What makes a Lamine Yamal special

The moment Lamine Yamal does his homework or plays rock-paper-scissors with his teammates to get a drink first makes people remember that this is a boy playing football in one of the top playgrounds in world football...

Lamine Yamal in the Spanish national team jersey. Photo: AFP

Growing too fast for his age What would you say if someone said Lamine Yamal was too old for his age? The 16-year-old winger is a precocious teenager. Somehow, he became Barcelona's youngest La Liga debutant a week before becoming the youngest to play for Barcelona B. Just a year out of the academy, he is already the youngest scorer in La Liga, Copa del Rey and Spanish Super Cup history - not bad for a kid still wearing braces. Should we talk about international records? Yamal is the youngest player to represent Spain; Youngest player to score for Spain; Youngest player to assist for Spain; Youngest player to receive a standing ovation for Spain - at the Bernabeu - against Brazil in March, where he assisted the goal and beat Ballon d'Or nominee Vinicus Junior. When Yamal finished third in last year’s Golden Boy award for the world’s best young player, an Italian newspaper created a new award to recognise him for being nominated at a younger age than anyone else in history. The award was officially named: The Youngest. Records galore When he played at EURO 2024, Yamal broke the age records for the tournament – ​​youngest to play, youngest to reach the knockout stages. Yamal was not just Spain’s youngest player, he may have been its most important player. Although Spain have been the team with the best possession since Yamal was a few years old, the famous tiqui-taka style of play that helped La Roja win two consecutive EUROs and a World Cup between 2008 and 2012 has faded. Every tournament over the past decade has been a repeat of déjà vu: lots of passes, not enough goals, and a disappointing defeat. They control most of the pitch, but their slow build-up play is always against a crowded defence. When it comes to creativity to break down defences, Spain – a country that produces midfielders better than strikers – often lack ideas. What Spain lacks Yamal was brought up in the possession-based environment of Spain. Having studied at La Masia since the age of seven, however, stylistically his football bears traces of the concrete pitches where he first learned to dribble at Rocafonda. “When you learn to play on the street, it gives you more independence. It makes you more cunning than someone who has been trained in an academy,” Yamal recently told Spanish GQ. That cunning is exactly what Spain have been lacking. Yamal’s job with the national team, as it was with Barcelona, ​​was to get the ball wide after a long, slow period of possession and conjure up something spectacular, the kind you can’t learn in school, to break down a defence. Yamal was a man with the freedom to try pretty much anything that came to mind. Dealing with multiple defenders in a stalemate is one of the hardest skills in football. Even wingers who excel at dribbling off the touchline or cutting inside struggle to do so successfully in a tight game. The rare talents who can dribble through an organised defence, like Yamal or Vinicius Jr, can do one of two things: force the opposition wide and attack towards the line, but if released, they will turn inside to use their stronger foot to pass or shoot. The dilemma from the defenders is evident in Yamal’s progression. There is no right way to stop, only a multiple choice test full of wrong answers. Unpredictable, Yamal’s football has little in the way of randomness. He beats defenders methodically, almost algorithmically, not unlike a young Lionel Messi, who seems to have deciphered the game into a series of if-then statements. Getting past one or two is just step one of the job. Spain has a player on the opposite wing in Nico Williams, but what makes Yamal special is his ability to read the game instantly and choose the next pass or shot as quickly as possible… Underneath all that detail, there is still the Yamal who has to do his homework, joking with Williams about rock-paper-scissors to get a drink first, to remind people he is still a teenager. “When I am 25, I want to be a responsible person who knows who I am,” Yamal once said. Everyone knows. And from now until Yamal turns 25, there are two more EUROs.

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Source: https://laodong.vn/lao-dong-cuoi-tuan/dieu-tao-nen-mot-lamine-yamal-dac-biet-1362173.ldo