When at last it was time for Lamine Yamal to leave, the 19-year-old’s number going up before the 90th minute for only the second time since the opening day, Real Betis fans whistled him all the way to the touchline where Barcelona’s coach was waiting. His work here done, Hansi Flick invited him to take the weight off his feet and his shoulders, not that he wanted to. First, though, he took Lamine Yamal’s head in his hands and, leaning in away from the amateur lip readers, tried to make himself heard over the noise.
At least he could think of something. When Lamine Yamal had opened the scoring just nine minutes into the match that was supposed to find out how good Barcelona really were, it hadn’t been easy. On the morning that Barcelona went to Betis – first versus third, a proper opponent at last – Jorge Valdano had lamented that sometimes he doesn’t have the words, and he always has the words.
Valdano had just watched Lamine do that, whatever that was, in Istanbul – an “almost rabona,” the kid called it – and now he had a problem. To which Lamine Yamal responded by doing another strange thing that same afternoon, scoring another brilliant goal to set Barcelona on the way to a 5-2 win over Betis in a game that made history. And if Lamine Yamal had been a little lucky three days before, momentarily losing control only for the rebound to bounce back to him like the ball knew where it would rather be, this was all him and very him.
The move started with Gerard Martín losing his boot and ended with pretty much everyone else losing their heads. In Martín’s momentary absence, Rodri dropped into defence and began it from there, the ball moved across the box and back until it was played up to Lamine Yamal. His superb pass with the outside of the boot unlocked everything and then, receiving again just inside Betis’s half, he set off.
There’s a moment, Lamine Yamal says, when you can sense the anticipation, feel people getting up one after the other all along the stand, a wave accompanying you, moving with you. At that moment, he says, there’s some inner power and you feel like Superman or Spiderman; the defenders are robots, he says, and however good a robot is, however well programmed to stop him, a human is better. Too fast, too agile, too inspired.
Too much thought gone into this, too much psychology. Man against the machines, code this. He rolled the ball one way with his left foot, flicked it the other with the heel of his right, and from the edge of the box, sent it flying into the far top corner.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
