Lamine Yamal becomes the most valuable player ever

Valuations

Robin Bairner | Chief Editor

Barcelona attacker Lamine Yamal has become the most valuable footballer ever, with the Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) of the 19-year-old rising to €225.9 million in FootballTransfers’ October update.

Fuelled by a spectacular season for Barca and World Cup glory with Spain, Lamine has seen his value leap from €190.9m in July to achieve a height never hit by any player before.

In doing so, he becomes the first player worth more than Neymar’s €222m world-record move from the Blaugrana to PSG. Although the Parc des Princes side smashed the transfer record to achieve that signing, Neymar’s ETV at the time stood around €175m, further underlining the quality of the teenager.

Who are the most valuable players in the world?

Lamine is the only player currently with an ETV of over €200m, though Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise is closing in on the mark at €198.1m – a rise of €58.5m.

Meanwhile, the Spaniard’s Barcelona team-mate and fellow academy graduate Pau Cubarsi also enjoyed a stellar rise following his exploits for Spain this summer. The 19-year-old centre-back is now worth €186m, making him the most valuable defender in the world.

Erling Haaland (€159.3m) and Jude Bellingham (€139.5m) round out the top five.

Meanwhile, there are a record 29 players with an ETV that tops €100m, with Real Madrid the dominant club in this regard with five players. In addition to Bellingham, Los Blancos can also count on Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior, Federico Valverde and Arda Guler.

READ MORE: The most valuable players in the world revealed

Lamine Yamal’s unstoppable rise

Lamine Yamal’s rise has been irresistible since breaking into the Barcelona first team at the age of 15 in April 2023.

He has been a regular fixture in the Blaugrana starting XI since then, with his ETV rising to €55.5m in July 2024 at the end of his first season with the Catalans. By January 2025, his value had risen to over €100m and his rise has continued since then.

His form this season for Barcelona, meanwhile, has been devastating. Across his last six games for Hansi Flick’s side, he has been directly involved in 14 goals, underlining why he is considered to be one of the favourites for the Ballon d’Or.

Unsurprisingly, such talent has attracted attention from other clubs, with Barcelona president Joan Laporta revealing that PSG once made a €250m bid for the superstar.

Speaking in February, the Barca president said: “When PSG offered us €250 million for Lamine Yamal, and we rejected it, he was 17 years old; some people thought we were crazy.”

This prompted Barcelona to sign Lamine on a contract that runs until 2031, complete with a €1 billion release fee, effectively securing his future on a long-term basis.

What is ETV and how does it work?

The Player Valuation Model offers the largest, most up to date and accurate database of Estimated Transfer Values (ETV) in the industry.

In association with FootballTransfers, SciSports calculates with their Player Valuation Model the Estimated Transfer Values (ETV) for more than 240,000 professional football players in over 250 leagues. They do this by using a machine learning model that is trained on around 600,000 historical transfers to find patterns in the transfer fees paid for transfers in the past.

In combination with other influential attributes this results in authentic player valuations that are updated every month. Their model is built to best represent the intrinsic value of a player based on historic and futuristic on-pitch added value under free market circumstances.

The information that is considered includes player age, position, performance level, including current level, future projections and current playing time, player experience, league strength and contract situation.

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