Pau Cubarsí, 19, wins World Cup Best Young Player after Spain concedes just one goal all tournament

A record-breaking defensive campaign

Spain conceded a single goal across eight matches at the 2026 World Cup, the lowest total for any champion in the tournament's history. At the centre of that defensive record was 19-year-old Pau Cubarsí, who played all 750 minutes and kept seven clean sheets alongside mentor Aymeric Laporte. The Barcelona centre-back registered 29 recoveries and completed 96% of his passes. FIFA named him the tournament's Best Young Player, making him the third recipient of the award and the seventh youngest World Cup winner ever.

We are looking at a centre-back who can define an era. He has had a World Cup at an extraordinary level. We forget he is 19 and normalise something that is absolutely abnormal.

The foot that won a final

In the 120th minute of the final at MetLife Stadium, Argentina pushed for an equaliser. Giuliano Simeone drove a low cross into the six-yard box for Marco Senesi, who needed only to touch the ball into the net. Cubarsí stretched out a leg and deflected it behind for a corner, preserving Spain's lead and securing the title. The intervention capped a tournament in which he had already frustrated Cristiano Ronaldo in the group stage, kept Kylian Mbappé quiet in the knockout rounds, and helped Unai Simón set a new record of 650 minutes without conceding.

I have watched him grow in a very healthy way, with his feet on the ground, with humility and a lot of self-confidence. He has values that come from his family environment, very humble, very healthy, very simple people.

A village of 200 and a family carpentry

Cubarsí was born and raised in Estanyol, a hamlet in the province of Girona, Catalonia, with fewer than 200 inhabitants. The village has no football pitch, a fact he once joked about: "There are lots of fields, but no football field." His family runs Fusteria Cubarsí, a carpentry workshop founded by his great-grandfather in 1905 and now managed by his father Robert and his uncle. During summers, Cubarsí would help out in the shop. He joined Barcelona's La Masia academy at age 11, but for the first four or five years he continued living in Estanyol, commuting by taxi to training in Girona.

I would prefer my children to grow up in a village environment because I have been more of a village person, of a quiet life. I like the city because you have more things at hand, but I prefer the tranquillity of the village.

From La Masia to the world stage

Xavi Hernández handed Cubarsí his first-team debut while the defender was still a minor, a decision that now looks prescient. At the World Cup, Luis de la Fuente paired him with Laporte, and the duo conceded only once, a goal that did nothing to alter Spain's path to a second star. Rodri took the Golden Ball and Simón the Golden Glove, but Cubarsí's award for best young player underlined a generational arrival. Jordi Roura, the former Barcelona youth chief who originally signed him, said the speed of his rise was the only surprise: not that he reached this level, but that he did it so soon.