It was billed as the battle of the two teenage wonderkids – and for once it was Lamine Yamal who found himself overshadowed, cast aside from the spotlight.<\/p>\n
This was Estevao Willian’s night.<\/p>\n
With Chelsea already 1-0 up and Barcelona down to 10 men, the 18-year-old produced a truly memorable moment to light up an already raucous Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n
Collecting a pass from Reece James, Estevao cut inside, turned Alejandro Balde inside out and then sent a rasping drive into the roof of the net past goalkeeper Joan Garcia.<\/p>\n
As former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin put it: “Start believing the hype.”<\/p>\n
“The goal’s the bit everyone will see, and it was wonderful in a number of ways,” Nevin said on BBC Radio 5 Live after the 3-0 victory. “It was just so tight, the footwork, and it’s a brilliant, brilliant finish.<\/p>\n
“But all the other parts of his game, the intelligence, the movement, the picking up of position… he’s a natural. Because usually footballers are called natural and they’re not – but it just looks so effortless for him. Some players just move differently to other players, a grace and elegance. It’s beautiful to see.”<\/p>\n
Speaking on Amazon Prime, ex-Chelsea forward Daniel Sturridge added: “The anticipation and expectation was that it was going to be Yamal’s night and it would be all about him. But you see Estavao tonight and it was absolutely brilliant.”<\/p>\n
Yamal’s evening came to an end in the 80th minute, substituted to jeers with the match already lost.<\/p>\n
Just two minutes and 40 seconds later, Estevao departed to a standing ovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was billed as the battle of the two teenage wonderkids – and for once it was Lamine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-313880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}