Golden Boy 2024: Lamine Yamal smashes another record and sweeps the votes

Since his debut in April 2023, Lamine Yamal has not stopped surprising the world of football, establishing himself as the benchmark in the forward line for Barça and the Spanish national team, winning a European Championship, the Kopa trophy and, in his first nomination for the Ballon d'Or, being among the 10 finalists.

Now, the Italian newspaper Tuttosport has awarded him the 2024 Golden Boy trophy, crowning the Barça player as the best footballer under 21 years of age in the European leagues. The results were announced in a streaming broadcast that took place in Turin and the trophy will be presented to the FC Barcelona player on December 16. In a video that was shown during the gala, Lamine thanked him for the award.

"It's a dream to win this trophy. I'm very happy and grateful to Tuttosport, the jury and, above all, to my teammates and coaches from both Barça and Spain."

Lamine Yamal made history by setting a double record, being the youngest Golden Boy of all time and also achieving the highest number of votes. There has never been a winner of the award as young as Lamine, who was crowned at 17 years and 4 months.

In addition, the Barça striker swept the votes, achieving the highest percentage in history with 97.6%, coincidentally the same with which Mbappé won. However, the French player did so in an edition with only 30 voters. As revealed by Tuttosport, the international jury made up of 50 journalists gave Lamine Yamal a total of 488 votes out of a possible 500, beating Jude Bellingham by 3 who won in 2023.

Lamine Yamal has no competition

His impact on world football has been so spectacular that he is already being compared to Lionel Messi himself, winner of the Golden Boy in 2005. In the race to win the award, Lamine was the great and only favourite from the start.

Not even other young stars such as Alejandro Garnacho, Pau Cubarsí, Leny Yoro, Omorodion, Warren Zaire-Emery, Arda Güler, Endrick or Joao Neves could compete with the Mataró striker, who in 2023 was already awarded the Youngest Boy award by Tuttosport.

In addition, by winning this award, he extends Barcelona's dominance of the Golden Boy. Lamine Yamal is the third FC Barcelona player to win it in the last four years. Pedri González won it in 2021 and Gavi in ​​2022.