Pau Cubarsi is still the man to beat. The Barcelona centre-back has held on to top spot in the latest update of the Golden Boy 2026 shortlist, the award handed out by Italian newspaper Tuttosport to the best under-21 footballer in European football — and he is not the only Blaugrana making the running.
Four Barcelona players now sit inside the top 50 of the 100-man list, as reported by Mundo Deportivo. Cubarsi leads it, Lamine Yamal is second, Marc Bernal is 20th, and Xavi Espart has entered the rankings for the first time at 50.
Why Cubarsi leads the Golden Boy 2026 race
The 19-year-old has spent the summer and the opening weeks of the season doing exactly what a defender has to do to win an award that usually goes to a forward: be undeniable. Cubarsi was named the best young player at the 2026 World Cup, and he has carried that level straight into the new campaign under Hansi Flick, anchoring a back line that has looked commanding from the first whistle of the season.
He has been the favourite for the Golden Boy since August, and this update only widens the gap. Should he see it through, Cubarsi would become the fifth Barcelona player to win the prize, after Lionel Messi in 2005, Pedri in 2021, Gavi in 2022 and Lamine Yamal in 2024. Cesc Fabregas (2006), Sergio Aguero (2007) and Joao Felix (2019) also won it, though all three collected the trophy before they ever pulled on a Barca shirt.
Yamal, meanwhile, is second in the ranking but cannot win it. Previous winners are ineligible, so his place on the list is a measure of standing rather than a live candidacy — his own award conversation this autumn is happening several rungs higher up.
Xavi Espart crashes the party
The genuinely new name is Espart. The 19-year-old only stepped up to the first team this summer, convinced Flick in pre-season and then started Barcelona’s opening four La Liga fixtures — several of them at left-back, a position he had barely played before. He also won the U19 Euros with Spain over the summer. A month ago he was a promising La Masia full-back; now he is on Tuttosport‘s radar.
His 50th place is the reward for that rise, and it fits a pattern at the club. The full-back Flick has compared to Philipp Lahm is the latest academy graduate to force his way into a senior conversation before anyone had planned for it.
Bernal’s 20th place is worth pausing on too. The midfielder lost the best part of a year to injury and has come back into a squad where minutes in the middle are fiercely contested, yet he remains one of the highest-rated teenagers in Europe.
Who else is in the mix
Outside the Barcelona contingent, the biggest mover is Ayyoub Bouaddi. The 18-year-old Moroccan midfielder, a recent Manchester City signing, has climbed onto the podium in third, pushing Real Madrid’s 19-year-old forward Yan Diomande down to fifth. PSG’s Warren Zaire-Emery, 20, holds fourth.
There is a second prize in play as well. Tuttosport also runs the Golden Boy Web award, decided by public vote, and Espart is among the candidates there, as Mundo Deportivo notes. Jude Bellingham, Kenan Yildiz and Mouzakitis are the three most recent winners of that one; Ansu Fati took it in 2020 and Karim Adeyemi — now a Barcelona player — in 2021.
The main award, the Golden Boy Best Absolut, has gone to a Barcelona player in three of the last five editions, with Desire Doue the most recent winner. On current form, the list says the trophy is Cubarsi’s to lose.
