Matias Palacios stepped up at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental on Monday evening to collect his Golden Ball, and the result had stopped being a mystery a week earlier. The UAE Pro League published its final shortlist on 4 August with three names on it: Palacios, Kodjo Laba and Soufian Rahimi. All three play for Al Ain. The league's biggest individual award was settled before a single envelope reached the stage of the annual awards ceremony.

What followed turned the 2025-26 season gala into something closer to an Al Ain club function. Khalid Eissa took the Golden Glove for best goalkeeper. Vladimir Ivic won the Leader Award for best coach. Abdulkarim Trawri collected the Golden Boy prize as the league's best under-23 player, and Rahimi added the Fans' Player of the Year award to a season that already had two trophies in it. Five of the six voting awards went to one dressing room.

The statistics prizes told the same story. Laba's 25 league goals earned him the Golden Shoe, and when the Dream Team for the season was unveiled, six of the eleven names wore Al Ain colours: Eissa, Rami Rabiea, Palacios, Trawri, Rahimi and Laba. Al Ain won the Fan Attendance Award too. They cleared the table faster than the banquet staff (I will show myself out).

One voting award escaped. Al Wasl's Sergio Pereira won Best Goal, beating two Al Ain nominees to do it, which counts as an upset by the standards of the evening. Elsewhere, Al Nasr's Abdoulaye Toure took the ADIB Cup top scorer prize with four goals, Al Jazira's Ali Al-Maamari claimed the Silver Shoe as the under-23 league's leading marksman with 17, and Al Nasr collected the Club Licensing and Professionalism Award.

Nobody in the room argued with the distribution. Al Ain sealed a 15th league title with two games to spare, winning 5-0 away at Sharjah on 6 May while nearest challengers Shabab Al Ahli were held in the Dubai derby. They went 26 matches unbeaten, collected 35 points on the road, more than any other side in the division, and beat Al Wahda in the ADIB Cup final to complete the double. Monday's haul was a receipt, not a verdict.

Ivic's award carries the most interesting arc of the night. The Serbian arrived in February 2025 with Al Ain fifth in the table and on their third coach of the season. Eighteen months later he has a league and cup double, a coach of the year trophy, and a win over Shabab Al Ahli's Paulo Sousa and Ajman's Goran Tufegdzic in the voting. The formula was never complicated: a settled defence in front of Eissa, Palacios creating, Laba finishing. It held for 26 matches without a defeat.

The Golden Ball going to Palacios rather than Laba is the detail worth sitting with. Captains, coaches, media and fans all vote, and they chose the creator over the man who scored 25. That is a fair read of how Al Ain actually functioned. Laba converted the chances. Palacios decided where the game happened.

Trawri's Golden Boy award points at the next phase. The young forward scored in the 5-0 at Sharjah that clinched the title, made the Dream Team alongside players a decade his senior, and beat his own team-mate El Houssein Rahimi to the under-23 prize. Two of the three finalists in that category came from the same academy pipeline. Al Ain are not just winning now. They are stockpiling the players who will be expected to win the next one.

The Fan Attendance Award was the least glamorous trophy of the night and possibly the most telling. Al Ain drew the league's biggest crowd of the season, 18,103 for the visit of Sharjah at Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium, and their travelling support helped fill grounds across the country all year. Hosts Yakoob Al Saadi and Khalid Jassim kept the ceremony moving through the club's repeat visits to the stage. By the end, the walk was familiar.

The league used the occasion for its own announcements. Andres Iniesta was unveiled as a global ambassador for the competition, a reasonable commute given the Spaniard already coaches in the country at second-tier Gulf United. An official league song followed, performed in four languages. Chairman Abdulla Naser Al Jneibi told the room that the league's competitions reached more than 45 million television viewers last season, with coverage from over 800 media outlets. "History is not written by those who settle for what they have achieved, but by those who consider every achievement the beginning of something greater," he said.

The turnaround is short. The 2026-27 ADNOC Pro League kicks off on Friday, three days after the last trophy left Emirates Palace, and Al Ain open their title defence against Bani Yas in the opening matchweek. The rest of the league applauded politely on Monday night. They have until Friday to come up with a better answer.

CAPTION: Matias Palacios collects the Golden Ball at Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental. Al Ain took five of the six voting awards on the night.