{"id":548504,"date":"2026-07-14T02:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548504\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T02:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:50:10","slug":"heir-to-messi-and-maradona-spains-lamine-yamal-ready-to-break-french-hearts-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548504\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Heir to Messi and Maradona\u2019: Spain\u2019s Lamine Yamal ready to break French hearts again \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What did you do on the day you turned 19? On Monday, Lamine Yamal\u2019s<\/a> birthday morning started like many others in his young, exultant life: on a football pitch, dozens of camera lens trained on him as Spain<\/a> went through their warm-ups. Spain trained in the Cotton Bowl, the famous gridiron venue in downtown Dallas that has hosted many prodigious talents over the past 90 years. <\/p>\n

But the blond-tipped, braced youngster from the Balearic enclave of Rocafonda is of a different species to the precocious juvenile brilliance that has long been celebrated in US sport.<\/p>\n

Spanish football has watched the transformation of Argentina<\/a> over the past two decades with Lionel Messi<\/a> as conduit. Now, they believe they have their own gift from the planets.<\/p>\n

It was 29 degrees dead-aired and sullen on Monday: a typical Texan July. Rain is forecast when France<\/a> and Spain meet on Tuesday at 3pm local time (8pm Irish time). The contemporary reference point between these nobles of European football is that goal by Yamal in Spain\u2019s 2-1 victory in the Euro 2024 semi-final in Munich. It was partly the absurd combination of insolence, skill and ease, feinting right and then teeing the ball up before firing a rapacious, curling left-foot shot from 25 yards. The ball rapped the inside of Maignan\u2019s post as though to accentuate the aesthetics.<\/p>\n

So, it was partly because it was a thrilling, brilliant goal in a European semi-final. But it was mainly because Yamal was 16 years old. He was, literally, a boy in a man\u2019s world. There\u2019s a moment in that sequence when Yamal knows he has lost the France midfielder Adrien Rabiot with that little feint touch and feint right. You can see the stress on Rabiot\u2019s face. But nobody knew what was coming next.<\/p>\n

\"Spain'sSpain’s Lamine Yamal scores against France in the Euro 2024 semi-final. Photograph: Christina Pahnke\/Getty <\/p>\n

Before the match, during media duties, Rabiot had made a comment about the young Spaniard that seemed innocuous. He spoke in flattering, measured terms about the Yamal\u2019s quality and made the reasonable point that a game of that magnitude carries an intensified pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s down to us to put the pressure on him, to not let him be comfortable and to show him that in order to play the final of a Euro, he\u2019ll need to show much more than he has until now.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his goal, Yamal indirectly addressed Rabiot, not in person but through the pitchside camera, telling the Frenchman, via the watching world: \u201cSpeak now.\u201d <\/p>\n

Two years and six days have passed since and Yamal, at 19, has become a coda for uncontainable and mesmerising sorcery on the right wing. He\u2019s lost none of the exuberance or brashness and he speaks about himself and his sport with a teenage artlessness and honesty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think since the World Cup<\/a> started, everyone has been waiting for this match,\u201d he said, at the weekend, after Spain had dispensed with Belgium 2-1 in Friday\u2019s quarter final.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were really looking forward to it happening. For me we are the two best teams in the World Cup. Without any fear, I believe that if anyone can go against France, it\u2019s us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even allowing for quirks of translation, the message is contained within the phrase \u201cwithout any fear\u201d. For all of the sophistication, technical excellence, passing patterns and defensive meanness of the Spain team Luis de la Fuente has built, there\u2019s a brutal simplicity to Yamal\u2019s role. The direction is simple, even crude. Get him the ball then wait to see what he makes happen.<\/p>\n

In a World Cup characterised by a grand gathering of the superheroes, Sweden\u2019s folk-hero-turned-media-guy Zlatan Ibrahimovic was ready to declare the torch passed early in the tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe he is the best player in the world. He is a special player for special moments and if they can get him on the ball, he challenges every time he gets the ball. It doesn\u2019t matter if he has one, two, three in front of him. He will challenge, he will create, and that is what Spain needs. That is what they missed in the first game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LamineLamine Yamal celebrates scoring Spain’s first goal in their 4-0 win over Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Justin Setterfield\/Getty <\/p>\n

Yamal scored against Saudi Arabia and Spain won 4-0. Spain have since cruised through the tournament. He has not added to his goal tally, but won two \u201cSuperior Player\u201d awards and has simultaneously excited the crowds and struck terror into left backs with every possession.<\/p>\n

But there is a sense he is on the threshold of taking over, or owning a game, or at least leaving an indelible mark on it. De la Fuente is doing his best to protect his country\u2019s incandescent talent, opting to leave him on the bench for that startling 0-0 draw against Cape Verde in the opening game.<\/p>\n

For the previous seven weeks, Yamal\u2019s rehabilitation from a hamstring tear in April was the subject to daily updates in the Spanish press. He arrived in the US as the anointed heir to Messi and the late Diego Maradona, and has been subjected to an international weight of expectation magnified by the evolution of digital media.<\/p>\n

De la Fuente is a sober and understated communicator, but even as he tried to protect his winger his mind drifted towards the mystical.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are big names,\u201d he said before the Saudi Arabia game. \u201cThe worst mistake we could make would be to compare him to anyone. He is the midst of a process. He has exceptional footballing maturity and lives it all with total naturalness. He has great serenity and strength. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to let him follow his path, but those players who have something different are ready for that. They\u2019re geniuses, like Dal\u00ed can paint a picture, or Michelangelo. They\u2019re different. What is exceptional to us, isn\u2019t to them. In those extremes, they feel comfortable. Why? Because they are different. What we think is exceptional, they consider normal. We should help him as best we can on this journey: that would be good for Spanish football and the Spanish national team.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Yamal can only benefit from the De la Fuente shield when he is with the national squad. His performances for Barcelona<\/a> this season have been incendiary and brilliant. Carefree as his game is, it demands an obscene workload and ceaseless creative responsibility. At the moment, he lags behind Kylian Mbapp\u00e9<\/a>, Harry Kane<\/a>, Lionel Messi<\/a> and Michael Olise in the odds for the Ballon d\u2019Or, which will be announced in London in October. But those odds will shift anyway with the events of this week. No teenager has won the award.<\/p>\n

Stats Performance compile a data base of minutes-played by 18-and-under footballers, dating back to 2009. The numbers reflect the relentless schedule of the domestic and continental club schedule and increasing international duties. Before this World Cup, Yamal had amassed 12,680 minutes. The next closest player was Jude Bellingham<\/a>, who had played 9,900 minutes before reaching 19 years old.<\/p>\n

Ryan O\u2019Hanlon, the ESPN writer and author of Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game\u2019s Analytics Revolution, sifted through the debris of prodigies from the past few decades and put together a fascinating chart detailing the total minutes played by 18s-or-under since the early 1990s. Wayne Rooney is in at number six, with 6,266. Michael Owen accumulated more than 5,000 minutes with Liverpool, and is among the players on the list who suffered injuries that affected their career trajectories, from Gavi to Eduardo Camavinga to Javi Martinez.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sombre backdrop with which to consider Yamal moves through this World Cup while shaking off the first injury scare of a football talent that has the potential, it seems, to advance the perceived limits of the game itself. We watch Messi, in his luminous twilight, secure in the knowledge of all he has already achieved.<\/p>\n

Yamal\u2019s football future is unwritten, which is what makes it so precious and fragile. <\/p>\n

World Cup Wallchart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What did you do on the day you turned 19? On Monday, Lamine Yamal\u2019s birthday morning started like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[232473,173521,1814,28467,42,28465,65024,4097,28776,43,230714,40,38,41,39,4018],"class_list":["post-548504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-ballon-d-or","tag-barcelona-fc","tag-france","tag-harry-kane","tag-headlines","tag-jude-bellingham","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-lamine-yamal","tag-lionel-messi","tag-news","tag-spain-football-team","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}