"I deserve it." Three words from Lamine Yamal, and the Ballon d'Or debate just got a lot louder. The Barcelona teenager — 19 years old, La Liga winner, World Cup winner — isn't hiding his ambitions, and frankly, he has the résumé to back the claim up.
Yamal told Movistar+ that he sees the race as a two-man contest between himself and Kylian Mbappé: "I honestly think that maybe there are two of us who are the best in the world. And I think I deserve it this year because of what I've won." It's not arrogance — it's an honest read of the calendar year. The problem is, the calendar doesn't agree.
Kane is the inconvenient frontrunner
Harry Kane scored 73 goals for club and country across the 2025-26 season. Seventy-three. He won the European Golden Boot, helped Bayern Munich to a domestic treble, and scored in both legs of a Champions League semifinal against eventual winners PSG. The Ballon d'Or rewards the best player over the previous season — not the most exciting player, not the youngest — and on pure output, Kane's case is close to unanswerable.
Yamal's year was genuinely impressive: 24 goals and 18 assists for Barcelona, a La Liga title, and a World Cup winner's medal with Spain. But reports suggest his role in the tournament was subdued, which matters when voters weigh up the full body of work. Barcelona's silverware haul — La Liga and the Spanish Supercopa — is solid but doesn't match Bayern's treble in scale.
Mbappé's position is the weakest of the three. The Real Madrid forward won the World Cup Golden Boot and became the tournament's all-time leading scorer — no small thing — but ended the year without club silverware. Team success carries weight in Ballon d'Or voting. Always has.
Barcelona backing their man, as you'd expect
Club vice-president Rafa Yuste came out swinging for Yamal, calling for "justice" to be done and praising the teenager's ability to inspire "young people around the world." Standard club-speak, but the underlying point isn't wrong — Yamal's ceiling may be higher than anyone currently in the running, and voters sometimes reward trajectory alongside achievement.
Still, the Ballon d'Or isn't voted on potential. If Kane's numbers hold up under scrutiny — and 73 goals in a single season is hard to scrutinise away — Yamal and Mbappé might be having a very public argument over who finishes second.
