Lamine Yamal: The Golden Wonderkid Who Reminds us of Lionel Messi

Follow @Mike_ThePundit on X for more expert analysis.

There are players who bring joy. Then there are players who bring memories. Lamine Yamal is both.

On a night when Barcelona seemed like they would falter, and Inter threatened to snatch something under the Montjuïc lights in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League Last week, it was the 17-year-old who took control, not by slowing the game down, but by bending it to fit him.

Lamine Yamal breezed in and out of spaces, drifting past seasoned pros like they were training cones. He didn’t play like a teenager. He played like the shirt had been stitched to his skin for years.

It didn’t matter that he felt a tweak in his groin during the warm-up. It didn’t matter that Inter were looking to run away with something. It didn’t matter that he was born three years after Messi’s Barcelona debut.

None of it mattered. Because when Yamal touched the ball – 102 times – to be precise, time collapsed.

That’s the thing with Yamal. It’s not just that he’s good, and he is, frighteningly so. The touch, the awareness, the way he doesn’t flinch when things tighten up. But there’s something else. Something harder to explain. He makes you think of someone. He makes you remember Lionel Messi.

He doesn’t want to be Messi. But he’s waking up that feeling. Although he doesn’t claim it. In fact, he distances himself from it.

“I don’t want to compare myself with anyone, and even less with Messi,” he said in a press conference last week. “I leave that to all of you (reporters). I try to follow my own path. Obviously, I look up to him as the best footballer ever that he is, but I don’t do the comparison.”

But it’s not about comparison. It’s about the echo.

When Yamal runs at a full-back, and Dimarco had the misfortune of being the latest victim, you hear the rustle of nostalgia. The angle of the body. The little pause before he goes. You feel like you’ve seen it before, even if you can’t quite place it.

Still, this isn’t some Messi imitation. It’s his own thing.

In the attempt to bring Barcelona back into the game on the night, Dimarco tried to contain him. Henrikh Mkhitaryan came to help. At one point, they both stood five yards off him like they were hoping he’d choose mercy. He didn’t. Instead, Yamal kept on dazzling. He tried again. And again.

Then came the goal.

There was a bit of Messi in that goal.

And across the game, there were more of those moments. A chipped cross to nobody. A mazy run that ended with the crossbar still rattling. That spin past Marcus Thuram that left the Inter forward looking for a way out. All these felt like something more.

Simone Inzaghi didn’t bother hiding it.

“I haven’t seen a player like Yamal in eight or nine years,” he said. “We had to triple up on him. He’s one of those talents that shows up once every 50 years.”

He meant it. You could tell.

Yamal wasn’t perfect.

Not everything came off. Some passes were overhit. Some dribbles ended in dead ends. But that’s what made it feel real. It wasn’t a robot, but a teenager pushing the edges of what he’s allowed to try.

The draw with Inter was his 100th appearance and brought his 22nd goal (along with 33 assists). At the same age, Cristiano Ronaldo had made 19 appearances (featuring five goals and four assists) and Lionel Messi had made nine, scoring once.

There’s a danger, of course, in turning every talented left-footed teenager into the “next Messi.” Yamal seems allergic to the idea. But when a player makes you feel the same feelings you once felt, the wonder, the disbelief, the feeling of seeing something impossible made real, it’s hard not to follow the thread.

Yamal is not Messi.

But for the first time in a long time, watching Barcelona feels like a privilege again.

Because of Lamine Yamal.

You can bet on Yamal in action tonight as Barcelona face an away UCL tie to Inter Milan – Bet here!

Share Post:

Leave a comment