Just as the LaLiga title race is enthralling and extremely difficult to predict at this juncture with three teams equally vying for the top spot, the Spanish league’s Player of the Season race is entirely wide open with a handful of candidates all deserving of honors.
So let’s rank the top five candidates to win the LaLiga Player of the Season award after roughly 17 Matchdays played. Special shoutouts go to the Villarreal duo of Alex Baena and Ayoze Perez, as well as returning Real Betis playmaker Giovani Lo Celso as the best players not on Real Madrid or Barcelona to fail to make this very selective top five.
5. Real Madrid CM Jude Bellingham
Fellow Real Madrid midfielder Fede Valverde has also had an exceptional season and scored an even better goal in Real’s 3-3 draw with Rayo Vallecano over the weekend, but Jude Bellingham has to get the nod over his teammate for the top five.
Bellingham was the best player in LaLiga last season in his first campaign in Spanish football, and with the form he’s been in over the past several weeks, you wouldn’t put it past the England international to climb back up this list and win it again.
He’s the most talented all-around player in the league when it comes to adding up his creativity, goal threat, defensive involvement, leadership, positioning off the ball, and work rate on it.
Bellingham is thriving now that he’s back in the No. 10 role closer to goal instead of filling in as an auxiliary defender. He hadn’t scored a league goal until November, but since getting off the schneid, he’s now scored in each of his last six games with three assists during that timespan.
On top of all that, Bellingham is averaging 3.2 combined tackles and interceptions per game with just 0.4 dribbles completed allowed. He is performing better than an average striker, playmaker, No. 8, and No. 6 all rolled in one player.
4. Barcelona ST Robert Lewandowski
After calls for his possible transfer after a somewhat mediocre 2023/24 campaign in which Barcelona were a clear second to Real Madrid, Robert Lewandowski has flourished while reunited with Hansi Flick, who has turned Barca into the most dangerous attack in European football.
Lewandowski is the focal point in the middle who finishes off the moves, and it would be a shock if the Polish legend didn’t end the 2024/25 season with the most goals in the top flight.
He already has 16 in 17 games for a league-high average of 1.04 goals per 90. With the winger duo of Raphinha and Lamine Yamal cooking, Lewandowski’s all-around game hasn’t needed to be as robust, but he’s still pulling his weight in terms of his hold-up play.
3. Barcelona LW Raphinha
Raphinha has always been a quality player, hence why Barcelona signed him from Leeds over heavy interest from Premier League stalwarts Chelsea and Arsenal, but he’s never been quite this good.
Like Lewandowski, Raphinha was the subject of brief transfer whispers last season, but Flick stood by the Brazilian even as many fans wanted to push the 28-year-old out the door for young European Championship standout Nico Williams.
There’s a case to be made that Raphinha has been the best player in the league thus far with 11 goals and 6 assists, averaging a whopping 3.3 key passes per game as one of the finest playmakers in the league alongside fellow wingers Yamal and Baena of Villarreal.
2. Real Madrid LW Vinicius Junior
What helps Vinicius Junior is the fact that he is THE attacking player on Real Madrid whereas Barcelona have three great players almost equally splitting the impact in Lewandowski, Raphinha, and Yamal.
It’s obvious how much Vinicius Jr. means to Real Madrid when you watch the difference in how they play with him and without him. Rodrygo Goes is a great player, Jude helps a ton from midfield, and Kylian Mbappe hasn’t been as poor as the mainstream media will have you think.
But unmistakably, Vinicius Jr. is the star of the show with his ability to take defenders on, carry the ball consistently, provide more threat than anyone else in the league off the dribble, and finish off moves expertly as a scorer or provider.
Vinicius Jr. has 8 goals and 5 assists in just around 1,100 minutes of LaLiga action, and only Lewandowski averages more than Vini Jr.’s 1.07 goals and assists per 90 minutes in the league.
1. Barcelona RW Lamine Yamal
Debating between Vinicius Jr. and Lamine Yamal at the top spot will only becoming more difficult and a more heated subject over the next few years as Barca’s teenage sensation continues to blossom, but, right now, I have to give the edge to Yamal when looking at his overall impact.
As the results slip for Barcelona, that could potentially change if Flick can’t stop the bleeding after yet another awful loss this past weekend to Leganes, but that shouldn’t change the fact that Yamal is the league’s leader in assists with nine despite also having five goals to his name.
Yamal does it all for Barcelona. He is a well above-average finisher for his position (and age) and the best player in the league at finding the killer pass, providing service that is as measured and intelligently delivered as that of a 30-year-old playmaker.
He works tirelessly for Barcelona as the best one-on-one attacking threat, averaging a league-best 3.2 dribbles completed per game. Yamal is the real deal, and even among his acclaimed attacking teammates, he stands out.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.