season, changed managers three times and won twice away. That was it.

Everywhere else, the drop was a trapdoor that never stopped creaking. Good teams turned bad overnight; bad ones found something extraordinary for a fortnight. The gap between Europe and oblivion was often a single result.

Nine clubs entered the penultimate round of fixtures still fighting to avoid the last two relegation spots. Espanyol, Sevilla, Alavés and Valencia pulled clear then. Five were left on the final day, tangled together.

At Montilivi, Elche and Girona met in a straight shootout. All or nothing. A late shot from Thomas Lemar crashed off the bar, the thin line between salvation and disaster. Girona had taken four points from their last eight games. Two years ago they were pushing for the title; last season they were in the Champions League. This time they went down on 41 points – a total that would have kept them up in any other season this decade.

Mallorca followed them, bottom of a three-team mini-league with Osasuna and Levante, all locked on 42 points. They dropped despite a striker who scored 23 league goals, a mark no one had reached in 26 seasons.

“This hurts,” said coach Martín Demichelis. “Football has been cruel,” added Girona’s Míchel Sánchez. Elche’s Eder Sarabia, whose team survived, just shook his head: “This league was really crazy.”

Rayo’s heartbreak, and everything that made them

There was one last story. The best, in its way, saved for last.

Rayo Vallecano, the club that went from little Rayo to Rayo effing Vallecano, took their noise and their politics and their defiance to Germany for their first ever European final. They did not bring the Conference League trophy back from Leipzig. It felt wrong and yet, for Rayo, also perfectly right.

The banner that stretched across the stand at the end said more than any silverware could: “I have known no greater victory than being with you in defeat.”

Except perhaps winning one of these …

The season’s wildest characters and moments

• Most charming president Rayo’s Raúl Martín Presa, who labelled his own supporters “drunk, brainless and idle”.
• Most optimistic owner Jesús Martínez, who, in week eight, after sacking the manager who had taken Oviedo up and kept them safe, said: “Don’t talk to me about just avoiding relegation; talk to me about European places.” Two days later, Oviedo were in the bottom three. They never got out.
• Best atmosphere San Mamés, of course. The twist? Athletic weren’t even playing. The crowd turned out for Euskadi versus Palestine.
• Best tifo-type thing The pandemic’s great toilet-roll hoards finally found their purpose. Atlético fans greeted their team at the Metropolitano with a bog-roll storm so dense it turned the place into the Monumental. Sevilla’s supporters copied them days later. Uefa and La Liga responded in the only way they know: fines.
• Best post-match singalong Rayo again, roaring through “A Pirate’s Life” with the CD Yuncos players they had just beaten.
• Best party – and worst hangover Imagine this: you win the Copa del Rey for only the fourth time. Kick-off is at 10pm, the game goes to extra-time and penalties, and you don’t leave the stadium until 2am. The hotel disco starts at 2.39am, taxis to a club arrive at 4.45am, and at 10.15am, having not slept, you climb on a bus to the airport and crack open the duty-free. One of the liveliest shouts: “This is the best day of my life and we’re going to have a fucking great time.” So you do. That day, the next, and the next, circling the city on an open-top bus, sunburnt and beer-soaked, hundreds of thousands lining the streets. Then you stagger in the following afternoon, still half-cut, to prepare for the next league game. And someone says: lads, it’s Getafe.
• Most nostalgic fan Lionel Messi, slipping silently into the Camp Nou on a cold Sunday night in November. Alone.
• Most brilliantly unexpected fan Wait, what?! (Some surprises are better left as they are.)
• Unluckiest fan At the end of Betis’s 3-0 win over Real Mallorca, one supporter desperate for Cédric Bakambu’s shirt sprinted down the stand, lost his footing, tumbled over the barrier and landed at the striker’s feet. A flawless way to get noticed. It still didn’t work. Bakambu just stared, baffled. Somewhere, Sergio Herrera was shaking his head; the Osasuna goalkeeper once gathered his entire team’s kit and hand-delivered it to the stands. No pratfalls, no broken bones.
• Naughtiest fan Oviedo’s match at Mestalla was postponed 24 hours because of torrential rain. Supporters were stranded in Valencia, so the club flew them home on the team’s charter. Lovely gesture. Until a mother in Asturias saw the photo online. “Hey, Real Oviedo,” she wrote, “please tell my son I’ll be having a word with him when he gets home.” He was supposed to be at his gran’s.
• Best groomed fans When Celta striker Borja Iglesias received homophobic abuse for painting his nails, the response was simple. Teammates and fans did the same, hands and colours raised in solidarity.
• Bluntest headline “Zaragoza are going to shit,” declared El Periódico de Aragón. Sadly, the paper had a point.
• Best starting XI This one. (No arguments accepted.)
• Best revenge Deep in the Copa del Rey, tiny Inter de Valdemoro from Spain’s ninth tier found themselves eight down to Getafe with half an hour left. On came Borja Mayoral, finally handed the chance to stick it to his big brother Kity in the opposition midfield. Mayoral scored twice more in an 11-0 thrashing. Speaking of which …
• Best name Valdemoro’s goalkeeper that night? Busy. Very busy.
• Toughest opponent Robert Navarro, brought down not by defenders but by tinfoil. Sometimes the pitch really does fight back.
• Best red card Granada’s Jorge Pascual, dismissed for calling the assistant “fucking moustache-face” and, as the referee’s report carefully noted, for “pointing to his upper lip to simulate said moustache”. Just in case there was any confusion.
• Best timing Well done, sunshine. (You know who you are.)
• Best-dressed team Sevilla, embracing hand-me-down chic. “You haven’t got any trainers, you lack the clothes you need, and someone from your family says: ‘Would you like your grandad’s trousers?’” coach Matías Almeyda explained. “‘Yes please, I could use them.’ ‘Would you like your cousin’s T-shirt?’ ‘Sure, give it to me.’”
• Most sought-after shirt Madonna’s got it.
• Smelliest shirt Real Betis’s scratch-and-sniff jersey, made of oranges and scented accordingly. At least before kick-off.
• Handiest goalkeeper Dani Cárdenas, who saved a Kike García penalty and the Vallecas nets in one movement.
• Best teammate All Action Hero Hugo Hard, who refused to complain about losing his place. “If I’m not a starter any more,” he said, “it’s because [Umar] Sadiq is playing like Pelé.”
• Most modest player When Barcelona promoted Mallorca’s visit as Robert Lewandowski versus Vedat Muriqi, the Kosovan striker laughed it off. “There are few strikers that compete with Lewy … and I’m not one of them. Thanks, though.”
• Best apology Betis forward Cucho Hernández scored against Levante and immediately held up his hands to say sorry to his “former club”. Touching. Except he had never played for Levante. He had played for Huesca. Same colours, different team.

The men on the touchline

Manager of the year was no easy call.

Luis Castro literally fell at the first hurdle, slipping over as he tried to return a ball on his debut. He never fell again, guiding Levante to safety in improbable fashion. At Real Sociedad, president Jokin Aperribay asked ChatGPT if Rino Matarazzo was a good fit. The answer was “no”. Four months later, Matarazzo had delivered a historic Copa del Rey.

Bordalás, the man who once compared his work to sharpening a pencil until nothing remained, warned that at Getafe he was down to the stub and the rubber. Somehow, that was still enough for Europe. At Sevilla, sporting director Luis García presented a new coach to a room that felt like a wake. Six weeks later, the same group had been dragged back to life.

Eder Sarabia, at Elche, described his team as the ones fighting with a catapult while others rolled out “bazookas and tanks”. They stayed up playing good football. Claudio Giráldez impressed again. Manuel Pellegrini did what Manuel Pellegrini always seems to do: steady, smart, successful. Flick, of course, stood above them all in the table, champion once more with Barcelona.

And yet the award goes to Iñigo Pérez, now bound for Villarreal. Through all the chaos at Rayo – no proper pitch, no settled training base, no hot water – he led them to their highest-ever finish and a first major final. He did it with dignity. “It’s easier to reach success through love,” he said. This season, he proved it.

The year of Lamine Yamal

As for the players, the argument circled back to the boy who started it all.

Carlos Espí might have been the single most decisive footballer in Spain. Ten goals in his last 14 games – the only ones he started – dragged Levante away from the edge. When fans called for him to win the Ballon d’Or, Vedat Muriqi twirled a finger by his temple and called them crazy. One more point and Muriqi might have had this award and survival.

Joan García produced the save of the season against Espanyol, an intervention Lamine Yamal described as “science fiction” and followed with: “Mother of God almighty, what a goalkeeper!” The Barcelona keeper ended up in the team of the season too.

But the player of the year? That has to be Lamine Yamal.

Twenty-four goals and 11 assists in all competitions. A teenager carrying the No 10 shirt and the weight that comes with it, leading Barcelona out of their autumn doubts and towards the line. “I would like to be everything everyone wants me to be,” he said. It was a revealing sentence. It also felt unnecessary. On the pitch, he already was.

Team of the season

G: Joan García (Barcelona) RB: Marcos Llorente (Atlético) CB: Florian Lejeune (Rayo) CB: David Affengruber (Elche) LB: Carlos Romero (Espanyol) M: Fermín López (Barcelona) M: Luis Milla (Getafe) M: Pablo Fornals (Betis) RW: Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) CF: Vedat Muriqi (Mallorca) LW: Alberto Moleiro (Villarreal)

Subs: Aaron Escandell (Oviedo), Eric García, Pedri (Barcelona), Ratiu, Chavarría, Isi (Rayo), Jon Martín, Mikel Oyarzabal (Real Sociedad), Aleix Febas (Elche), Abde (Betis), Budimir (Osasuna), Espí (Levante), Mbappé, Güler, Tchouaméni (Madrid), Muñoz (Osasuna), Pubill, Koke, Griezmann (Atlético), Martínez (Alavés), Gueye (Villarreal), Expósito (Espanyol), Iglesias (Celta).

A season that began with a teenager crowning himself and ended with banners in defeat, toilet rolls in the sky and presidents cancelling newspapers leaves one question hanging over Spain: what on earth do they do for an encore?