Three winners and three losers for Barcelona from the 2026 FIFA World Cup

Three winners and three losers for Barcelona from the 2026 FIFA World Cup Sixteen Barcelona players crossed the Atlantic with different expectations and so many dreams. Eight are now set to return as world champions. However, beneath all those medals, the 2026 FIFA World Cup altered reputations, saw some stocks rise, some fall and left several Blaugrana stars wondering what might have been. There are goals that win matches, goals that define tournaments and, every once in a while, goals that rewrite the way an entire career will be remembered. Ferran Torres now has one of those . A substitute on the biggest night of his life, the forward became the man who returned Spain to the summit of world football and added the second star to their jersey. It was a fitting conclusion to a World Cup with a distinct Barça flavour . Here are Barcelona’s three biggest winners and three players who leave the World Cup with considerably less than they hoped for. Winner: Ferran Torres Spain’s hero. (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images) For much of his Barcelona career, Ferran Torres has lived in football’s grey areas. Winger or centre-forward? Starter or substitute? Important, certainly, but indispensable? Not always. Those debates will continue when club football returns. Ferran is even linked with a move to French giants PSG at the moment. However, some moments sit above such conversations. Ferran entered the World Cup final from the bench and, in the second period of extra time, provided the breakthrough Spain spent two hours waiting for. Argentina had frustrated La Roja , survived wave after wave of pressure and forced the match into its most anxious stage. Then Ferran arrived to have his Iniesta moment. The finish made Spain world champions for the second time. It also made Ferran immortal. Regardless of whether he stays at Barça, moves to PSG or whatever else happens in his career going forward, he has etched his name in history with one swing of his left foot. For Ferran, that is the ultimate victory. Loser: Ronald Araujo Two World Cups, zero appearances. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images) There is no pleasure in placing Ronald Araujo on this side of the list. His World Cup was not lost through a mistake, a bad performance or a tactical demotion. His body let him down. Araujo suffered a muscle tear in training before Uruguay’s opening match and did not feature as Marcelo Bielsa’s team exited in the group stage. Four years earlier, he had travelled to Qatar while recovering from injury and did not play there either. Two World Cups have now passed without one of Uruguay’s finest defenders stepping onto the pitch. At his best, Araujo possesses qualities almost no centre-back can replicate: recovery speed, physical dominance, aggression and the capacity to survive in vast spaces. He has always been important for the national team irrespective of his club form, but his availability has always been a question mark. While Cubarsi leaves North America with the Best Young Player award and a starting role in a world-champion defence, Araujo leaves without a minute played. At a time when his club career seems to be going nowhere, this does not make for good reading from the defender’s perspective. Winner: Pau Cubarsi The Best Young Player of the tournament. (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images) Pau Cubarsi went to the World Cup as one of the finest young defenders in football. He returns as one of the finest defenders in the sport. That may be his greatest achievement of all. Cubarsi started the final alongside Aymeric Laporte at the heart of a Spain defence that conceded just once throughout the tournament. By the end of Sunday night, he had a World Cup medal and FIFA’s Best Young Player award to accompany it. There is little theatre to Cubarsi’s football. There is no need for a desperate recovery tackle when he has already read the danger. There is no constant desire to make defending look dramatic. The teenager had a stupendous World Cup both with and without the ball. It was a World Cup full of 29-year-old performances from the 19-year-old starlet. Against Argentina, while Lionel Messi attempted to find the spaces from which he had tormented opponents for an entire generation, Cubarsi was right next to him to stop him from doing that. The Spaniard had a World Cup to remember, made everyone sit up and take notice , and returns to Barcelona with his reputation enhanced manifold. Loser: Raphinha Plagued by injuries again. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images) Raphinha’s tournament disappeared more quietly. He started Brazil’s opening draw against Morocco and began their second group match against Haiti before injury struck after around 40 minutes. By the end of the group stage, he had accumulated only 130 minutes and was out with a hamstring injury. Eventually, he recovered, but not in time. Raphinha’s disappointment is about opportunity. World Cups come once every four years, and this was supposed to be a tournament played in the heart of his prime. A stage on which one of Barcelona’s senior attacking figures could carry his club form into Brazil colours and add another layer to his career. Injuries did not allow him to enjoy that arc. Winner: Lamine Yamal At the top of the world at 19. (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images) Perhaps the strangest measure of Lamine Yamal’s greatness is that he can become a world champion at 19 and leave behind the feeling that there is still another level to come. His tournament did not begin in the best possible fashion. Lamine arrived after an April hamstring injury and was initially managed carefully, coming from the bench in Spain’s opening draw against Cape Verde. On his first start, against Saudi Arabia, he needed only 10 minutes to score and help transform a Spanish attack that had looked pedestrian without him. Later, he was named player of the match in the 3-0 knockout victory over Austria without even registering a goal or assist. Yet Lamine did not need to defeat Messi single-handedly for the tournament to belong on his rapidly expanding list of achievements. The final itself was subdued, for him and almost everyone else, before Spain’s substitutes changed its course. However, he stayed part of the structure that carried La Roja all the way. European champion as a teenager. World champion at 19. Football usually asks young players to wait their turn. Lamine has turned that into a joke. Loser: Gavi A peripheral role for Gavi with Spain. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images) Calling a 21-year-old world champion a loser should come with an obvious disclaimer. Gavi has just won football’s greatest prize. Nothing about that should be diminished. However, individual tournaments can contain uncomfortable truths even beneath gold medals. Gavi started Spain’s opening match against Cape Verde and played 71 minutes, but dropped out of the XI when Alex Baena returned against Saudi Arabia. He later appeared from the bench against Austria, yet when Spain reached the final, Luis de la Fuente’s preferred starting midfield consisted of Rodri, Fabian Ruiz and Dani Olmo. For a player whose rise once felt unstoppable, he has now moved to the periphery. It is a shame that his 2026 World Cup will be remembered for that one poor performance against Cape Verde. He is still young enough and talented enough to turn it around, and the Barcelona midfielder will be keen to have a more prominent role for Spain in tournaments going forward. Spain’s medal will hang around his neck forever, but a competitor like Gavi would have wanted to earn it more than he did.