Rodri and Spain dominate the 2026 World Cup awards, Mbappe takes the Golden Boot
Rodri won the Golden Ball, Unai Simon the Golden Glove and Pau Cubarsi the Young Player award as Spain swept the individual honours. Kylian Mbappe was the exception, holding off Lionel Messi for a second straight Golden Boot.
Jul 20, 2026
Spain went to the 2026 World Cup as one of the favourites and left with almost everything worth taking. The trophy was the big one, sealed by Ferran Torres in extra time against Argentina, but the individual prizes told the same story. Three of the four headline awards went to Spanish players, and the one that got away was claimed by a Frenchman whose team did not even reach the final.
Rodri takes the Golden Ball
The Golden Ball, given to the tournament’s best player, went to Rodri. That will surprise nobody who watched Spain control game after game from the base of midfield. He is not a player who fills highlight reels, and that is rather the point. Spain conceded once in seven matches on the way to the final, and Rodri was the metronome who made that possible, breaking up play and starting attacks with a calm that never seemed to waver.
It is a fitting bookend to a couple of years in which Rodri has quietly become the most important footballer on the continent. He does the unglamorous work, and the people who hand out awards have finally caught up with what coaches have known for a while.
Mbappe salvages the Golden Boot
If there was a consolation for the beaten sides, it went to Kylian Mbappe. The France captain finished as the tournament’s top scorer with 10 goals, enough for the Golden Boot even though France fell in the semi-finals and then lost the third-place play-off. Ten goals in a single World Cup is a haul that would have won the award in almost any edition, and Mbappe carried a France side that flattered and frustrated in roughly equal measure.
The race went to the final weekend. Mbappe and Messi were level on eight goals with two matches left, and it was the third-place play-off that settled it. Mbappe scored twice as France lost a wild game 6-4 to England, dragging his tally to 10 and leaving Messi needing a hat-trick in the final to catch him. Argentina lost 1-0 and Messi was kept off the scoresheet, so the Boot stayed in French hands. It also made Mbappe the first player to win the award at two World Cups in a row, after his goals carried France in 2022.
Spain lock down the other two
The Golden Glove went to Unai Simon, and the case for it is written in Spain’s defensive record. A goalkeeper can only win that award behind a good defence, and Spain gave him one, but Simon made the saves that mattered when the run to the title threatened to come undone. He kept clean sheet after clean sheet in the knockout rounds.
The Young Player award, meanwhile, stayed in the Spain camp too, going to Pau Cubarsi. Still only 19, the centre-back played every one of Spain’s matches and defended like someone a decade older, and for a defence that conceded as little as Spain’s did, that says plenty. A tournament that was supposed to belong to the established names instead handed one of its prizes to a kid who is only getting started.
A campaign built on not conceding
Pull back from the individual names and Spain’s win looks like a triumph of the collective, which is how Luis de la Fuente framed it afterwards. At 65 he became the oldest manager to win the World Cup, two years on from delivering Euro 2024, and he did it with the meanest defence any champion has taken through the tournament, conceding just once in the entire campaign, the fewest a World Cup winner has ever let in.
That defensive spine stretched Spain’s unbeaten run to 38 matches, a sequence no European or South American side has ever matched. It was not always thrilling to watch. It was ruthlessly effective, and it left Spain holding the trophy and most of the medals that go with it.