​Sevilla’s Bounou beats Real Madrid’s Courtois to Zamora award

Yassine Bounou has won the Zamora Trophy ahead of Real Madrid and Belgium international Thibaut Courtois following the completion of the La Liga 2021-22 campaign.

The trophy is an award that goes to the goalkeeper who has the lowest goals-to-games ratio in the Spanish elite division.

To win the individual diadem, Bounou finished the campaign with 24 goals conceded in 31 Spanish elite division matches played, which is 0.77 goals per game.

La Liga winner Courtois occupied the second position courtesy of his coefficient of 0.81 in the just-concluded season.

With this, the Morocco international succeeds Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak who went home with the accolade in the 2020-21 league season.

Also, he is now the first Sevilla player to ever achieve this individual recognition since its inception.

The 31-year-old was recently voted by fans as the first winner of the newly introduced La Liga Santander Mid-Season African MVP Award, beating Samuel Chukwueze and compatriot Youssef En-Nesyri to the diadem.

Bounou’s commanding display in goal for Julen Lopetegui’s Los Nervionenses saw them finish in the fourth position in La Liga and will now feature in the 2022-23 Champions League campaign.

In a recent interview with GOAL, he said his primary objective is to win titles with Sevilla and not chase after individual honours.

“The most important thing is to continue to improve so that Sevilla can find its very best version of Bounou and I feel think by doing that, maybe I could win prizes,” he said.

“My main objective is to be the goalkeeper that Sevilla needs and winning [the Zamora trophy] is something extra.

“I am thinking about the team needs and not personal needs.

“One day when I was talking to [Thibaut] Courtois, he said to me that: ‘are you going to win the Zamora prize because you are in the running?’, then I said ‘I would rather win La Liga that the Zamora prize’ because it makes everyone feel so much better.

“Courtois is used to winning and winning the Zamora prize is nothing new to him, anyway I would prefer to win the league because someday people would say, ‘he was the champion of the league or the Europa League.

“People remember what the clubs have done and not personal awards.”

Bounou will be one of the Atlas Lions’ stars to watch out for when the 2022 Fifa World Cup gets underway in Qatar.