Lamine Yamal was only a few months old when Lionel Messi, then 18 himself, held the baby in his arms for a UNICEF calendar photoshoot in Barcelona’s locker room. Eighteen years later, the baby inherited Messi’s iconic jersey, after two splendid years wherein he showed the spark to inherit the Argentine’s vaunted legacy.
The No 10 shirt, a symbolic baton, comes with storied pedigree as well as burden. Before Messi, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and Diego Maradona all wore the most famous number in the club’s history. “I’ll try to build my own path, but all kids would like to be like them,” Yamal said Wednesday at the club’s announcement. “All three have been incredible players, they’re legends, and I’ll try to follow in their footsteps.”
“My goal is to keep winning and growing,” Yamal said. “It’s the club of my life. It’s my home, I’ve been here since I was 7 years old,” he said. It’s not the first time that he has been asked about Messi and Co. “I don’t want to compare myself with anyone and even less with Messi,” he had once said.
To understand the crushing burden of the number, he needs to look only as far as his close friend Ansu Fati, a talent that quickly went astray and is now spending a loan spell at Monaco. But, there is profound optimism around Yamal that he would be the club’s talisman like Messi was for a decade and a half.
Messi himself has found shades of himself in Yamal. “If I have to choose someone, because of the age and because of the future that he has, I’ve heard that they have chosen Lamine Yamal and without doubt [it’s him] for me, too. I agree it depends on him and many things because that’s how soccer is, but he’s the present and without a doubt has a huge future,” he had once said.
Messi’s colleague and one of Barcelona greats himself, Xavi, once said Yamal could define an era. “I see him very calm. He is very measured in the sense that he is digesting everything that is happening to him very well, despite his young age. He is a mature person, he is responsible, he is aware of the situation he is experiencing,” said Xavi, who was Barcelona’s manager when Yamal made his debut.
“He’s very humble and he’s showing us that he’s a differential player. He is a player that can mark an era in football, especially at Barcelona. Hopefully we can always enjoy him at this level. He’s a teenage boy who’s growing up. On a mental level, he is a cheerful, joking boy. He’s enjoying himself. He’s happy,” he added.
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At 18, he has already set the stage alight with wondrous goals, assists, nervelessness on the big stage and a capacity to make fools out of the best defenders in the world. There is joy and fearlessness in his game, besides a sparkling maturity. “Fear while playing the game? I left all my fears in the park of my neighbourhood, back in Mataro, a while ago,” he had once said.
Last week, though, his 18th birthday party wooed controversy for its extravagance as well as hiring people with dwarfism as entertainers.
Yamal deflected the controversy“In the end I work for Barça, but when I’m away from the club’s training centre, I enjoy my life and that’s it,” Yamal said. “I’m indifferent to both criticism and praise if they don’t come from my family or people close to me.”
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
