Lamine Yamal played in Vitoria for his fifth consecutive game as a starter. Except for the Copa match against Athletic, he has finished them all on the pitch. In San Mamés he was replaced in extra time, so he also played the 90 minutes. Lamine is the same 16 years old as in August, when he settled at Barça, after a dazzling performance at Joan Gamper. It was one of those unforgettable fights that usually stand out many years later for football stars, but at that very moment the debate began about the care required of a teenager who still does not know the razor blade.
It’s a debate as old as football. When a youth luminary emerges, the small handful of teenagers who have amazed successive generations of fans come to mind. Pelé began the descent in the fifties of the last century. At the age of 17, he impressed the Brazilian team that won the World Cup in 1958. There he discovered that true geniuses come from the factory. Pelé, Maradona and Messi, the three footballers who eat separately at the king’s table, demonstrate the relationship between precocity and unparalleled mastery.
With whatever exceptions you want – Zidane, for example, didn’t burst onto the international scene until he was 25 – the extremely different player shows it very early on. They also take very little time to assume the maximum responsibilities in their teams, so their presence in the lineups is constant. Sometimes the devil of injuries, bad advice, emotional turmoil or the greed of middlemen descends on precocious genius.
The catalog of young stars who dissipate without leaving a trace in football is extensive, some because they were not as extraordinary as suspected, others because they were victims of the worst factors that preside over football. It is natural, therefore, to welcome with caution and great care the brilliant teenagers who face the overwhelming demands that football requires, which in the case of today’s Barça multiply exponentially. Uncertainties and discouragement make a little more runs than the studs of the rivals.
Lamine did not score any of the three goals in Barça’s victory in Mendizorrotza, but he was the figure of the match, the player who aroused the most admiration and the only one who produced surprise. Due to the evidence of the team’s weaknesses and needs, Xavi has changed Lamine Yamal’s roadmap. Left behind is the youth protected with loose cotton and many minutes of rest, more substitute than starter, more circumstantial resource than key to the team, more sad than happy.
Who knows? Perhaps it suited Lamine to internalize and vent his frustrations during his brief journey through the desert, but the evidence (and Raphinha’s injury) has prevailed. The administration of minutes, the fear of burning him and the respect for hierarchies are over. At the most critical moment of the season, the 16-year-old boy plays every minute of every game, without the previous preventive voices being heard.
Barça need Lamine like the bread they eat and Yamal needs to play to assume his crucial importance. This equation has been fulfilled in the last five games. The player’s response has been so good that he will only leave the starting line-up when exhaustion is evident or Barça’s situation improves so much that Lamine asks for a break. The more it has played, the better it has worked. In the last five games he has reached a new height in the team, one that will force us to look at him with different eyes and, in some cases, with a different attitude. Lewandowski will most certainly never take his hand off Lamine Yamal again.
