This Monday (30), Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham won the 2023 Kopa Trophy.
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The award is given to the best young player under the age of 21, during the Ballon d’Or awards. Bellingham is 20 years old, becoming the first English player to win the trophy, since its inception in 2018. He also finished 18th for the Ballon d’Or award.
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The Kopa Trophy is awarded for his performance last season, when he was playing for Borussia Dortmund and helped the team finish second in the Bundesliga. He also starred for England at the World Cup in Qatar.
The midfielder moved from Dortmund to Real Madrid in June, after a record deal for a British player. Real paid an initial £88.5m, with the transfer fee potentially rising to £115m. In Saturday’s (28) El Clasico win at Barcelona, Bellingham scored twice, to give him a record of goals per game in his first 13 matches.
Bellingham beat Bayern Munich forward and former England youth team-mate Jamal Musiala into second place and Barcelona midfielder Pedri González into third. The British player is the fifth winner of the Kopa Trophy, with Kylian Mbappe (2018), Matthijs de Ligt (2019), Pedri (2021) and Gavi (2022), the previous winners of the award.