There’s an old Italian saying: “There isn’t two without three.” When it comes to Lamine Yamal’s swollen glut of Kopa Trophies, the expression rings true.
Only once before in the, admittedly limited, history of the award handed out by France Football to the best U-21 player on the planet had anyone claimed the gong more than once. Yamal now stands alone with three prodigious crowns. Remarkably, he would still be eligible for a fourth next year.
Barcelona’s impish 19-year-old enjoyed the best season of a career which has already scaled so many peaks. Yamal was the club’s leading scorer and most prolific provider of assists in a rampant league title win, averaging one goal or assist every 90 minutes he was on the pitch.
Beyond the cold hard numbers, Yamal has that “special spark,” to use his own description. In a world of rigorous tactical instructions, there is something infectious about the old magic of a pure dribbler like Barcelona’s No. 10.
“A fullback will have a coach who says: ‘O.K., Lamine: what he does is…’ I think of him as a robot, trying to stop me,” Yamal told The Guardian earlier this year. “Robots can be almost perfect but a human will have something a robot doesn’t.”
While he is very much a fallible creature made of flesh and blood, there is something robotic about Yamal’s unrelenting accumulation of silverware. The three-time league title winner added the World Cup to his European Championship to complete the set of major international titles, which probably sit above his Kopa Trophies in an ever-expanding personal collection of honors.
Every Kopa Trophy Winner
| Year | Winner | Club |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Kylian Mbappé | Paris Saint-Germain |
| 2019 | Matthijs de Ligt | Juventus |
| 2021 | Pedri | Barcelona |
| 2022 | Gavi | Barcelona |
| 2023 | Jude Bellingham | Real Madrid |
| 2024 | Lamine Yamal | Barcelona |
| 2025 | Lamine Yamal | Barcelona |
| 2026 | Lamine Yamal | Barcelona |
There must come a point when the Ballon d’Or organizers rename their prize. As gifted a young talent as the Real Madrid great Raymond Kopa was, even he would blush at Yamal’s domination during what remains the infancy of his career.
Beyond the club’s braces-clad talisman, Barcelona have collectively made this award their own since 2020, when all prizes were scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yamal’s teammates Pedri and Gavi went back-to-back once the new normal was replaced with old normality before Real Madrid’s Jude Bellingham briefly broke the Catalan monopoly.
Yamal may stand out on his own as the award’s only multi-winner, but Jamal Musiala can also boast three separate seasons in which he claimed a spot on the podium. None ended with him on the top spot. The Bayern Munich gem lost out to Pedri (finishing third), Gavi (third) and Bellingham (second) in consecutive years thanks to his rubbery weaving.
Now 23 and no longer eligible for consideration, Musiala has only once been nominated for the senior men’s Ballon d’Or. In 2023, he failed to earn a single point in voting. Yamal, by contrast, has long since relegated the Kopa Trophy to irrelevance in his quest for the ultimate individual recognition the sport has to offer.
