11 Players To Watch During the 2025-26 European Soccer Campaign

While a couple of less prominent leagues are already underway, the 2025-26 European club season really kicks off on Friday, when England’s Premier League, France’s Ligue 1 and Spain’s La Liga all begin the new campaign. In Italy, Serie A starts next week, as does the German Bundesliga. 

We’vew already given you our Top 20 clubs to watch this term. But what captures the imagination of fans who watch the world’s most popular sport is the players. Here are 11 fascinating characters to keep an eye on between now and next May. 

Jobe Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund)

The younger brother of Real Madrid’s English superstar Jude Bellingham, the 19-year-old midfielder helped Sunderland win promotion to the Premier League last season before following the career path of his more decorated sibling and moving to Germany. Jobe received a hero’s welcome upon his arrival at the 81,000-seat Westfalenstadion and has already been awarded the Black & Yellow’s revered No. 7 shirt. He debuted for Dortmund during the FIFA Club World Cup, then cemented himself as a starter during the preseason. Now he seems poised to help a BVB side that surprisingly reached the Champions League final two years ago challenge for its first Bundesliga title since 2012. 

Moises Caicedo (Chelsea)

Good as Cole Palmer was during Chelsea’s ultimately triumphant Club World Cup run, the Blues wouldn’t have won the title without Caicedo. Still just 23, the Ecuadoran has emerged as perhaps the best defensive midfielder in the world since leaving Brighton & Hove Albion for London two years ago this week — somehow exceeding the expectations that came with his $135 million price tag, the 10th-highest transfer fee of all time. 

Now Caicedo gets to take his ball-winning talents to the Champions League for the first time in his career, as Chelsea — which finished fourth in the Premier League last season — returns to Europe’s top club competition following a two-year hiatus. 

Ousmane Dembele (Paris Saint-Germain) 

If Lamine Yamal doesn’t win the Ballon d’Or, it probably goes to Dembélé, who made a strong case for the honor in leading PSG to its long-coveted first UEFA Champions League title. The 28-year-old Frenchman was close to unstoppable last season, scoring 35 goals in 53 games as the Parisians claimed a continental treble. (The 2018 World Cup winner scored just 40 times in his six full seasons with Barcelona.) Dembélé capped off 2024-25 by taking PSG to the Club World Cup final, scoring twice against Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals and adding an assist and another strike in the semis versus Real Madrid. And he’s off to a fast start to the new season, scoring in the shootout as PSG came back to beat Tottenham in Wednesday’s UEFA Super Cup final.

Desire Doue (Paris Saint-Germain)

When Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr. all left PSG within twelve months of each other in 2023 and ’24, it was easy to wonder who would emerge and become the new faces of the club. Enter the 20-year-old Doué, who burst onto the scene last season with a breakout, trophy-laden campaign — his first at the Parc des Princes.

Doué arrived in the French capital on a $58 million transfer from Rennes and immediately made his mark, scoring 16 times and quadrupling his previous career best of four goals. Two came in the 5-0 Champions League final drubbing of Inter Milan; he was named the best young player of that tourney, and of the Club World Cup six weeks later. What will Doué do for an encore in 2025-26?

Viktor Gyokeres (Arsenal)

For three years straight, the Gunners have been the Premier League runner-up. The main reason the North London club fell short? The lack of a lethal forward like Manchester City’s Erling Haaland or Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah to put the Gunners over the top. 

Gyökeres could be that missing piece. The 27-year-old Swede arrived this summer from Sporting Lisbon for $86 million and a resume that speaks for itself. He bagged 39 goals in 33 Primeira Liga matches in 2024-25 and finished his career in Portugal with 97 strikes in 102 total appearances. “He’s a proper No. 9,” Arsenal all-time top scorer Thierry Henry says of Gyökeres. “You have a guy that’s a killer in the box.

Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid)

On a personal level, Mbappé’s maiden season in the Spanish capital was a triumph. The 26-year-old French superstar won the European Golden Shoe as the continent’s top scorer, with 44 goals. He set a new record for goals for a first-year Real Madrid player. He was named the club’s MVP. 

But despite scoring in Madrid’s UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Intercontinental Cup wins, Europe’s most decorated club team lost the Spanish title to chief nemesis Barcelona and failed to reach the final of both the Champions League and Club World Cup — a disaster by Real’s lofty standards. 

The challenge for Mbappé and new coach Xabi Alonso this season will be to turn the forward’s individual brilliance into team success.

Cole Palmer (Chelsea)

A highly-rated prospect when he left mighty Manchester City for the Blues in the summer of 2023, nobody expected Palmer — who had made 19 previous Prem appearances without scoring — to explode for 22 goals in his first season in London. 

Last term, Palmer found the net just 15 times. 

But the English winger’s performance at the FIFA Club World Cup in June and July suggests he’s ready to take another massive leap forward in 2025-26. 

Palmer scored three times in six contests as Chelsea upset PSG to win the title. Two of those strikes came in the 3-0 win in the final, after which the 22-year-old received the Golden Ball as the tournament’s top player. That can’t hurt Palmer’s confidence as the 2025-26 slate kicks off.

Christian Pulisic (AC Milan)

After skipping the Concacaf Gold Cup, getting into a public war of words with U.S. men’s national team coach Mauricio Pochettino and facing intense criticism from several USMNT legends as the shorthanded Americans lost the final to rival Mexico without their best player, Pulisic has plenty to prove in 2025-26. 

That sitting out this summer was worth it, for starters. Pulisic set career highs for goals and assists and led Milan in scoring both in Serie A and in the Champions League last season. 

But the American won’t have to worry about the latter after the seven-time European champ finished eighth in Italy. That will allow the Rossoneri to prioritize winning the Scudetto for just the second time since 2011. It could also lead to another huge year for Pulisic, who insisted the break would help him and the U.S. heading into the 2026 World Cup. He’ll get to prove it beginning with Sunday’s Coppa Italia game against Bari.

Raphinha (Barcelona)

Mesmerizing as Lamine Yamal was from start to finish last season, the stats say he wasn’t even Barça’s best player. 

Raphinha had 34 goals to Yamal’s 18 across all competitions in 2024-25. And it’s not like Raphinha can’t create; the former Leeds United man also had 25 assists, same as the teenage sensation. 

Is this the new normal for the 28-year-old? Or was last season an outlier? The most goals Raphinha had scored in a single campaign previously was 18, when he was with Portuguese club Vitória Guimarães way back in 2017-18. He managed just 10 in each of his first two seasons at Barcelona, and 11 in his final one in the Premier League. 

Raphinha’s form almost put Barça in the Champions League final last May. If he builds on or even matches his breakout campaign, the Blaugrana could  claim their sixth European title next spring.

Florian Wirtz (Liverpool)

That the reigning English champions were willing to drop a club-record fee of more than $135 million to prise Wirtz away from Bayer Leverkusen this summer says how highly the Reds rate the German playmaker.

Wirtz, 22, led Leverkusen to its first and only Bundesliga title, in 2023-24. He’s already established himself with Germany’s national team, having made 31 appearances already for the four-time World Cup champs. 

Will he live up to expectations at Anfield? After winning their 20th English title last season, Liverpool is looking to repeat as champions for the first time since 1983-84. Adding Wirtz won’t hurt.

Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) 

He just turned 18 in July, but the electrifying Spaniard heads into the season before his first FIFA World Cup as a legitimate global superstar. Yamal might already be the planet’s best player; he’s on the shortlist of favorites to win the Ballon d’Or when the award is presented in Paris on Sept. 22. 

Yamal helped his country to the European title last summer, then led Barça to a domestic treble. This year, both his and the Catalan titans’ priority is to win the UEFA Champions League, which Barcelona hasn’t done in more than a decade.

Doug McIntyre is a soccer reporter for FOX Sports who has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him @ByDougMcIntyre.

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