Forget Rodri and VinÃcius and all that Ballon d’Or “brawling” — let’s say goodbye to 2024 by admitting, unequivocally, that it has been the year of Lamine Yamal.
In footballing terms, the boy is a genius. Fact. He’s blessed with sublime skills, physical maturity beyond his years and, above all, by supernatural on-pitch vision and match intelligence.
I have zero quibbles with the Spaniard and the Brazilian consistently coming first and second across planet football’s great annual awards (Ballon D’Or, FIFA Best) this year. They are older, more streetwise, have more trophies, and have spent longer earning the accolades. But the first thing to point out about Yamal’s Mozart-like talent is how much exquisite joy and admiration he brings to anybody who loves the greatest sport ever invented.
By which I mean that whether you are a Barcelona fan or you detest the sight of their Blaugrana jerseys, Lamine does things that’ll make you gasp, yell and swoon. Oh, how we need more like him across professional soccer in the coming year! How much we also need kids, girls and boys, to be inspired by him to try and emulate him.
While the elite levels of our beloved game become more about automaton-like play and total control, a far more risk-averse style encased in a strategic straightjacket, Lamine isn’t necessarily anarchy because there is purpose and constructive ideology in what he does on the ball. But he’s freedom, spirit, invention, and fun. And while there’s no automatic guarantee what he’ll achieve on the remainder of his career, it’s genuinely startling to compare what he’s achieved over the past 12 months with the identical periods in the careers of Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Even if you include Diego Maradona and Pele, those two are the behemoths not just of modern football, but the entire history of the beautiful game. With over 2,400 goals and assists between them plus an endless stream of trophies, they boast exceptional, all-time attributes. Whether young Lamine has the mental toughness, hunger and extraordinary reservoirs of personal growth that both Cristiano and Messi have shown are fundamental to their characters, we will have to wait to discover. But the 17-year-old Catalan has absolutely dwarfed the early phases of their careers in a sporting sense.
If, and this seems an outrageous prospect, he goes on to develop at a similar rate to those two legends, then he will smash their numbers.
Across the past 12 months, Barcelona’s prodigious teenager has scored 13 times for club and country while also producing 26 goal assists. That means in 2024, Lamine has produced 39 goal contributions while just 16 and 17! Even on its own, that number is dramatic, but wait for the comparison.
Lamine has none of that. Every time, he does with the ball what the passage of play, or his teammates, or the balance of the match, most needs. Whether that’s a dribble, a cross, a shot, a one-two exchange of passes, taking the sting out of a move and slowing things down or accelerating a transition: you name it. He always has options. Lamine has always considered them before he gets possession, and he has an ability to see things around him that, at 17, I think is completely out of proportion to almost anyone who’s proceeded him.
It was years into Lionel Messi’s career, when Pep Guardiola explained the player’s need to wander about the pitch taking mental snapshots, that it was obvious how well he could read the dynamics of a football match rather than simply produce genius individual play. With Lamine, it’s obvious right now.
Now, this column is deliberately not trying to project that Lamine is “the next Cristiano” or “the next Messi” — there is an entire galaxy of opportunities, difficulties, challenges and threats for this youngster to traverse before we can even think about assessing that. I’m not interested in hyping or over-projecting.
I understood Spain coach Luis De La Fuente in the summer when I asked him about how he was managing this prodigy of his. He admitted that his mind had turned to how those around the great Roman emperor Julius Caesar had decided that one of their main tasks was “to remind Caesar that he was human!” But I’ve taken this occasion, at the end of the year, to remind you that 2024 was when Lamine Yamal hinted to all of us that there are things he’s already doing which, in all footballing context, seem superhuman.
It’s something we can all delight in and be truly grateful for. Happy New Year, everyone.
