Lamine Yamal, Spain's Rising Superstar!

Making his Barcelona debut at age 15 and becoming the youngest goalscorer in La Liga history, aged just 16 years and 87 days, is Yamal Spain's next sensation?

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Quiz Question…

Juventus and Manchester City will meet at the Club World Cup on 26th June. Since 2010, which of these clubs has won the most league titles?

Answer to follow at the end of The Newsletter

Stick To Football Behind The Scenes: Mark Crossley

DON’T MENTION LIONEL BUT LAMINE IS MY PLAYER OF THE SEASON

By Rob Draper, co-host It Was What It Was

Are we there yet? Can we finally say the 2024-25 season is over? Does it ever really end, what with the Club World Cup ongoing? But with the Nations’ League, World Cup qualifiers and Vanarama National League Play Off final complete, can we now draw a line under the season and consider our player of 2024-25? In doing so we shall surely throw ourselves into the most heated of debates, the one in which we bicker on social media over who should win the Ballon d’Or.

Much as I could be persuaded by the contributions of Desiré Doué, Ousmane Dembélé, Raphinha, La Liga’s player of the year, and Mo Salah, the Premier League's outstanding performer, the eye was constantly drawn to the youth who Simone Inzaghi described as a “phenomenon” and who will only become an adult next month. “There’s one like that born every 50 years,” said the former Inter coach after that match.

Drive out of Barcelona north, past the Villa Olimpica, where the 1992 Olympic Village was built to regenerate the city, and head for Badalona. Now you’re leaving behind the swish, swanky districts of Born, where tourists gather to buy overpriced coffee and Miro-branded china. You’re into a post-industrial landscape, chimneys from the long-since-defunct electrical plant dominating the skyline. Carry on up the C-32 and you’ll come to Mataró. It might technically be almost into the Costa Brava but it’s not quite the town of pretty coves with yachts bobbing up and down, their sundecks populated by the beautiful, wealthy Catalans taking their summer break. That is further up the coast towards the French border.

This is more like those left-behind coastal towns of England. Once in Mataró, head for the Rocafonda neighbourhood with the postcode 304, now one of the most-famous in the world thanks to that celebration. According to Spain’s National Institute of Statistics, almost half of the population of Rocafonda is at risk of poverty. It’s a barrio that was built new in the 1960s to house migrants from the south of Spain, mainly from poorer regions such as Andalucía and Extremadura. But in the 21st century it transformed to become home to the next generation of workers arriving from Africa and South America.

Here it was that Lamine Yamal spent his early years, in some respects a perfect poster boy for the Gen Alpha wave of kids that will define the 21st century. With his father Mounir Nasraoui, Moroccan, and his mum, Sheila Ebana from Equatorial Guinea, he is a child of both muslim North Africa with a stake in Christian sub-Saharan Africa but representing the new Spain and old Europe. He is a Muslim who transcends race and religion, connecting powerfully with a range of different tribal loyalties: Arab, African and European.

It is perhaps indicative of the distinctive challenges of growing up in Rocafonda that Barça took him into their dormitory accommodation at La Masia, their youth system, at the age of 12. Normally local boys live at home and commute with the boarding-school-style facilities reserved for out-of-town kids.

Last summer, when he was *checks notes* still 16 and unpicking England in the Euro 2024 final, his story dovetailed neatly with Spain team-mate Nico Williams, whose parents had crossed the Sahara barefoot having been swindled by people traffickers in a bid to make the UK, eventually ending up settled in Bilbao. The kids born in an age of mass cross-continental migration turn out to be the ones writing 21st century football history.

“Really we do him no favours by comparing him to the greatest footballer who ever lived,” his first Barça coach Xavi once said. And he’s right. You know who he means. And yet how can we not? Baptised by Lionel Messi at birth because, coincidentally, his parents won a raffle for him to be photographed with a Barça player as part of a UNICEF campaign. And it just so happened that Messi was assigned to be the player pictured bathing this particular baby. If you’re susceptible to signs of divine providence, that’s your John The Baptist moment right there.

There are several cameos that stand out in Barça’s double-winning year. There is the third goal in the 4-0 win at the Bernabéu in October, scored with his less-favoured right foot, going inside the keeper for the top corner rather than the more obvious strike across goal to the far corner. That day he turned to the Real Madrid Ultras Sur fans and pointed to his name on the back of his shirt, the gap-toothed grin bearing his youthful braces. “This is who I am,” he seemed to say. He once had a standing ovation at the Bernabéu playing for Spain against Brazil, but in this moment Sid Lowe noted in The Guardian a home fan shouted: “Go sell your hankies at the traffic lights.” This isn’t quite the fairy tale of a post-racial, multicultural new Spain. Every country, every city is struggling with the tensions of the new age. But kids like Yamal may come to define the epoch.

Who will ever forget the epic 7-6 Champions League semi-final against Inter? More pointedly, who will forget the second half of the first leg where, for long sections, this 17-year-old appeared to be playing an entirely different sport at a level far above an experienced, streetwise and talented Inter team? The goal that pulled Barça back into the contest was sublime, the outside of that stronger left foot guiding the ball into the far corner, rebounding in off the post, all after having delivered a dazzling dribble at extraordinary pace that no Inter player could get near and which reminded you of …well, you know who. Yet I almost prefer the moment a few minutes later when, accelerating to the byline and seemingly out of play, he stops, lands Federico Dimarco on his backside and produces a shot from a seemingly impossible angle that glances off the crossbar. Dimarco is no idiot. And yet despite being ten years Yamal’s senior, sometimes there is nothing you can offer by way of defence.

You knew this boy was special 18 months ago. And yet you never could conceive he would cover so much ground in such a short space of time. Football comes at you fast. It was meant to be the season Kylian Mbappé delivered for Real Madrid and secured his place in football’s pantheon. It now looks like he might have missed his Ballon d’Or window.

There are pitfalls ahead of course, The fact that he played his 100th game for Barça in that semi-final against Inter indicates a lot of strain on young muscles that may presage injury issues ahead. There is fame and fortune to negotiate, his new deal with Barca until 2031 worth £25m a year with his buy-out clause set at £850m.

There are players with more consistency and better stats available for 2024-25. But in terms of making your jaw drop, no one has done that more than Yamal. Sometimes, once-a-generation, a talent makes you gawp and feel more alive than ever before. This was that season and Lamine Yamal was that player. I haven't felt like that since … well, you know who.

Quiz Answer:

Juventus