\u201cWho do you vote for: the best player of the season or the one who wins the game on Thursday?\u201d<\/p>\n\nLamine Yamal<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Yamal, when asked about the competition with Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 for the Ballon d’Or, emphasized his preference for awarding the best player of the year, regardless of the match result. He highlighted his confidence in his team’s victory on Thursday, but reaffirmed his position to vote for the most outstanding player of the season.<\/p>\n\n\nThe winger, who scored 18 goals and provided 25 assists in 55 appearances during the season, where Bar\u00e7a secured a domestic treble, avoided revealing his vote. However, he praised Raphinha as the best forward in the Champions League.\n\nFurthermore, Yamal downplayed the Ballon d’Or as a primary goal, focusing on achieving success with Barcelona and Spain in the Champions League and the World Cup in 2026.\n\n\n \u201cIn the end, I don’t think about the Ballon d’Or or whether I’m going to win it, because I think you’ll do badly if you think you have to win the Ballon d’Or,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think about playing, about winning\u2026 and it will come. In the end, if I win the Champions League and the World Cup next year, it will come. It’s about enjoying it, and it will come when it has to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The match between Spain and France, which will be played in Stuttgart, is a rematch of last summer’s European Championship semi-final, where Yamal scored in Spain’s 2-1 victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n French midfielder Adrien Rabiot had questioned Yamal before that match, and the Barcelona winger used that criticism as motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo be honest, I’m not aware of everything that’s said about me, but a lot of information reaches me,\u201d he stated. \u201cI might not be looking at my phone, but a friend calls me and tells me this or that, so I find out through them. They send me a lot of TikTok stuff, good things; bad things sometimes from my two closest friends because they know it motivates me, more than anything before a match.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cThey send me things 20 minutes before a match to motivate me. They know I don’t get nervous before a match. For example, against France, I was sleeping on the bus, I woke up and my friend calls me and says: \u2018Remember what [Rabiot] said about you\u2019. I reply \u2018Yes, yes, of course I remember, don’t worry\u2019\u201d. \n\n\n \u201cThe match starts, they score, I look at the stands and my friend makes a gesture to say \u2018Remember\u2019. He gets me going and I enter that zone of not stopping running and all that. And that’s how he motivates me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pau Cubars\u00ed, Yamal’s teammate at the club and national team, also highlighted the danger that opposing players face if they provoke the young winger.<\/p>\n\n\n“He’s a magnificent player,” the defender stated.\n\n\n \u201cWhat he’s doing at 17 in the most difficult fields in Europe is incredible. It’s as if he were 30 years old. Lamine likes to shut people up. If you mess with him, all you do is make him more determined. And then he goes and resolves matches and qualifiers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lamine Yamal: The Duel with Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 as a Prelude to the Ballon d’Or Barcelona’s young star, Lamine Yamal, envisions the upcoming UEFA Nations League match between Spain and France as a potential early final for the Ballon d’Or, a personal duel with Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, if they so desire. Yamal, at just 17 years old, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2549,684,1426,3030],"class_list":{"0":"post-8950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ballon-dor","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-lamine-yamal","11":"tag-spain"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Lamine](\"https:\/\/a.espncdn.com\/combiner\/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2025%2F0324%2Fr1468490_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg\" "\\"\\"")