Graham HunterMay 27, 2025, 09:13 AM ET
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Graham Hunter is a Barcelona-based freelance author for ESPN.com who makes a speciality of La Liga and the Spanish nationwide group.
The Spanish solar has set on one other season in LaLiga. The 2024-25 marketing campaign kicked off with headline after headline about Kylian Mbappé‘s long-awaited transfer to Actual Madrid, however it will likely be remembered by the tantalizing title triumph of Barcelona.
With the season now consigned to the historical past books, it’s time to look again and dole out some silverware of our personal. ESPN’s Graham Hunter anoints the participant of the season, the supervisor of the season, the signing of the season, and rather more.
Participant of the season: Lamine Yamal, Barcelona
There’s a wholesome queue, however this award is settled by a three-word phrase: “He’s a genius.” It’s been asserted by Hansi Flick, Luis de la Fuente, Claude Makélélé and David Raya. No one says that about anybody else in LaLiga, however once you see somebody shaking their head in amazement, then utilizing that expression, you instantly know they’re speaking in regards to the 17-year-old Yamal.
Jostling on this hypothetical queue are standout footballers resembling Robert Lewandowski (good purpose stats), Mbappé (the best scorer Actual Madrid have ever had in a debut season), Isco (a bit of magician), Pedri (match once more, fabulous and fearless), Raphinha (captaincy sitting evenly on his beforehand stooped shoulders whereas he registers the most effective numbers of his life). However this season has been jaw-droppingly spectacular, and enjoyable, from Barcelona’s thrilling younger prodigy.
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When you’ve been watching, I don’t have to persuade you. If, for some unimaginable purpose, you haven’t, then let me make the case briefly. Sure, scoring 9 occasions and including 15 assists at this age is astonishing, whereas profitable your third, fourth and fifth senior profession trophies in a stellar season burnishes your résumé. However there are far higher causes for naming him LaLiga’s greatest participant.
First, he all the time reveals up. With out exception. We noticed that for Spain final summer season, and of their UEFA Nations League playoff in opposition to Netherlands. He proved it, too, within the UEFA Champions League, however when you think about what Yamal did in opposition to Actual Madrid within the two Liga Clásicos — in actual fact, he scored three and added two assists in 4 Clásicos this season throughout LaLiga, the Spanish Supercopa and Copa del Rey — how he harm Atlético Madrid, reserving his greatest for the one two golf equipment who may compete with Barça for the league title, it’s one other feather in his cap.
Statistics apart, what’s completely superb about this chic expertise is that he produces magnificence. The perpetual “give me the ball and I’ll produce magic” that he exudes is matched by supply: a shuffle, a twist, a faux to 1 facet, a bewitching dribble, a ball curled in behind the protection off the skin of his left boot, his geometrical imaginative and prescient and precision, his “this is what I do, folks” face when he produces killer moments … we’re within the presence of greatness.
Ending the season, as champion, he has a complete of 72 targets and assists for membership and nation and doesn’t flip 18 till July. On the equal ages, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi had a complete of 10 targets and assists for his or her golf equipment (between them, not every), and neither had made their worldwide debut. Yamal is shaping as much as be within the class reserved for transcendent greats resembling Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Simone Biles.
Don’t miss a minute; when he performs, we watch and provides reward.
Runners-up: Isco (Actual Betis), Pedri (Barcelona)
Lamine Yamal was excellent in 2024-25, main Barcelona to an surprising LaLiga title triumph. MANAURE QUINTERO/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Objective of the season: Lamine Yamal, Barcelona
There’s a prime three, and whilst you’re studying this I’m certain that there are already arguments, and maybe even bodily dust-ups, breaking out as all people argues for his or her private favourite. Magnificence is within the eye of the beholder. My selections are: Antony taking the bronze, silver going to Giovani Lo Celso, and Yamal taking dwelling gold. However which of them? There’s the dilemma.
What’s exceptional is that every one three targets got here on the similar finish of the RCDE stadium in Barcelona and, within the case of Antony and Lo Celso, each got here in the identical match: away to Espanyol earlier this month when Los Verdiblancos have been shedding with 5 minutes remaining. The Argentine strolled by half the Espanyol group and scored with the identical majesty as Messi might need. Antony minimize in from the proper and buried a left-footed shot into the far prime left nook that had Isco holding his arms to his head in disbelief.
But it surely’s Yamal, once more, and deservedly, who wins gold right here.
Was it his right-footed top-corner debut purpose in a Clásico whereas beating Madrid 4-0 on the Bernabéu in October? No.
How about his first-time zinger throughout Thibaut Courtois within the second Liga Clásico that Barcelona received 4-3 to place half a tempo throughout the title profitable line? No.
Certainly, then, the stunner he scored on the penultimate day in shedding 3-2 to Villarreal? No.
It’s the purpose that received the title. Away at Barcelona’s hated metropolis rivals, the house group competent, tight of their bodily urgent and defending, the title on the road and Yamal, constantly double- or triple-marked whereas having a reasonably quiet night time — not less than by his requirements. Seven minutes after halftime comes the most effective LaLiga purpose of the season.
Yamal (like Messi used to do) begins the transfer. A bit of lob of the ball into an area the place Dani Olmo is arriving. Yamal (like Xavi used to evangelise) doesn’t cross and transfer, he passes and stands nonetheless. Olmo performs keepy-uppy with the ball, twice, and attracts two gamers towards him. Yamal is in area, will get the ball again and rips inside from right-to-left however he’s a full 25 yards away from Joan García‘s goalmouth when he unleashes a ferocious, heat-seeking, left-footed drive throughout the keeper and into the highest nook at supersonic pace. Beautiful. Momentous. Lamine Yamal.
Runners-up: Giovani Lo Celso (Actual Betis), Antony (Actual Betis)
Right here is the place, lastly, there may be not solely competitors for Yamal, however a unique class winner. Sørloth would say in his native Norwegian, “Det har vært en krevende og vanskelig sesong” (“That was a demanding and difficult season.”) No trophies, not practically sufficient begins within the Atlético XI (solely 15 of them) to maintain this pushed, bold striker blissful. Nonetheless, a litmus check of his expertise could be his goals-per-game ratio. Have a look at it, it shines: a purpose each 79 minutes in LaLiga (20 in 1,561, the bulk off the bench, together with that last day hat trick at Girona).
However one match particularly boosted these stats. Actually, it was an event when Los Colchoneros might need been caught out. Could 10 and the guests, Actual Sociedad, had not too long ago gone to Actual Madrid and scored 4 occasions. World Cup winner Julián Álvarez (who Sørloth outscored regardless of the Argentine beginning double the quantity of league matches) was out suspended. Coach Diego Simeone doesn’t belief the 2 of them as a partnership so, Álvarez being absent, Sørloth has his probability to begin as sole striker.
The Jack Reacher lookalike hit a 3-minute, 57-second hat trick and added his fourth earlier than half an hour had been performed. Past the information (LaLiga’s earliest and quickest hat trick) the standard of his quartet was distinctive. Strikes of giant energy, precision and, together with one other magnificence that cannoned off the crossbar, he performed as if he felt invincible. It was good to look at, and it simply wins him this award.
Runners-up: Isco (Actual Betis 2-1 Sevilla), Fermín López (Barcelona 7-1 Valencia)
Joan García is being focused by lots of Europe’s prime golf equipment following his heroics in purpose for Espanyol this season. Alex Caparros/Getty Photos
Rookie of the season: Joan García, Espanyol
To be eligible as a “rookie” for these awards, a participant must be 23 or below and have accomplished his first season in LaLiga with not less than 1,500 minutes.
Actual Betis’ Jesús Rodriguez is such a Rolls-Royce footballer — his affect is enhanced by the truth that he’s a regionally born, academy-trained 19-year-old — that the winger might need received this class however for the truth that he didn’t fairly attain 1,500 LaLiga minutes (though throughout all three competitions he did). So the prize goes to the man who conceded all three candidates for LaLiga Objective of the Season. Step ahead, after which dive sharply to your proper, Joan García of Espanyol.
Even he sneaks by ESPN’s stringent standards solely as a result of he was 23 for 95% of the season and this, categorically, was his breakthrough season regardless of having made a few Liga appearances as a teen. By Jornada 38, he’d produced a whopping 145 saves, however he nonetheless managed to be in LaLiga’s prime 9 goalkeepers ranked on effectivity (targets conceded by video games performed) which is fairly exceptional. He received Save of the Month consecutively, which is exceptional, golf equipment are queuing as much as pay his buyout clause and, bluntly, if he wasn’t this good, Espanyol would have been relegated by early spring.
About his relationship together with his coach, Manolo Jiménez, whereas rising prior to now calendar 12 months, García says: “There were definitely moments of doubt when I thought I might be better off elsewhere. If you’re not given game time, it can really erode your confidence as a young keeper, but Manolo was great. Even when I messed up in a game, he didn’t drop me and that made all the difference. If you’re immediately dropped after a poor performance, you don’t get the chance to correct your mistakes and it can really dent your confidence.”
Jiménez did properly, however he and Espanyol reaped massive advantages. Not that they’ll be capable to maintain García for subsequent season, thoughts you. Greater wages and challenges beckon.
Runners-up: Raúl Asencio (Actual Madrid), Jesús Rodríguez (Actual Betis)
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Laurens: You possibly can’t inform me Mbappé is Madrid’s drawback with virtually 40 targets
Julien Laurens sticks up for Kylian Mbappé after his hat trick in Actual Madrid’s 4-3 defeat to Barcelona in El Clásico.
Signing of the season: Kylian Mbappé, Actual Madrid
So fully transformational has been the arrival of Antony at Actual Betis that it was going to take one thing very particular to beat the Brazilian (who joined for a paltry €1 million mortgage charge), however Mbappé actually is that particular. OK, Madrid’s two-trophy haul (the UEFA Tremendous Cup and FIFA Intercontinental Cup) is a below-par efficiency given their expectations, however the actual fact that the Frenchman has scored extra occasions in his debut season for Los Blancos than anyone else of their total 123-year historical past signifies that he has been a superb signing.
It is usually, clearly, an itch scratched. He had slipped by their arms not less than thrice earlier than and his arrival this season has proven why membership president Florentino Pérez was so obsessive about levering him out of Paris Saint-Germain. No one has scored this many in LaLiga (31) since Messi left, Mbappé has 43 targets and 5 assists in all competitions since final August, he pipped Sporting CP‘s Viktor Gyökeres for Europe’s Golden Boot, scored in all 4 of Madrid’s finals this season (doubtlessly with the FIFA Membership World Cup last nonetheless to come back) and caught 5 previous Barcelona in 4 Clásicos.
Sure, it’s costly to have Mbappé on the books, however, bear in mind, he arrived with no switch charge. Good enterprise, nice participant, greatest signing.
Now comes Xabi Alonso as Actual Madrid’s subsequent supervisor. Will that be an ideal match? Virtually undoubtedly not. The coach needs tactical self-discipline, the striker needs freedom to do what he needs. Can they discover an lodging? That reply will decide whether or not Mbappé matches this season’s targets with extra trophy lifts subsequent time period.
Runners-up: Ayoze Pérez: (Villarreal), Antony (Actual Betis)
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What Aitana Bonmatí thinks makes Lamine Yamal particular
Aitana Bonmatí sits down with ESPN to debate fellow Barcelona star Lamine Yamal’s speedy stand up the ranks of the worldwide sport.
Most improved participant: Lamine Yamal, Barcelona
If this part have been titled, “Player whose performance stats have improved most dramatically,” then it must be Raphinha. A 12 months in the past, he was typically in tears when he went dwelling from coaching, doubting himself, and he discovered it exhausting to ascertain a future at Barcelona — not to mention be a captain in a league-winning Blaugrana group. However the reality is that the winner of this award as titled, by one other lengthy margin, is Yamal.
What has modified in Raphinha is his self-confidence and his understanding that coach Hansi Flick trusts him — plus he’s enjoying in a format that’s constructed to go well with him. Yamal has taken his sport, completely remolded it, and shot from being an attention-grabbing 16-year-old prospect to arguably the most effective, most enjoyable, most decisive, most astonishing footballer on the earth.
Generally the style check must suppress the stats check, and whereas the Brazilian has been stunningly good, decided and profitable this season, Yamal owns the soccer. He’s precocious, sure, however he’s clear-minded about what has modified.
Final season he advised me: “My biggest strength is thinking before I get the ball.” This season he advised me: “Apart from winning the Euros and scoring that goal against France changing me, it changes the opposition, too. Before I was like a child, but since winning Euro 2024, it’s true that all of the opponents treat me differently and see me as a big player and I’m not like a kid anymore. So, that changes me and gives me more belief.”
A 12 months in the past he felt like he was having enjoyable, considerably within the shadows. Now he’s within the full glare of the highlight, he can’t go wherever with out being mobbed (markers on the pitch, followers off it) and but he has soared. Greater, stronger, extra intelligent, vastly extra assured however extra impactful, more practical, and a participant who, when he’s absent, makes the sport much less value watching and, for his group, much less winnable. We’re within the presence of a phenomenon.
Runners Up: Raphinha (Barcelona), Oihan Sancet (Athletic Membership)
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Why Marcotti thinks Barcelona’s title is their most spectacular since Pep’s first
Gab Marcotti explains why Barcelona beating Actual Madrid to the LaLiga title is their most spectacular achievement in over a decade.
Which group earned an A: Barcelona
It’s Barça, in fact — even when Rayo Vallecano (European soccer subsequent season for under the second time of their historical past), Betis, Villarreal and Athletic Membership all have claims.
The massive factor in regards to the Blaugrana — maybe even above the mechanics of how shocking it has been that they will invent, apply and profit from such a controversial and harmful excessive line of defense that catches the unwary offside but additionally helps the press — is the enjoyment with which they play and the enjoyment, until you actually are fanatical about their closest rivals, that it brings watching them. What Pedri advised me a few weeks earlier than the top of the season means that he thinks his group deserves prime marks.
“The first time I played this new system, I looked back and thought to myself, ‘There’s a lot of space in behind,’” he stated. “But the high line helps compact the play in the middle and Barça’s playing style in every training session, in every rondo, in everything, is always played in small spaces, and so playing possession football in small spaces, where there’s less room, Barça, or Barça players, have always come out on top in that scenario.”
Some will decide that trophy success is a good-enough token to applaud the best way a group performs, however the thrills, the magic, the inconceivable comebacks from shedding scorelines (one thing Flick needs to eradicate), the wing play, the verve — Barcelona get an A for his or her work as a result of that is the soccer that can make children world wide need to decide up a soccer and easily play. Out within the backyard, out within the park, on the road, within the mud, on concrete — however play. They’ll attempt to emulate Pedri, Yamal, Raphinha, Gavi, Pau Cubarsí, and the game, globally, can be all the higher for that. Gràcies, Barcelona.
Runners-up: Athletic Membership, Actual Betis, Villarreal, Rayo Vallecano
Simply two years after profitable the Europa League, Sevilla completed a single level above LaLiga’s relegation zone in 2024-25. Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press by way of Getty Photos
Which group earned an F: Sevilla
This is among the only a few occasions Girona have been aggressive all season, but it surely’s Sevilla and albeit, it’s Sevilla by a ways. The Catalans didn’t do properly, however they earned hundreds of thousands from a Champions League marketing campaign that basically debilitated their LaLiga efficiency. Sevilla had no such distraction.
Their native soccer paper, Estadio Deportivo, summed it up: “Shameful statistics and ending up scrabbling away from the threat of relegation.” The ultimate league place of seventeenth, one above the relegation spots, seems to be unhealthy, but it surely really additionally appeared inept from final summer season onward.
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Individuals discuss “joined-up thinking” when companies plan, execute and achieve a harmonious motion. Against this, Sevilla director of soccer, Victor Orta, assembled a squad that may run and leap and bustle and barge … after which signed a coach, García Pimienta, who’s famend for coming from the Barcelona college and who likes positional play, technically beautiful soccer, clever, tactically vivid footballers who use the ball and their strategic actions in a fashion of which Pep Guardiola or Luís Enrique would approve. Signing this coach for these gamers was backward pondering, not joined-up. None of them knew what he was on about, not to mention have been capable of produce it.
Mirror, if you’ll, that it’s solely two years since Sevilla received a European trophy (beating Manchester United, Juventus and AS Roma en route) after which take into consideration the depressing, error-prone, goal-shy facet that almost went down this season. The tune you’ll be able to hear every week is “Junior, vete ya!” (“Junior, quit now!”) geared toward José Luís Del Nido Jr., the membership president who’s perpetually in a nasty, mud-slinging warfare together with his dad, the ex-president who’s probably the most profitable within the membership’s historical past.
The fanbase is trapped someplace between fury and apathy, the group’s an terrible watch, Sevilla’s monetary honest play handcuffs are brutal (as a result of they pay an excessive amount of in salaries and transfers in change for failure and embarrassment) so that they’ll want to maneuver on from gamers resembling Juanlu Sanchez, Loïc Badé and possibly even Dodi Lukebakio. This season’s change from Pimienta to Joaquín Caparrós means it’s 14 coaches prior to now 10 years.
Terrible. And all within the season when their best legend, Jesús Navas, stated an emotional goodbye endlessly by retiring midseason. They need to be ashamed of themselves. If there have been a decrease grade than F, that’s what they’d get.
Runners-up: Girona, Actual Valladolid
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Flick displays on Barcelona’s ‘unbelievable’ title parade
Hansi Flick speaks after Barcelona’s LaLiga title parade by town.
Supervisor of the season: Hansi Flick, Barcelona
That is the one the place there’s no competitors, however a plethora of explanations. Hans-Dieter “Hansi” Flick is the hands-down winner, and never just because he has received LaLiga in blistering fashion throughout his first season answerable for Barcelona — and, in doing so, changing into solely the second German (following Bernd Schuster) to win Spain’s prime division.
What makes him such a standout winner is each the human facet of his story and the theatrical, daring, virtually unbelievable fashion wherein the trophy has been secured. To cite the great music of South Pacific, “You got to have a dream!”
When Flick was merely operating a sports activities store, relatively than proving that he’s one of many world’s main soccer coaches, his retailer so typically received the race to promote probably the most Nike items that the corporate rewarded him with massive journeys round Europe. In March 2006, the prize was a go to to Camp Nou, the place he watched Barcelona defeat, coincidentally sufficient, Schuster’s Getafe.
“I said to myself right then, ‘One day I will coach here, I will coach this team,’” Flick stated.
Generally once you dream massive, you’ll be able to win massive. However the actually particular a part of this achievement is to reach at a troubled, debt-ridden, fractured membership, institute probably the most daring offside line that nearly anyone has ever seen and switch it right into a massively necessary weapon en path to profitable the title. Alongside the best way, Barcelona’s urgent has been magisterial, they’ve received three trophies, they participated in two or three of the all-time nice LaLiga, Spanish Supercup and Champions League matches.
Flick has additionally given new which means to the facility of La Masia, new significance to Barcelona’s world-renowned youth academy. There actually isn’t a single participant in his first-team squad who hasn’t improved in a technique or one other. Pedri says about him: “The side of him you don’t see from outside is that he always tries to help you when you’re playing badly, he chats to you, asks what’s wrong. He adopts this fatherly role and it’s great because when it’s time to train, he’s strict, and when it comes to talking, he’s calm.”
Don’t neglect, both, the best way wherein he took a bet on persuading goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny to come back out of retirement in order that he may then steer the Blaugrana dwelling to these three trophies. It’s storybook stuff that Hollywood scriptwriters would definitely reject for implausibility.
Runners-up: Manuel Pellegrini (Actual Betis), Carlos Corberán (Valencia)
