Lamine Yamal: A Frontrunner for the 2026 Ballon d'Or
Álvaro Morata has seen enough. From close range, under pressure, with trophies on the line. And when he looks at the race for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, his verdict is clear: Lamine Yamal belongs with the very best.
Now starting a new chapter in the Segunda División with Leganes, the Madrid-born forward spoke to Cadena COPE and did not hide where his vote would go. In a field packed with established global stars – Rodri, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Kylian Mbappé – Morata put Spain’s teenage phenomenon right alongside them.
This was not sentimental praise from a former captain talking up the next generation. Morata went straight to the qualities that rarely make highlight reels. He underlined Yamal’s work behind the curtain: the way he prepares, the way he studies, the way he trains.
“He is much smarter and far more hard-working than many people think, in terms of how he studies matches and how he prepares for them,” Morata said, lifting the lid on a teenager often reduced to clips and superlatives.
For Morata, the shock came early. He still remembers watching a 16-year-old Yamal tear through Europe, already playing as if the stage belonged to him. “He was dominating Europe at 16 years of age, and what I have seen with my own eyes is truly incredible,” the former La Roja skipper recalled.
Those “eyes” have seen plenty. The pair have shared the pitch 15 times for Spain since that explosive night in Georgia in September 2023. It was there that Yamal scored on his international debut and Morata hit a hat-trick in an emphatic win that felt like a changing of the guard. One veteran announcing he was still here; one prodigy announcing he had arrived.
Yamal has not slowed since. The La Masia graduate already owns a trophy cabinet that would satisfy most players at the end of their careers. Eight major titles. A domestic treble with Barcelona in the 2024-25 season. And then came the international avalanche.
Euro 2024. Nations League. And the 2026 World Cup, where Spain climbed back to the summit of the game with Yamal at the heart of it. He now stands as the youngest footballer in history to lift both of international football’s greatest prizes. Not just a prodigy, but a serial winner before his career has truly begun.
That body of work has carried him to the 30-man shortlist for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, a list that usually rewards years of dominance, not a teenager still technically learning the trade. His presence there does more than flatter. It underlines his status as a genuine frontrunner for the Golden Ball.
On October 26, in London, the football world will dress up, gather under the lights and discover whose name is etched into the next chapter of the award’s history. Until that night, the numbers and narratives will be dissected, the campaigns weighed, the arguments thrown around studios and dressing rooms alike.
Yamal will have little time for any of it. His task is simpler and far more demanding: keep driving Barcelona in La Liga and in Europe, keep turning potential into production, keep making the extraordinary feel routine.
If he does, the debate Morata has already settled in his mind might soon be settled on the biggest stage of all.
