The Spanish sun has set on another season in LaLiga . The 2024-25 campaign kicked off with headline after headline about Kylian Mbappé ‘s long-awaited move to Real Madrid , but it will be remembered by the tantalizing title triumph of Barcelona .
With the season now consigned to the history books, it’s time to look back and dole out some silverware of our own. ESPN’s Graham Hunter anoints the player of the season, the manager of the season, the signing of the season, and much more.
Player of the season: Lamine Yamal , Barcelona There’s a healthy queue, but 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 . Nobody says that about anyone else in LaLiga, but when you see someone shaking their head in amazement, then using that expression, you immediately know they’re talking about the 17-year-old Yamal.
Jostling in this hypothetical queue are standout footballers such as Robert Lewandowski (brilliant goal stats), Mbappé (the highest scorer Real Madrid have ever had in a debut season), Isco (a little magician), Pedri (fit again, fabulous and fearless), Raphinha (captaincy sitting lightly on his previously stooped shoulders while he registers the best numbers of his life). But this season has been jaw-droppingly impressive, and fun, from Barcelona’s thrilling young prodigy.
If you’ve been watching, I don’t need to convince you. If, for some unimaginable reason, you haven’t, then let me make the case briefly. Yes, scoring nine times and adding 15 assists at this age is astonishing, while winning your third, fourth and fifth senior career trophies in a stellar season burnishes your résumé. But there are far greater reasons for naming him LaLiga’s best player.
First, he always shows up. Without exception. We saw that for Spain last summer, and in their UEFA Nations League playoff against Netherlands . He proved it, too, in the UEFA Champions League , but when you consider what Yamal did against Real Madrid in the two Liga Clásicos — in fact, he scored three and added two assists in four Clásicos this season across LaLiga, the Spanish Supercopa and Copa del Rey — how he hurt Atlético Madrid , reserving his best for the only two clubs who could compete with Barça for the league title, it’s another feather in his cap.
Statistics aside, what’s utterly glorious about this sublime talent is that he produces beauty. The perpetual “give me the ball and I’ll produce magic” that he exudes is matched by delivery: a shuffle, a twist, a fake to one side, a bewitching dribble, a ball curled in behind the defense off the outside of his left boot, his geometrical vision and precision, his “this is what I do, folks” face when he produces killer moments … we are in the presence of greatness.
Ending the season, as champion, he has a total of 72 goals and assists for club and country and doesn’t turn 18 until July. At the equivalent ages, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi had a total of 10 goals and assists for their clubs (between them, not each), and neither had made their international debut. Yamal is shaping up to be in the category reserved for transcendent greats such as Tiger Woods , Michael Jordan and Simone Biles .
Don’t miss a minute; when he plays, we watch and give praise.
Runners-up: Isco (Real Betis ), Pedri (Barcelona)
Goal of the season: Lamine Yamal, Barcelona There’s a top three, and while you’re reading this I’m sure that there are already arguments, and perhaps even physical dust-ups, breaking out as everybody argues for their personal favorite. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My choices are: Antony taking the bronze, silver going to Giovani Lo Celso , and Yamal taking home gold. But which ones? There’s the dilemma.
What’s remarkable is that all three goals came at the same end of the RCDE stadium in Barcelona and, in the case of Antony and Lo Celso, both came in the same match : away to Espanyol earlier this month when Los Verdiblancos were losing with five minutes remaining. The Argentine strolled through half the Espanyol team and scored with the same majesty as Messi might have. Antony cut in from the right and buried a left-footed shot into the far top left corner that had Isco holding his hands to his head in disbelief.
But it’s Yamal, again, and deservedly, who wins gold here.
Was it his right-footed top-corner debut goal in a Clásico while beating Madrid 4-0 at the Bernabéu in October? No.
How about his first-time zinger across Thibaut Courtois in the second Liga Clásico that Barcelona won 4-3 to put half a pace across the title winning line? No.
Surely, then, the stunner he scored on the penultimate day in losing 3-2 to Villarreal ? No.
It’s the goal that won the title . Away at Barcelona’s hated city rivals, the home team competent, tight in their physical pressing and defending, the title on the line and Yamal, consistently double- or triple-marked while having a fairly quiet night — at least by his standards. Seven minutes after halftime comes the best LaLiga goal of the season.
Yamal (like Messi used to do) starts the move. A little lob of the ball into a space where Dani Olmo is arriving. Yamal (like Xavi used to preach) doesn’t pass and move, he passes and stands still. Olmo plays keepy-uppy with the ball, twice, and draws two players toward him. Yamal is in space, gets the ball back and rips inside from right-to-left but he’s a full 25 yards away from Joan García ‘s goalmouth when he unleashes a ferocious, heat-seeking, left-footed drive across the keeper and into the top corner at supersonic speed. Gorgeous. Momentous. Lamine Yamal.
Runners-up: Giovani Lo Celso (Real Betis), Antony (Real Betis)
Here is where, finally, there is not only competition for Yamal, but a different category 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 nearly enough starts in the Atlético XI (only 15 of them) to keep this driven, ambitious striker happy. Nevertheless, a litmus test of his talent would be his goals-per-game ratio. Look at it, it shines: a goal every 79 minutes in LaLiga (20 in 1,561, the majority off the bench, including that final day hat trick at Girona ).
But one match in particular boosted those stats. Really, it was an occasion when Los Colchoneros might have been caught out. May 10 and the visitors, Real Sociedad , had recently gone to Real Madrid and scored four times. World Cup winner Julián Álvarez (who Sørloth outscored despite the Argentine starting double the amount of league matches) was out suspended. Coach Diego Simeone doesn’t trust the two of them as a partnership so, Álvarez being absent, Sørloth has his chance to start as sole striker.
The Jack Reacher lookalike hit a 3-minute, 57-second hat trick and added his fourth before half an hour had been played. Beyond the records (LaLiga’s earliest and quickest hat trick) the quality of his quartet was exceptional. Strikes of huge power, precision and, including another beauty that cannoned off the crossbar, he played as if he felt invincible. It was brilliant to watch, and it easily wins him this award.
Runners-up: Isco (Real Betis 2-1 Sevilla ), Fermín López (Barcelona 7-1 Valencia )
Rookie of the season: Joan García, Espanyol To be eligible as a “rookie” for these awards, a player has to be 23 or under and have completed his first season in LaLiga with at least 1,500 minutes.
Real Betis’ Jesús Rodriguez is such a Rolls-Royce footballer — his impact is enhanced by the fact that he’s a locally born, academy-trained 19-year-old — that the winger might have won this category but for the fact that he didn’t quite reach 1,500 LaLiga minutes (although across all three competitions he did). So the prize goes to the guy who conceded all three candidates for LaLiga Goal of the Season. Step forward, and then dive sharply to your right, Joan García of Espanyol.
Even he sneaks through ESPN’s stringent criteria only because he was 23 for 95% of the season and this, categorically, was his breakthrough season despite having made a couple of Liga appearances as a youngster. By Jornada 38, he’d produced a whopping 145 saves, but he still managed to be in LaLiga’s top nine goalkeepers ranked on efficiency (goals conceded by games played) which is pretty remarkable. He won Save of the Month consecutively, which is unheard of, clubs are queuing up to pay his buyout clause and, bluntly, if he wasn’t this good, Espanyol would have been relegated by early spring.
About his relationship with his coach, Manolo Jiménez, while emerging in the past calendar year, 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 well, but he and Espanyol reaped big benefits. Not that they’ll be able to keep García for next season, mind you. Bigger wages and challenges beckon.
Runners-up: Raúl Asencio (Real Madrid), Jesús Rodríguez (Real Betis)
Signing of the season: Kylian Mbappé, Real Madrid So completely transformational has been the arrival of Antony at Real Betis that it was going to take something very special to beat the Brazilian (who joined for a paltry €1 million loan fee), but Mbappé really is that special. OK, Madrid’s two-trophy haul (the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Intercontinental Cup ) is a below-par performance given their expectations, but the very fact that the Frenchman has scored more times in his debut season for Los Blancos than anybody else in their entire 123-year history signifies that he has been a brilliant signing.
It is also, obviously, an itch scratched. He had slipped through their hands at least three times before and his arrival this season has shown why club president Florentino Pérez was so obsessed with levering him out of Paris Saint-Germain . Nobody has scored this many in LaLiga (31) since Messi left, Mbappé has 43 goals and five assists in all competitions since last August, he pipped Sporting CP ‘s Viktor Gyökeres for Europe’s Golden Boot, scored in all four of Madrid’s finals this season (potentially with the FIFA Club World Cup final still to come) and stuck five past Barcelona in four Clásicos .
Yes, it’s expensive to have Mbappé on the books, but, remember, he arrived without a transfer fee. Good business, great player, best signing.
Now comes Xabi Alonso as Real Madrid’s next manager. Will that be a perfect match? Almost definitely not. The coach wants tactical discipline, the striker wants freedom to do what he wants. Can they find an accommodation? That answer will determine whether Mbappé matches this season’s goals with more trophy lifts next term.
Runners-up: Ayoze Pérez : (Villarreal), Antony (Real Betis)
Most improved player: Lamine Yamal, Barcelona If this section were titled, “Player whose performance stats have improved most dramatically,” then it would have to be Raphinha. A year ago, he was sometimes in tears when he went home from training, doubting himself, and he found it hard to envision a future at Barcelona — let alone be a captain in a league-winning Blaugrana team. But the truth is that the winner of this award as titled, by another long margin, is Yamal.
What has changed in Raphinha is his self-confidence and his understanding that coach Hansi Flick trusts him — plus he’s playing in a format that is built to suit him. Yamal has taken his game, utterly remolded it, and shot from being an interesting 16-year-old prospect to arguably the best, most exciting, most decisive, most astonishing footballer in the world.
Sometimes the taste test needs to suppress the stats test, and while the Brazilian has been stunningly good, determined and successful this season, Yamal owns the football. He’s precocious, yes, but he’s clear-minded about what has changed.
Last season he told me: “My biggest strength is thinking before I get the ball.” This season he told 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 year ago he felt like he was having fun, somewhat in the shadows. Now he’s in the full glare of the spotlight, he can’t go anywhere without being mobbed (markers on the pitch, fans off it) and yet he has soared. Bigger, stronger, more clever, vastly more confident but more impactful, more effective, and a player who, when he’s absent, makes the game less worth watching and, for his team, less winnable. We are in the presence of a phenomenon.
Runners Up: Raphinha (Barcelona), Oihan Sancet (Athletic Club )
Which team earned an A: Barcelona It’s Barça, of course — even if Rayo Vallecano (European football next season for only the second time in their history), Betis, Villarreal and Athletic Club all have claims.
The big thing about the Blaugrana — perhaps even above the mechanics of how surprising it has been that they can invent, apply and benefit from such a controversial and dangerous high defensive line that catches the unwary offside but also helps the press — is the joy with which they play and the joy, unless you really are fanatical about their closest rivals, that it brings watching them. What Pedri told me a couple of weeks before the end of the season suggests that he thinks his team merits top 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 said. “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 judge that trophy success is a good-enough token to applaud the way a team plays, but the thrills, the magic, the improbable comebacks from losing scorelines (something Flick wants to eradicate ), the wing play, the verve — Barcelona get an A for their work because this is the football that will make kids around the world want to pick up a football and simply play. Out in the garden, out in the park, on the street, in the mud, on concrete — but play. They’ll try to emulate Pedri, Yamal, Raphinha, Gavi , Pau Cubarsí , and the sport, globally, will be all the better for that. Gràcies , Barcelona.
Runners-up: Athletic Club, Real Betis, Villarreal, Rayo Vallecano
Which team earned an F: Sevilla This is one of the very few times Girona have been competitive all season, but it’s Sevilla and frankly, it’s Sevilla by some distance. The Catalans didn’t do well, but they earned millions from a Champions League campaign that really debilitated their LaLiga performance. Sevilla had no such distraction.
Their local football paper, Estadio Deportivo, summed it up: “Shameful statistics and ending up scrabbling away from the threat of relegation.” The final league position of 17th, one above the relegation spots, looks bad, but it actually also looked inept from last summer onward.
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People talk about “joined-up thinking” when businesses plan, execute and succeed in a harmonious movement. By contrast, Sevilla director of football, Victor Orta, assembled a squad that can run and jump and bustle and barge … and then signed a coach, García Pimienta, who’s renowned for coming from the Barcelona school and who likes positional play, technically exquisite football, intelligent, tactically bright footballers who use the ball and their strategic movements in a manner of which Pep Guardiola or Luís Enrique would approve. Signing this coach for those players was backward thinking, not joined-up. None of them knew what he was on about, let alone were able to produce it.
Reflect, if you will, that it’s only two years since Sevilla won a European trophy (beating Manchester United , Juventus and AS Roma en route) and then think about the miserable, error-prone, goal-shy side that nearly went down this season. The song you can hear each week is “Junior, vete ya! ” (“Junior, quit now!”) aimed at José Luís Del Nido Jr., the club president who’s perpetually in a nasty, mud-slinging war with his dad, the ex-president who is the most successful in the club’s history.
The fanbase is trapped somewhere between fury and apathy, the team’s an awful watch, Sevilla’s financial fair play handcuffs are brutal (because they pay too much in salaries and transfers in exchange for failure and embarrassment) so they’ll need to move on from players such as Juanlu Sanchez , Loïc Badé and maybe even Dodi Lukebakio . This season’s change from Pimienta to Joaquín Caparrós means it’s 14 coaches in the past 10 years.
Awful. And all in the season when their greatest legend, Jesús Navas , said an emotional goodbye forever by retiring midseason . They should be ashamed of themselves. If there were a lower grade than F, that’s what they’d get.
Runners-up: Girona, Real Valladolid
Manager of the season: Hansi Flick, Barcelona This is the one where there’s no competition, but a plethora of explanations. Hans-Dieter “Hansi” Flick is the hands-down winner, and not simply because he has won LaLiga in blistering style during his first season in charge of Barcelona — and, in doing so, becoming only the second German (following Bernd Schuster) to win Spain’s top division.
What makes him such a standout winner is both the human side of his story and the theatrical, daring, almost unbelievable style in which the trophy has been secured. To quote the wonderful music of South Pacific, “You got to have a dream!”
When Flick was merely running a sports shop, rather than proving that he’s one of the world’s leading football coaches, his store so often won the race to sell the most Nike goods that the company rewarded him with big trips around Europe. In March 2006, the prize was a visit to Camp Nou, where he watched Barcelona defeat, coincidentally enough, Schuster’s Getafe .
“I said to myself right then, ‘One day I will coach here, I will coach this team,'” Flick said.
Sometimes when you dream big, you can win big. But the truly special part of this achievement is to arrive at a troubled, debt-ridden, fractured club, institute the most daring offside line that almost anybody has ever seen and turn it into a hugely important weapon en route to winning the title. Along the way, Barcelona’s pressing has been magisterial, they’ve won three trophies, they participated in two or three of the all-time great LaLiga, Spanish Supercup and Champions League matches.
Flick has also given new meaning to the power of La Masia, new importance to Barcelona’s world-renowned youth academy. There really isn’t a single player in his first-team squad who hasn’t improved in one way or another. 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 forget, either, the way in which he took a gamble on persuading goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny to come out of retirement so that he could then steer the Blaugrana home to those three trophies . It’s storybook stuff that Hollywood scriptwriters would certainly reject for implausibility.
Runners-up: Manuel Pellegrini (Real Betis), Carlos Corberán (Valencia)
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