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Graham Hunter, Spain writer
Forget Rodri and Vinícius 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.
Let’s start with Messi — by far the greater of the two when compared with Cristiano Ronaldo. By the time the Argentine genius was 17 years and five months old like Lamine is now, he had started for Barça in defeats in the Copa Del Rey and Champions League, but hadn’t scored or assisted. He hadn’t even started a LaLiga match.
It’s crazier for Cristiano Ronaldo: still in the Sporting CP Academy at an identical age, he had yet to make the first team, score or assist in senior football.
The fact that Lamine has played electrically well in victories over PSG and Bayern Munich, contributing assists in each match, and scored his first Champions League goal against Monaco this season, probably stands in most stark comparison with Cristiano. The Portuguese has gone on to be the all-time Champions League league leading scorer with a genuinely jaw-dropping 140 goals, but it took until he was closer to 23 than 22 to score the first of those — a full 26 matches into his Champions League career. Lamine is five years ahead of him!
As for Messi, he scored early in his UEFA career, but it took the greatest player in footballing history until the beginning of his third season to score as many times for Barça as Lamine has already done.
In terms of international trophies, it took Cristiano 14 years to win one, Messi 17. It has taken Lamine one full senior season to conquer Europe with Spain; he even collected prizes for best young player, team of the tournament and best goal, while also setting the mark as the youngest-ever winner.
The numbers stand out, they are historic, but what has been confirmed in this last calendar year is the impression that Lamine’s brain is absolutely extraordinary.
2:07
What Lamine Yamal’s injury means for Barcelona
Craig Burley questions why Hansi Flick kept Lamine Yamal on the field in Sunday’s defeat to Leganes and ponders what it means for Barca’s LaLiga title hopes.
When I first interviewed him, one of my favourite answers was: “my big strength is the ability to think about what I’m going to do with the ball before it gets to me.” These days he doesn’t have to say those words: he demonstrates them in every match.
Obviously, that skill is slightly less tangible than his statistics, particularly if you are only an intermittent LaLiga watcher, but another comparison is relevant and helpful here.
It always seemed that Messi and Cristiano made the ball their personal possession to do with what they wanted.
That was a more innate talent in the Argentinian, but there were times when CR7 genuinely seemed able to make the ball dance to his commands. However, in his early years, both in Portugal and at Old Trafford, his basic instinct was to apply that skill to becoming the “showman.” Until Alex Ferguson, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Roy Keane bashed that self-indulgence out of him, Cristiano craved the acclaim and attention, plus he had the old-fashioned winger’s idea that humiliating a direct opponent was what the crowd, in gladiatorial fashion, wanted to see if they paid money to come to the Colosseum.
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.