Lamine Yamal, rendering the superficial extraordinary look since … 2007. Just when you thought that the young Barcelona superstar had struck the upper ceiling of what could reasonably be expected of a 17 -year -old child on a football field, he goes and blows a hole in a league of the Champions League with two of the most remarkable moments of the brilliance of the competition, and does them in the same half.
First assistance. By sending Florentino flying on the ground and Nicolas Otamendi crashed on the inadvertent ball screen of Robert Lewandowski, Yamal went to fly in the box, the space opening to try to fold it in the most distant corner. Only the youngster will know if that’s what he was trying to do. What he did was to complete the ball away from the goal and directly in the wake of Raphinha for the opening goal.
If someone other than perhaps half a dozen players on the planet would call him a rod with confidence. At an age when he cannot vote legally during an election, the decision -making and the technical capacity of Yamal are such that you must at least consider the possibility that he thought it.
There was no doubt about its objective, the strike which restored the two global advances of Barcelona on Benfica after Nicolas Otamendi had struck a corner. By picking up the ball near the right key line, Yamal exceeded a challenge, but his touch moved him away from the goal while he was leaning at the edge of the box. Again, it seemed to be whatever.
With the most minimal back and almost no strikethrough, Yamal encountered the ball in stride. The turn he conferred on it left Anatolii Trubin without any chance of approaching it. Even for a youngster with his own immaculate notation album, it could well be the choice of lot.
Barcelona would continue to add more in advance when Raphinha finished a fast counter just before half-time. The Brazilian may have ended this match with two goals, but without a doubt, it was Yamal’s day. Again. The temptation would be to label this, the first direct elimination match of the Champions League in which he marked, as a moment of escape for the young person. For the most part, it would be. In the case of Yamal, we have probably succeeded in the moment of the small groups in Euro 2024, perhaps when he exceeded Pelé to become the youngest scorer of all time during a major tournament.
Indeed at 17, 241 days, Yamal became the youngest player to score and help in a match in the Champions League, breaking the previous record of Breel Embolo of three weeks and a day. Lionel Messi, perhaps the last player to look as well at this young age, marked and helped in a 5-0 victory against Panathinaikos at 18, 131 days.
Yamal and Company are now the first side officially in the hat for the quarter -finals of the Champions League (sorry Arsenal, you will have to present yourself tomorrow evening). This looks like another major opportunity to look at the will of a teenager, who makes his way through the high quality defense of Inter.
If this is what Barcelona ends, you are not betting against Yamal which has a huge impact. This is her trajectory, she feels a question when he overwhelms an elite defense, not so. How long before starting to take out a word from the label so often applied to him, the best young player in the world?
