Lamine Yamal, the Three-Time Kopa Trophy Winner, Says Defender Pau Cubarsí ‘Deserved It’

Lamine Yamal walked onto the stage at the London Palladium to collect the prize that names him the best young footballer in the world, and spent most of his speech telling the people who voted for him that they had picked the wrong man. “I would have liked to see my team-mate Cubarsí here,” he said, “because I think this prize should have been for him. He deserved it.”

Most of the coverage has filed the moment under humility: the Barça family, the La Masia friendship, a teenager being kind to an absent friend. That reading is warm, and it misses the sharper thing. Yamal is a forward judged on what he produces, standing in front of a jury that judges young players the same way, and he used his minute at the microphone to argue that a defender’s season, built on clean sheets and patient passing, had been the better one.

Lamine Yamal said it twice, and the second time he was being pushed

He spoke in Spanish, and the English versions differ slightly from outlet to outlet, but the core line holds in all of them. Then co-host Thierry Henry tried to steer him toward the bigger prize of the night, asking whether this was the trophy he really wanted. Accounts of the reply split. GOAL heard a one-word “No”. DAZN’s on-air translation, as quoted by SPORTbible, rendered it as “All of them!” A second GOAL report says he turned away, embarrassed, and declined to answer. Every account agrees on where he went next: “Speaking about this one specifically, this one should have been for Cubarsí.”

Once is good manners. Repeated with Henry needling him and the room laughing, it becomes a position. It was not a new one, either. Before the ceremony, Yamal had publicly backed Cubarsí’s candidacy in a message on Instagram, as reported when the nominees were named. He came to London having said it, and with a full theatre inviting him to enjoy the moment, he refused to take it back.

The case Yamal was making for Pau Cubarsí

The defender’s record makes the argument on its own. Cubarsí won FIFA’s Young Player Award at the World Cup, at the heart of a Spain back line that conceded once on the way to the title. Opta Analyst counts seven clean sheets, broken only by Charles De Ketelaere’s equaliser for Belgium in the quarter-finals. Only Rodri, the tournament’s Golden Ball winner, completed more passes than Cubarsí’s 671. At club level he added a second straight La Liga title with Barcelona.

Yamal’s own year was hardly thin, with a World Cup and a league title in it. But a centre-back’s best work is the attack that never happens, and award juries rarely see it. Everything Barca, the fan site, said so bluntly after the result, arguing that the Kopa vote carries the same bias toward attackers as the Ballon d’Or itself. In the main Ballon d’Or ranking, released before the ceremony, Cubarsí was placed 12th.

A record night that Cubarsí watched from Barcelona

The record is real. Yamal is the first player to win the Kopa Trophy three times, after his wins in 2024 and 2025, and the award has only existed since 2018, when Kylian Mbappé took the first one. Andriy Shevchenko read out his name at the 70th Ballon d’Or gala, the first held outside France. Barcelona took the women’s prize as well, with Vicky López retaining it.

Cubarsí was not in the hall. He stayed in Barcelona to rest after a demanding run of games, Cadena SER reported, at the end of a week that included a 2–1 Clásico defeat to Real Madrid at Camp Nou. Hansi Flick did not travel either. Yamal, also in contention for the main award on the same night, could have let the applause do the talking. He chose to spend it on the player who wasn’t there.

Both are 19, so both can contend for the under-21 prize again next year. If the voters end up weighing the same two names again, the winner has already cast his ballot in public.

Tags: Lamine Yamal, FC Barcelona, Ballon d'Or, Kopa Trophy, Pau Cubarsí