Football journalist and author Guillem Balagué provides his insight on the rise of Lamine Yamal and how he has become the talisman for Barcelona.
Lamine Yamal had something to say to Espanyol. After Sunday’s 4-1 victory in the Catalan derby, he went straight to Instagram. “They have to swallow the defeat… as usual.” That was just a kid from Mataró reminding the neighbours exactly where they stand.
This is who he is. The social media provocations, the Clásico jokes, the streamer exchanges that gave Courtois and Carvajal ammunition at the Bernabeu… critics line these up as evidence of immaturity, as if a more polished version of Lamine Yamal would serve Barcelona better. They are wrong. The competitive instinct that makes him wind up opponents on socials is the same instinct that makes him impossible to contain on a football pitch. You do not get to separate them.
He provided two assists in that derby, then made it 3-1 in the 87th minute after Espanyol had briefly cut the deficit. Yamal played the full 90 minutes, despite the fact 72 hours later, Barcelona face Atlético in Madrid for the return leg of the UEFA Champions League quarter-final where the Catalans start with a 2-0 deficit. Hansi Flick wanted to rest him in the La Liga game but… he is too important.
Only three players in the world are valued at €200 million by Transfermarkt: Haaland, Mbappé, and Lamine Yamal. The crucial difference is that he is 18 years old. He has arrived at a valuation that took others the peak of their careers to reach, and he has not yet got there. Not by a mile.
That UEFA Champions League defeat is not seen by Lamine as a setback. More like an unfinished business, which is an entirely different thing. Setbacks produce anxiety. Unfinished business produces fury for someone who dreams of changing the history of a club that have not won the competition since 2015. La Liga, which will be won by Barcelona, is the baseline now, while the UEFA Champions League is the validation.
He is objectively better than last season, he is growing - more involved, demanding the ball earlier, working harder without it, reaching 18 goals in 21 fewer games than last year. He has 20 now and 15 assists.
In the first of the three encounters against Atletico in ten days, there was a classic Lamine Yamal moment. In the last ten minutes, with the score at 1-1, a shot from him was blocked by an Atlético player. The goalkeeping coach Jose Ramón de la Fuente stepped out of the technical area and told him to move the ball rather than risk with an individual moment. Yamal pointed at the scoreboard, pointed at the clock, raised his arm twice in irritation.
Read it wrong and it looks like a teenager losing his composure.
Read it right and it looks like a player who understood the moment better than anyone around him.
After Real Madrid had lost against Mallorca just before Barcelona’s game, the league title was on the line and three points were the target he wanted. His job - his actual job, the reason he wears the number 10, the reason the club has him as the reference point already - is to be the one who produces the winning moment when winning moments are required. That is his job description. You do not hand someone that shirt and then ask them to pass it square.
The structure around him is worth understanding. Jorge Mendes is his agent, alongside his business partners, Santiago Liotta and Santiago San Torcuato, Mende’s key figures in Spain and Latin America. They provide the financial architecture - the Adidas deal alone is reportedly worth €32 million over ten years, signed when he was 16. Every major brand in global sport is circling a player who is 18, whose market value can only go in one direction, and who carries with him a story - immigrant family, Moroccan and Equatorial Guinean roots, Barcelona academy, generational talent - that transcends football.
There is a photograph - a baby in a plastic tub, held awkwardly by the greatest footballer who ever lived, taken for a charity calendar after his parents won a raffle. That baby now wears the number 10 shirt the man that was holding him in the photo, Messi, once wore.
Despite one of the most sophisticated commercial operations around any young athlete on the planet, he retains ownership of his own image and his This file has been converted from its original format for security purposes. He wears a cap from an unknown brand because he likes it. He posts what he wants, including what he wants to say to Espanyol. The machine serves him. He does not serve the machine. In an era when young stars are routinely consumed by the apparatus built to protect them, that is not a small thing.
His inner circle is simpler still. His cousin. His friend Souhaib. His father and mother. People who were there before any of this arrived, and whose presence alone, without strategy, reminds him of who he is and where he came from. When his new contract was signed with Barcelona last summer, Lamine Yamal refused to put pen to paper until his grandmother Fátima flew back from Morocco. She had to be in the room. Fátima, who had once crossed from Morocco alone and worked three shifts so her son could follow.
He said something once that deserves to be the last word before Tuesday. “I left fear in the park in Mataró.” It was a rare press conference. He will do another one before the Atletico Madrid game. He said yes to facing the press when suggested. The UEFA Champions League is that important. He is the number 10 and won’t hide. He wants to lead the comeback.
More than being happy to lead, he is desperate to turn things around. And that, more than the valuation, more than the shirt number, more than the photograph with Messi, is what makes him the most dangerous player on the pitch on Tuesday night.
